The Florida Department of Education’s updated 8th-grade benchmarks describe the American Civil War as “a four-year disagreement between two regions that loved each other very much but were going through something.” The new framing, approved by a working group of seven, removes references to slavery as a cause of the conflict and substitutes the phrase “various differences of opinion, some of them strongly held.” Lead author Dr. Brent Maginnis, 64, defended the language as “warm” and said his goal was for students to “come out of the unit feeling closer to both sides, the way you do after a really good family dinner.”