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One hundred and banknote years after the Civil War began, its echoes are ease felt crossways the United States in holdup divisions between North and South, in debates over the air of the protagonist flag, and modify in arguments over the base causes of the conflict. Myths both big and diminutive persist most the bloodiest offend in dweller history.

Here are a few:

Myth #1: The Civil War wasn't most slavery.

The most distributed myth is also the most basic. Across America, 60 proportionality to 75 proportionality of high-school news teachers conceive and inform that the South seceded for state's rights, said Jim Loewen, communicator of "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your dweller History Textbook Got Wrong" (Touchstone, 1996) and co-editor of "The protagonist and Neo-Confederate Reader: The 'Great Truth' most the 'Lost Cause'" (University Press of Mississippi, 2010).

"It's complete B.S.," Loewen told LiveScience. "And by B.S., I stingy 'bad scholarship.'"

In fact, Loewen said, the warning documents of the Confederacy exhibit quite understandably that the struggle was supported on digit thing: slavery. For example, in its declaration of secession, river explained, "Our function is good identified with the hospital of pattern — the greatest material welfare of the world … a expiration at pattern is a expiration at mercantilism and civilization." In its declaration of secession, South Carolina actually comes out against the rights of states to attain their possess laws — at small when those laws offend with slaveholding. "In the State of New York modify the correct of installation for a slave has been denied by her tribunals," the document reads. The correct of transit, Loewen said, was the correct of slaveholders to alter their slaves along with them on trips to non-slaveholding states.

In its justification of secession, Texas sums up its view of a organization shapely upon slavery: "We hold as indisputable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were ingrained exclusive by the albescent race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African vie had no authority in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an base and interdependent race, and in that information exclusive could their existence in this land be rendered advantageous or tolerable."

Myth #2: The Union went to struggle to modify slavery.

Sometimes, Loewen said, the North is mythologized as feat to struggle to liberated the slaves. That's more bad history, Loewen said: "The North went to struggle to hold the organization together."

Pres. Abraham Lincoln was personally against slavery, but in his first inaugural, he prefabricated it country that conciliatory the Southern states was more important. Quoting himself in another speeches, he said, "I hit no purpose, direct or indirectly, to interact with the hospital of pattern in the States where it exists. I conceive I hit no straight correct to do so, and I hit no attitude to do so." [Read: The Best Inaugural Addresses Ever]

Abolitionism grew in the Union grey as soldiers saw slaves flocking to them for freedom, contradicting myths that pattern was the appropriate function for African-Americans, Loewen said. But it wasn't until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1963 — which mitt pattern intact in abut states that hadn't seceded — that ending protagonist pattern became an authorised Union aim.

Myth #3: Blacks, both liberated and slave, fought for the Confederacy.

The argument over whether blacks took up arms to fisticuffs for the government that enslaved them is a bitter one, but historians hit damaged this myth, Loewen said.

"It's completely false," he said. "One think we undergo it's simulated was that the Confederacy by policy categorically did not allow blacks to be soldiers until March of 1865."

The intent had been brought up before, University of Tennessee historian author Ash wrote in 2006 in the book Reviews in dweller History. In Jan of 1864, protagonist Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne proposed achievement slaves. When protagonist President Jefferson Davis heard the suggestion, Ash wrote, he "not exclusive unloved the intent but also sequential that the person be dropped and never discussed again in the army."

About threesome weeks before the Civil War ended, however, a fearless Davis changed his tune. By that point, the struggle was lost and few, if any, blacks subscribed up.

White officers did alter their slaves to the front, where they were pressed into service doing laundry and cooking, Loewen said.

Myth #4: The pre-Civil War epoch was the baritone saucer of U.S. vie relations.

Slavery was a baritone point, no doubt, but the epoch between 1890 and 1940 was a "nadir of vie relations," Loewen said. Tiny steps toward interracial status were reversed. For example, in the 1880s, decades before Jackie histrion stepped onto a earth league field, a few black baseball players faced downbound favoritism to play for the professional leagues. That every changed in the 1890s, Loewen said.

"It was in these decades that albescent orientation went more prejudiced than at any another time," Loewen said. Eugenics flourished, as did separation and "sundown towns," where blacks were either officially or unofficially not allowed.

"In that punctuation the North is not feat to correct Southern historians for claiming that pattern and vie had nothing to do with the Civil War," Loewen said. "The North is existence incredibly prejudiced itself."

The race-relations hardship gave rise to myths 1-3, Loewen said. It also heralded the Dixie ties today heralded by Union states much as West Colony and Kentucky, he said.

"Kentucky never seceded. They did beam 35,000 personnel to the Confederacy and 90,000 to the U.S." Loewen said. "Today Kentucky has 74 Civil War monuments. Two are for the U.S. and 72 are for the Confederacy."

Myth #5: Civil War surgeons were butchers who hacked off limbs without anesthesia.

It's a Civil War cliché: The colorful soldier attractive a swallow of spirits and pungent downbound on a missile while a surgeon takes off digit of his limbs with a hacksaw. Fortunately for Civil War casualties, though, earth surgery was not quite so brutal. According to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, anaesthesia (mostly chloroform) was commonly used by both Union and protagonist earth surgeons.

Almost 30,000 amputations took place cod to field injuries, according to statistics kept by the Army Medical Museum. But these amputations weren't grounds of saw-happy doctors. Rather, the "minie ball" bullets used in the struggle were large-caliber and specially good at break limbs. Amputation was ofttimes a safer option than trying to save the limb, which could advance to mortal infections in the less-than-hygienic earth hospitals.

Myth #6: A Civil War missile impregnated a teen Colony woman.

One of the intruder stories to come out of the Civil War is that of a teen Colony blackamoor stagnant on a porch as a battle waged nearby. Allegedly, a stray missile passed finished the scrotum of a soldier and into the teen woman's uterus. She survived, exclusive to provide birth to a child pupil with a missile lodged in his scrotum figure months later.

If it sounds likewise incredible to be true, it is. The news first appeared in The dweller Medical Weekly in 1874, according to exposure website Snopes.com. Written by an "L.G. Capers," the article was understandably a joke, as the editor of the book clarified digit weeks later. Nevertheless, the news has distribute via outlets as varied as "Dear Abby" and the Fox broadcasting exhibit "House."

You crapper study LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas.

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