As a historian and college professor, I give Jack Kelly’s recent Post-Gazette column “Remnants of Slavery” an “F” for misusing history to serve ideological goals. Mr. Kelly’s account of slavery and more recent race relations in America is false and bears all the hallmarks of propaganda.

His assertion that American slaves were “treated less harshly than in most other places where slavery has been practiced” was exactly the argument made by 19th century slaveowners. Historians studying this topic consistently demonstrate the horrors of American slavery. In his classic Many Thousands Gone, Ira Berlin notes that slaveowners constantly devised new ways to punish their slaves including a coffin that slowly crushed a person over twenty-four hours.

Sarah Grimke wrote about growing up in South Carolina in the early 1800s and recalled meeting a woman who delighted in talking about the many bizarre, sadistic punishments she used on her slaves. She would tie a leather strap around a person’s ankle and then around their neck, forcing them to stand on one foot. If they tried to lower their ankle, the strap choked them. One hour in this position produced intense agony. To punish her maid for petty theft, the woman cut slits in the maid’s ears with a knife. The Virginia Slave Code of 1705 declared that for the punishment of slaves for robbery or any major offense, they should suffer sixty lashes, be placed in the stocks, and have their ears cut off. For minor offenses, the person was to be whipped, branded, or maimed. And children were routinely ripped from their parents and sold to distant owners, spouses forcibly separated, and enslaved women raped by White men.

Even a cursory glance at the history of American slavery reveals shockingly inhuman treatment. In fact, at a time when other nations were abolishing slavery, American slavery became more violent and based on race. The Virginia Slave Code of 1705 specified that “all Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion…shall be held to be real estate.” The law also made slavery a lifelong condition inherited at birth based on whether the mother was free or enslaved—not simply a case of “bad luck” in Mr. Kelly’s words.

When Abraham Lincoln took office, he still had hope that the seceded states would return to the United States and avoid conflict. For the next two years of the war, he repeatedly defined the Civil War as a war for Union. Only at the beginning of 1863, did he issue the Emancipation Proclamation and redefine the goal of the war to end slavery. Even then, many Union soldiers fought to preserve the Union and many who opposed slavery did so because of its deleterious effects on White workers and White farmers. ...