Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History

Introduction

Introduction If it can be said that there are many Souths, the fact remains that there is also one South. —W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South I live in a tolerable yet sometimes intolerable place. Its sensual climate lures the unsuspecting, and the grace, manners, and civility of its citizens impart a preternatural quietude that belies the storm beneath. Its culture is rich in music, food, conversation, and literature; yet it can be a barren place, a tundra of conformity, a murderer of imagination, inquiry, and innovation . Some who have loved it most deeply only to uncover the unpleasant reality have cast themselves, rather than the place, as the betrayer. For they have understood that the secret that lies beneath this place could, if broadcast , destroy it and them together. I am not immune to such feelings, though I grew up elsewhere. I have spent much more than half my life in the South, and I do not pretend to understand it yet. Perhaps I never will. I do know that there is a war going on here. It is an ancient conflict, as war and time go in this country. The Civil War is like a ghost that has not yet made its peace and roams the land seeking solace, retribution, or vindication. It continues to exist, an event without temporal boundaries, an interminable struggle that has generated perhaps as many casualties since its alleged end in 1865 as during the four preceding years when armies clashed on the battle- field. For the society that became the South after 1865—and, truly, one could 1 2 Still Fighting the Civil War not speak of a distinct South before that time—the Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed shaped the form it takes today. To justify the war, its great sacrifices, and its tragic conclusion, white southerners exalted the cause for which they fought. To that end, they rehabilitated the Old South and restored the principles upon which its civilization rested: white supremacy and patriarchy. Freedom was a dangerous thing; it ruined a slave and removed women from the protection of men. While all white southerners shared in fabricating a history out of necessity, white men, above all, elevated their own deeds during the war and their efforts to redeem the South afterward. Despite four years of fighting, after all, they had not only failed their cause of independence but had faltered in protecting their women and children and in keeping their slave families intact and working. Those who had slaves lost them, and many more lost their patrimony and self-respect. Southern white men could not live with failure and dishonor, so they manufactured a past that obviated both and returned their pride, dignity, and above all their control. In this respect, white southerners responded as do many peoples of the world when confronted with tragedy and defeat. In the seventh century b.c. a young prince, Josiah, descended of King David, attained the throne of Judah. A small, poor nation with great plans to unify disparate territories under one ruler and one God required a history to justify its grand designs. That epic evolved into the Hebrew Bible, a text not so much historical record as ideological and theological tract designed ‘‘to appropriate the past for the present.’’ But the one God could not protect Josiah and the people of Israel. The Egyptian pharaoh killed the ruler and enslaved his subjects. Not long after, Babylonians destroyed Judah and exiled its aristocracy. How to account for such a tragedy? Revise the epic to place the blame for the kingdom’s downfall on an earlier ruler and promise that unconditional obedience to the covenant between God and the people will guarantee redemption and restoration : ‘‘If the people obey the commandments, they yet have a future.’’ As theologian Phyllis Trible wrote, this new version of the story ‘‘spoke to the present; it served the needs of a defeated and dispossessed people.’’ Though the promise of the return to glory and a rebuilt Temple never materialized, the Bible became the source of survival for a defeated people.1 The Bible underscores that history and memory are not distinct. They evolve from each other, and their interaction produces the flexibility that enables traditions to survive through centuries of change. Trible noted that ‘‘What ‘actually happened’ and what a people thought happened belong to a Introduction 3...