years employed them to teach us why and how Southern men fought against the North. Certain honest efforts have been made to expel these books and their teachings. Differences of opinion should not, and do not, induce us to impugn the motives of faithful men; but we regret that these efforts have not been entirely successful.
The general views so far expressed have been presented before. The situation seemed to us to require their forcible repetition. Now, however, and by the last remarks with respect to the histories, we are brought to the special work expected from your committee of this year, the examination of the books allowed for use by the last ruling of our Board of Education, and now in use in the "public" and some of the private schools of the State.
ALL ARE UNFIT.
To begin with, and in general: As the result of our examination and such scholarly aid as we have been able to secure, we have to report the positive conclusion that no Northern author has yet written a school history in which it is not easy to trace one or more of the purposes we have described and denounced. All that we have seen are for this reason unfit for use in Southern schools.
Nor do we hesitate to express the opinion that, standing, as these people do to the truth of history, conscious that their section is on trial with respect to the sectional war, and well aware of the growing signs that theirs is to be the "Lost Cause" at last—human nature being imperfect—fair history cannot be expected of Northern authors, unless they be of the rarest and boldest, worthy to rank with the inspired historians who wrote the simple truth. If they imitate these great writers they conquer self to an extent impossible for simple mortals; offend their own people, and fail of their market. They cannot do the first; fear to do the second; the third, their publishers will not allow. Ignorantly or knowingly, seeing with the blinded eyes of prejudice or intent that others shall not see, they are constrained to falsify the record in fact or in effect; otherwise they must be silent. They have not been silent.
