Civil War’s dirty secret about slavery

We have an op-ed today at CNN.com on how to understand the relationship of the North to slavery and race on the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.

The essay, written by Executive Director Katrina Browne and Managing Director James DeWolf Perry, builds on our ongoing work around the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and the enduring historical myths which blind us to the legacy of slavery and race today.

Here is how the op-ed begins:

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, a war that redefined national and regional identities and became an enduring tale of noble resistance in the South and, for the rest of the country, a mighty moral struggle to erase the stain of slavery.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces opened fire on the beleaguered Union garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. By April 14, the fort had fallen and the war had begun in earnest.

By the time Fort Sumter was again in Union hands, following the evacuation of Charleston in the closing days of the war in 1865, the war had become the bloodiest in the nation’s history — and has not been surpassed. Yet the relationship of the North to the South, and to slavery before and during the war is not at all what we remember today. The reality is that both North and South were profoundly complicit in slavery and deeply reluctant to abolish our nation’s “peculiar institution.”

To read the full article, go to “Civil War’s dirty secret about slavery” at CNN.com.