Beware of Doctrinaires at Historic Columbia

This Labor Day weekend, I decided to tour parts of Columbia, South Carolina. I visited the state capitol, select cemeteries, and, of course, a few historical homes; one, of which, marred my trip. I was so disturbed by this visit, I posted to Yelp as a warning to others:


This is the first time I’ve posted on Yelp and I do so as a warning to students of history. As an enthusiast, I spend my vacations visiting historical sites and homes so as to get a better insight into prominent figures and families that I’ve read about. Usually these tours center on the subject at hand; not so at Historic Columbia and particularly at the Hampton-Preston home. Instead, I was treated to an alternative history by a college student that’s neither accurate or original.


I’m sure this doctrinaire was given a script but that’s no excuse for her attitude. She insisted that the States’ Rights doctrine was solely about slavery and that the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy did so for the preservation of slavery. She derived this premise based upon “the documentary evidence” of the Confederate Constitution. I tried to inform this young lady that a small percentage of the population owned slaves and that their constitution was written by a political elite. I also tried to inform her that four states didn’t secede until Lincoln demanded states conscription and financial aid to the Union cause. But that didn’t matter; she would have none of it. She didn’t even understand the Southerners of that time considered the war a Northern invasion.



I found it funny that this young lady lamented today’s “revisionist history.” A student of this era would know that the Lost Cause doctrine has been around since Reconstruction. You’ll find this lament in writings from carpetbaggers like Albion Tourgee; Marxist such as W.E.B. DuBoise; and red-diaper babies such as Eric Foner.. The only thing new that I’ve discovered by today’s revisionist historians is that the States’ Rights doctrine had nothing to do with tariffs and punitive federal policies, all Northerners were abolitionist and that all Southerners were rabid slave holders. So sayeth modern academia; so sayeth their doctrinaires.