The issue:
The fact checkers:
Willoughby Mariano: writer, researcher
Elizabeth Miniet: editor
Jim Tharpe: editor
Analysis:
Note: I am of a Southern family and have studied the Civil War in some depth, though with no particular attention paid to this particular issue. I have no personal interest in the truth of the matter either way, other than as a matter of favoring the truth over something less.
Ray McBerry, spokesperson for the Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans, appeared on public radio station WABE after the History Channel stopped airing a commercial that advocated a minority view about the American Civil War.
Context (transcript mine):
STEVE GOSS:One of the spots on the Sons of Confederate Veterans' Web site refers to the war as a time when--I'm quoting here--(")Men and women of the South stood courageously for liberty.(") unquote. How can the Sons of Confederate Veterans make a sweeping statement like that when millions of blacks were enslaved in the South?
RAY MCBERRY:The reason that the Sons of Confederate Veterans are able to say that Southern men and women were standing up for the issue of liberty is because those foundational bedrock principles upon which the, the Confederacy was formed, were the exact same principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence, and when the South chose peacefully to secede in 1861, um, they were really doing the exact same thing that our founding fathers had done from England in 1776. That was, attempting to peacefully secede and just go their own separate way. And had Mr. Lincoln and the North allowed that to happen, it would have been a peaceful separation.
STEVE GOSS:Shouldn't your ads, when they refer to "the people of the South" have an important qualifier and maybe just say "the white people of the South" and that would be historically accurate?
RAY MCBERRY:No, in order to be accurate, uh, we believe they should be written the way they are. Because there were also many freed blacks who actually fought on behalf of the South during the war. In fact, uh, one of the largest slave owners, I think in Louisiana, was a freed black man, uh, was a doctor there in the Louisiana area, and many freed blacks, as well as slaves, fought voluntarily on the side of the South during the war. Um, you'll find, uh, blacks in almost every regiment throughout the South who fought right alongside, uh, white Southerners, and in almost every case they--it was a voluntary decision that the free blacks made.
I take McBerry to say that blacks either slave or free occurred in nearly every Confederate regiment and that it was almost always a voluntary decision in the case of the free blacks. He mentions both slave and free soldiers and does an imperfect job of keeping the two groups distinct during his discourse.
The PolitiFact reaction:
