State of Virginia Textbook

In honor of the first post of this blog, I'd like to look at the State of Virginia and their textbook issue. What is this issue? Well, they hired a writer to write a 4th grade textbook. Then they had a committee of three teachers vet the textbook-so far, so good, right? And then someone actually read it. And in it is a sentence which says that thousands of slaves fought (and died) for the South during the American Civil War and that two companies of slaves fought under General Stonewall Jackson. There is so much wrong with this that I frankly don't know where to start. Is it actually thinking that this could be true? That slaves would love their lives enough that they would fight for the side that kept them chained and beaten like animals? Or is the pure lack of scholarship in this? The real Civil War historians politely said that this is "outside the mainstream of scholarly thought about the Civil War", instead of just coming out and saying it's wrong. And where did the esteemed author get this information? From the Internet, of course. Where she did not remember one of the cardinal rules of doing research on the Internet-and that is KNOW YOUR SOURCES. Seriously, if you don't realize that you got this info from a web site sponsored by the Sons of the Confederacy, then you are an idiot. And what does Virginia say? "Just don't teach that paragraph". I think they absolutely should teach it-and use it as a way of teaching children that you can't always believe what you read, especially on the Internet.
By the way, no slaves fought for the South. There was a huge debate within the Confederacy itself over whether to arm the slaves or not-and the leaders believed that if they armed the slaves, the slaves would:
A) Use the weapons on them or
B) Make a dash for Union side as use the weapons on them during the actual battles.

Considering how many ex-slaves made a break for the Union side, their concerns were quite valid. And if you want a real Civil War historian, go read James McPherson-he's the real thing.