1. My history book for sixth grade starts off its survey of the men of the Middle Ages with an account of the Norse gods, paralleling previous entries in the same series which started with the Greek gods to set the stage for famous Greeks and so on.

The trouble is that, from what I’ve read, the Norse gods actually had very little influence in the Middle Ages. Apart from the Vikings themselves they left almost no cultural impact. The Prose and Poetic Eddas weren’t widely read and the Norse myths weren’t really re-discovered until about the 19th century, if I recall.

Meanwhile you can’t throw a rock without hitting a Medieval reference to the gods of Greece and Rome, but Medieval references to the Norse gods or heroes are few and far between (for instance, just try to count how many time Chaucer or Shakespeare mention Thor, compared to how often they mention Jove). I guess they thought it was just good information for students to have. Which, to be fair, it is.

2. Some context that is generally left out of the story of Bleeding Kansas (to the point where I didn’t even know about it until I was doing research for my class): by the time Kansas was being settled, the north already had an advantage in the Senate courtesy of California, which advantage later grew to include Minnesota, and Oregon, putting the Southern interest behind by three in the all-important Senate. The pro-slavery side was so desperate in that fight because they were trying to make up lost ground. Ground which it was increasingly clear they were never going to make up, owing to the relative size of the territories where slavery was and was not permitted.

3. The narrative in the South at the time was that the North was conspiring to politically encircle and overrule them. Like most such political narratives, this was almost certainly nonsense, but one can see where they might think that.

4. The more I read about the period, the more it seems to me that slavery was more of a proxy issue to both sides (apart from the committed abolitionists). The real issue was whether the poorer and less populated Southern states would be politically dominated by the wealthier and more populous Northern states. Slavery was essentially shorthand for ‘southern-style culture:’ a rural, hierarchical, land-based society, as opposed to the urban, fluid, money-based society. So, spreading slavery westward meant making more Southern-style states.

Unfortunately for the South, the fact that it was also widely regarded as a moral and social evil meant that they were always going to be in the weaker position rhetorically as well as in every other area.

5. Remember: the pretense of equality always favors the stronger side.

6. Behold a paradox: practically no one today thinks that slavery, especially as practiced in the United States, was in any way a good or defensible thing. Yet precisely because everyone agrees that it was evil, we are required to endlessly repeat the fact to one another. It seems the less likely anyone is to believe something, the quicker we are to suspect him of it.

7. From history class the other day:
Myself: “What is the capital of Turkey?”
Pupil: “Uh…’T.'”

I didn’t give him credit, but I did admit it was a good answer.