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I admit that I am guilty (at least in my mind) of glorifying antebellum as well as my confederate ancestors
I'm not sure but does that all mean nostalgia is a no-no for Southerners?? I hope those who criticize don't throw the baby out with the bath water. The South, like all regions, had and still has its own distinctive geographical personality. Concepts such as loyalty, honor, ritual and extended family shouldn't be looked askance if that's attitude involved in 'glorification'. The antebellum South would still demand some respect considering what she dealt with after the terrible, divisive war.
I admit that I am guilty (at least in my mind) of glorifying antebellum as well as my confederate ancestors
I'm not sure but does that all mean nostalgia is a no-no for Southerners?? I hope those who criticize don't throw the baby out with the bath water. The South, like all regions, had and still has its own distinctive geographical personality. Concepts such as loyalty, honor, ritual and extended family shouldn't be looked askance if that's attitude involved in 'glorification'. The antebellum South would still demand some respect considering what she dealt with after the terrible, divisive war.
Ha! Hold your breath, Brother!
Scroll up and read the caustic comments like....it was a white problem, who couldn't handle seeing black people not at the very bottom and resorted to violent means to mainatin politcal power......
The South was stuck with 4 million uninformed, illiterate, angry and resentful people who had spent their entire lives imprisoned and who now had the right to vote. And there are those who refuse to understand why they should not be allowed to take over political office and run things once they were out of prison.
I believe the ending of slavery was clumsily done and resulted in a situation that put the entire United States at peril. If it had not been handled by the South as it was, then the modern South would resemble Zimbabwe or Congo, and would have sucked resources from the North even more than was the case.
[/i]The South was stuck with 4 million uninformed, illiterate, angry and resentful people who had spent their entire lives imprisoned and who now had the right to vote. .
The above also describes a huge percentage of the Southern white people of the time. Illiteracy rates among Southern whites were twice as high as among Northern whites in 1860. ** Most of the population of the pre war South was composed of poorly educated agricultural workers who seldom ventured very far from their places of birth.
Scroll up and read the caustic comments like....it was a white problem, who couldn't handle seeing black people not at the very bottom and resorted to violent means to mainatin politcal power......
The South was stuck with 4 million uninformed, illiterate, angry and resentful people who had spent their entire lives imprisoned and who now had the right to vote. And there are those who refuse to understand why they should not be allowed to take over political office and run things once they were out of prison.
I believe the ending of slavery was clumsily done and resulted in a situation that put the entire United States at peril. If it had not been handled by the South as it was, then the modern South would resemble Zimbabwe or Congo, and would have sucked resources from the North even more than was the case.
This is one of the most racist posts I have ever read on C-D! It's not only totally untrue, but your characterization of the freedmen in the post-war South is nothing more stereotypical Jim Crow/KKK defense of the indefensible.
While most freedmen were illiterate in 1865, many were not. Many had already taken advantage of the schools set up by the Freedmen's Bureau in the South as early as 1863. That many other ex-slaves and their ancestors in the South remained illiterate is plainly the fault of the Southern elite who refused to provide public schools for blacks, especially in rural areas.
While most ex-slaves were "uninformed" because their white masters had kept them so, they weren't stupid. Why in the world would freedmen vote for Southern whites who wanted to re-enslave them, which is what the white Southerners tried to do from the get-go. It's why Southerners resorted to terrorism to force blacks to stop voting.
What proof is there that freedmen were particularly "angry and resentful"? That they looted some plantation houses? That they assisted Union troops? They resisted signing labor contracts? That they didn't step off the boardwalks into the street for their ex-masters?
What freedmen wanted was land of their own and the wherewithal to farm it. They didn't want to work on someone else's cotton or rice plantations, but on their own subsistence farms. IOW, they wanted just what small-time white farmers wanted. Instead, both got screwed over by the ex-slaveholders who owned most of the land and who turned both into poor, uneducated share-croppers. That was the real drain on the South, bud.
Why are guys from Denmark and California trying to explain Southern culture to us? You don't understand the South unless you are a part of the South. There are some things that a junior high level American History class can't convey. Southerners are the only Americans to ever experience military defeat on their own soil, and have been derided and dismissed as white trash cartoons ever since. White Southerners are America's last remaining ethnic caricatures. The last group of losers that it's okay to make fun of. It's easy for Northerners to dump the blame of all of America's racism right onto the South's redneck shoulders.
The myth of the Old South is still revered by some Southerners who wish to remember a time when a Southern accent wasn't synonymous with ignorance, racism, poverty, and shame.
This is not saying that white Southerners are martyrs (for some reason in this country everyone wants to be a victim) or innocent or that racism and poverty and illiteracy were never problems in the South (they obviously still are) but I'm trying to offer a more balanced perspective. I think this is how many Southerners, including myself at times, view the national bias against Southerners. It's the local boys versus the outsiders kind of mentality. That we are a common culture surrounded by a nation of "otherness." The version of the Old South, true or not, that is often glorified is a way of remembering a time when Southerners didn't have to hang their heads and try to suppress their accents.
We long for Robert E. Lee but all we get is Larry the Cable Guy.
Why are guys from Denmark and California trying to explain Southern culture to us? You don't understand the South unless you are a part of the South..
So then historians should just give up on trying to address any era or place unless they are "a part of it?" That instantly blanks out all history which took place before any of us were alive, which would include the Antebellum South.
And btw...this particular Californian was born in the South and spent the first 23 years of his life there.
Last edited by Grandstander; 10-02-2013 at 12:39 PM..
While most freedmen were illiterate in 1865, many were not. Many had already taken advantage of the schools set up by the Freedmen's Bureau in the South as early as 1863.
The Freedman's Bureau was not established until 1865.
Quote:
That many other ex-slaves and their ancestors in the South remained illiterate is plainly the fault of the Southern elite who refused to provide public schools for blacks, especially in rural areas...
True.
So?
That is the world that existed and that is the world that should have been addressed.
Quote:
Why in the world would freedmen vote for Southern whites who wanted to re-enslave them, which is what the white Southerners tried to do..........
They wouldn't. And they didn't. That's the point.
Let me quote from Walter Lord in Historical Viewpoints, Reprints from American Heritage, Second Edition:
...Negro Sheriffs, clerks and magistrates thrashed about in confusion and ignorance. In Warren County the sheriff couldn't write a simple return. I Issaquena County not one member of the board of supervisors - responsible for handling the county's business - could read a contract. There wasn't a justice of the peace in Madison County who could write a summons.....
.....as late as October, 1856, the radical leader Thaddeus Stevens was asking his friend Charles Sumner if he knew of any good books on how the Russians freed their serfs.....
...And incidents did happen. William Wilkinson was murdered at Lauderdale Springs by five of his former slaves for selling his plantation - they claimed it was rightfully theirs by Christmas.....
Quote:
What freedmen wanted was.....
You have no idea what anyone wanted, and assigning beliefs simply because they are consistent with your ideas is not 'history'.
This is not saying that white Southerners are martyrs (for some reason in this country everyone wants to be a victim) or innocent or that racism and poverty and illiteracy were never problems in the South (they obviously still are) but I'm trying to offer a more balanced perspective. I think this is how many Southerners, including myself at times, view the national bias against Southerners. It's the local boys versus the outsiders kind of mentality. That we are a common culture surrounded by a nation of "otherness." The version of the Old South, true or not, that is often glorified is a way of remembering a time when Southerners didn't have to hang their heads and try to suppress their accents.
We long for Robert E. Lee but all we get is Larry the Cable Guy.
Except it's also the period of plantation slavery. There are many other things to celebrate of one's culture, but choosing to glorify that, rather unpleasant period does create a more negative perception.
Well, I'm no fan of Southern revisionist history, but it's a pretty easy question to answer.
The South lost a much greater proportion of its manpower to overall population than the North.
The South suffered massive damage to its infrastructure and its cities.
The South endured a crippling blow to its economy both from the loss of slavery in the production of labor-intensive crops, but also in its net worth. It is interesting to note that the average value of a slave-state farm prior to the Civil War was around $7,000, more than twice that of a free-state farm. What's more, while certainly not at parity with their Northern counterparts, Southern workers' per capita income in 1860 is estimated to be roughly 75 of that Northern workers, and considerably better than some regions in the North, and better than. If the South had been considered to be its own country, its per capita income would have been 4th in the world, ahead of Germany, France, and Denmark. And the rise of cotton plantations in places such as Egypt during the Civil War to compensate for losses of the commodity caused by the Union blockade choked off a surefire avenue to quick economic restoration.
When you realize that, by 1950, 85 years after Appomattox, Southern states had a per capita income of maybe 35-40% that of Northern states, that should tell you a great deal.
The South not only lost, but was occupied for more than an additional decade by Federal troops.
And, finally, it is the upper classes that typically write the histories and define the culture. The Southern aristocracy, destroyed as it was, could look back to the days before 1860 as very much a golden age. For that was when the South had wealth and some kind of definable social order that was pretty much destroyed by four years of Civil War.
Because they don't know the true history of the Reconstruction era. Also a lot of the period between 1865-1900 and even after was spent forgetting the Civil War and what you are talking about was among the imaginary images that were created to paper over the harsh reality of the Civil War, Slavery and the "Black problem".
Ironic that a Dane would be weighing in on this, given that Denmark had legal slavery in its colonies until 1848.
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