Regarding retired educator Tootie Betres’ July 3 letter “Our heritage lives on”.

Below the writer’s signature wasa list of her credentials: a former teacher, administrator, district social studies chairman and for 27 years a professor of education at Slippery Rock University.

With that impressive list I now know why, since my Junior High School, more than 60 years ago, and my son’s education in the Butler School district, many teachers have been teaching American History as they wanted it to be rather than factual history.

Specifically, the writer states that on Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring all slaves free.

That statement is false. It has always been false. When I corrected my own junior high history teacher more than 60 years ago I met a lot of resistance. “How can a student be right and an experienced teacher wrong?”

Years later I discovered all the students at Center Township Elementary School were still being taught that fallacy; that is, until I saw my son’s exam paper. They may have since regressed, but someone else will have to check.

Lincoln had written the Emancipation Proclamation long before but waited until a Union victory — the battle of Antietam — to have it published. Slaves living in Washington, D.C., were not freed, nor were slaves living anywhere the Union Army was in control. It was a symbolic gesture since it applied only to Southern states under rebellion.

One purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation was to inform foreign nations (France and England) that if they came to the aid of the Southern states, they would be coming to the aid of slavery. England had ended slavery and the slave trade with the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1833. It also changed the focus of the war. Some slaves were gradually freed as the Union Army took control of Southern territory. But it took the 13th Amendment to free slaves throughout the United States.

One hundred fifty one years later we still can’t get history right.