Confederates in the Attic

My wife is currently reading this book and says it is interesting. I will read it when she is done.

As some one who has kin on both sides of the war taking sides would make one nuts, although I think I favor the South by about 60/40. The first Jews to settle in the colonies were in the South, about the same time some of my Puritian ancestors were settling in Massachusetts, and a whole bunch of Quaker ancestors in Pennsylvania so it gets kind of weird throwing around ancestors from one side to the other. It is certain that some of my great grandparents would have shot the others. 

No serious person wants to refight this war. We are close enough to another one without redoing the issues of the last. However, every soldier who died was an American and their memorials, cemeteries and monuments need to be preserved and not desecrated by thugs. Over 125 years ago wives, sisters, and widows formed the United Daughters of the Confederacy and in conjunction with the Southern Memorial Association established cemeteries for the war dead. 

The federal government established national cemeteries for Federal soldiers, and promised money for the Confederate dead. It never happened, another in the long string of broken promises from DC. That broken promise caused the reconstruction era to last much longer and contributed to the myth of the lost cause. Slavery was defiantly an issue, perhaps, 50% but the issues of state sovereignty, individual rights, and the size of the federal government are still with us today. Needless to say, issues the left doesn't and won't talk about. I hold with my statement that 50 years ago the odds of a new civil war were < 1% today >20% and growing. 

Being on the left coast, I don’t feel I have a dog in this fight, Artler. But I’m about 90/10 in favor of the Federals.

Still, I’m reading this book with an open mind. It is what it is. Any bit of history (or current events) can be interesting or boring depending upon how it is written. And so far the author has done a very good job of not going all intellectualoid on us. He’s just the average joe writing about his passions and what he’s finding in pursuit of them.

Horwitz himself is from Maryland (which passed approval with the North Carolinians) but I think was raised further north. He does not have any kind of Southern accent which was why one of the North Carolinians asked somewhat skeptically where he was from.



Absolutely. But any statues of Lenin, Marx, Che, or Stalin are going right into the bay.

The clear sense of this book (in the early going) is the Confederate historical pursuits run the gamut. There are some hardcore asshole bigots out there. But my guess is that most are just delving into their own history. And as the author notes, the advent of modern genealogy techniques, combined with a renewal of interest in all walks of life regarding genealogy, has touched the South no less than anyone else.

I really got a kick out of the description of the Historical Interpreters. The ones he ran into in North Carolina were hardcore ones, not farbs. This group loves authenticity. And if someone gets lice, all the better from a certain point of view. They are living exactly as their ancestors did. When the author was invited to join them for a day and night, the apples he brought with him weren’t allowed because they were too pristine…nothing like the soldiers would have had. But the chunk of cheese he had was permitted.

Good god, when you read how these guy ate and slept, no wonder disease took such a heavy toll…on both sides.

And however misguided the cause, there is (or should be) automatic sympathy for the common soldier who owned no slaves and, from his (perhaps simple-minded) point of view, was defending his country (state) from invasion.

The average soldier of the South faced enormous hardships. And my general impression, no offense intended, is that these guys were not necessarily the brightest bulbs on the porch. I think slavery led to a widespread degeneracy of the South that would have to be purged at some point. And when you read some of the descriptions of the hardcore veneration of the Confederacy by some, you get a glimpse for how dark they are/were.

What I realize also is that, for me, this book is a bit of interesting history. For a great many the war isn’t yet over.

William R. Forstchen and Newt Gingrich used the Union Mills scenario in their Gettysburg, with about the same results you indicate -- the virtual destruction of the Army of the Potomac.  It was the first in a series of 3 books, and the others don't work out so well for Lee.

I’m 32% into this book. It’s a powerful narrative.

Because so much heat is thrown on this subject, it wouldn’t do to not have a cool, objective, or at least honest head.

What I don’t want to do is pre-judge the South, not having lived there or visited there. But through the years, I’ve received earfuls of general impressions from white people escaping the South. Because this is a heavily military area as well, you get a lot of cross-pollination in that regard.

Regarding horror stories, you never know when you’re dealing with a Snowflake who thinks someone’s a Nazi because they support the Second Amendment or one who is truly appalled at the primitive, racist rednecks who apparently still infest the South.

This book gives a hard look at some of those rednecks in the first third of this book. It isn’t pretty. It’s certainly good background for better understanding the Confederate flag issue and statues.

An interesting factoid is the sheer recovering of the South. The author notes that today the 11 states of the old Confederacy make up the fifth largest economy in the world.

Some of the Confederate identification and flag-waving is just bizarre as described by the author. He notes one town in Kentucky (it was regarding the Michael Westerman murder) which had gone Confederate-crazy. The author did research and found out this part of Kentucky was most definitely pro-Union and yet it became a craze to wave the Confederate flag and research your supposed Confederate roots.

One type of person (perhaps the poorer, more ignorant sort) seemed to be taking all their grievances and putting them into the Confederate basket as an answer.

Others may well fit this description offered by A.V. Huff, a historian of the South at Furman University in upland South Carolina:



Even Jefferson Davis is quoted as basically saying “Get over it and move on.” But it seems that many have made an idol of the idea of the Confederacy. This book is a few years old so thing may have changed a little since 1999.

My angle is that I blame the Confederacy for Big Government (to the extent anyone from the 1860’s can be blamed for what we are doing today). They were a boil that had to be lanced at some point. They didn’t do it themselves so it came from without.

And that’s emblematic of often good issues (the problem of big government) being ruined by dishonest actors. I think this section of the book is indicative of that:



And therein lies the problem: When you connect some legitimate issues (ask the Asians, for one, about institutionalized racism) with the Confederacy, rednecks, and a whole lot of smoldering racism, you do the harm to the issues. This is what RINOs run from to some extent. I’m no RINO apologist, as you well know, but you can see their side of things. If you come out against affirmative action because it’s a racist policy, it makes it difficult when you are also tarred as a racist because of a bunch of Southern (and other) kooks who may well be racist who are against the same thing, but for different reasons.

I believe in smaller government. But the clearly disingenuous cries of “states rights” in the cause of being able to keep other human beings as slaves does not serve the purpose of shrinking the Federal government. Indeed, one gains further insight into why blacks, in particular, see Big Government as their guarantor of freedom.

The South ruined so many things and yet still there are many crying a river of tears over some twisted nostalgic image of what never was. At least those Historical Interpreters have no illusions about how nasty a life it was for a Confederate soldier.