This class will be geared towards telling the untold story of the War Against the Constitution. The class will elide past the motif of war that the victors get to write the history. One can find that “history” everywhere. The goal in this class is oriented to give you the whole story of the War of Northern Aggression. I am providing a long list of books. We will not be able to get to all of these but now you will have this list in case you ever want to go diving for yourself. We will be using the books that have an asterisk next to them. This does not necessarily mean they are the best books, though they sometimes will be. It means they are the books that will fit into our time frame most easily. Shelby Foote’s III volume series, for example, is elegantly written and is a living book but, alas, we can not fit Foote’s III volume into this course. Still, I would encourage all to turn the TV off and read Shelby Foote.
There are countless books on this huge subject. These are some of the ones I have read. My hope is this will wet the appetite of both children and parents to desire to continue on in their learning regardless of their age.
I would say that he who gets the history of the War Against the Constitution wrong will get very little else right about US History. It is an important subject.
Keep in mind that the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) could be a whole separate semester class with a reading list every bit as long and controversial as this one. You really can not tell the story of the War Against the Constitution without telling the story of Yankee Reconstruction.
Keep in mind that learning never ends.
(1.) Shelby Foote — The Civil War: A Narrative (III Volume set)
(2.) * R. G. B. Horton — A Youth’s History of the Great Civil War in the United States From 1861-1865
(3) Alexander Stephens — A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (II Volumes)
(4) Edgar Lee Masters — Lincoln the Man (Free Audio on Amazon)
(5) * Webb Garrison: Lincoln’s Little War; How His Carefully Laid Plan Went Astray
(6) * Thomas J. DiLorenzo — The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
(7) * Thomas J. DiLorenzo — Lincoln Unmasked
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* Walter D. Kennedy — Myths of American Slavery
* Walter D. Kennedy — Myths of American Slavery(9) * Understanding the War Between the States; A Supplemental book by 16 writers that Enable A More Complete and Truthful Study of American History (Middle School, High School, College, and Beyond)
(10) *Ludwell H. Johnson — North Against South; The American Iliad 1848-1877
(11) * John S. Tilley — Facts The Historians Leave Out: A Confederate Primer
(12) Otto Scott — The Secret Six
(13) *Mildred Lewis Rutherford — Truths of History
(14)* Walter Brian Cisco — War Crimes Against Southern Civilians
(15) James Ronald Kennedy & Walter Donald Kennedy; “The South Was Right”
(16) Al Benson — Lincoln’s Marxists
(17) Jeffrey Manber & Neil Dahlstrom — Lincoln’s Wrath: Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels and a President’s Mission to Destroy the Press
(18) Avery Craven — The Coming of the Civil War
(19) Thomas & Debra Goodrich — The Day Dixie Died
(20) Howell Cobb — A Scriptural Examination of the Institution of Slavery in the United States
(21) Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, Jennifer Frank — Complicity; How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery
(22) Jennifer L. Weber — Copperheads; The Rise & Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North
(23) C. C. Goen — Broken Churches, Broken Nation
(24) Lyon Gardiner Tyler — John Tyler & Abraham Lincoln; Who was the Dwarf?
(25) Jefferson Davis — The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (II Volumes)
