"The cause was lost but the Lost Cause shouldn't be"

Tony Horwitz grew up in New Haven, Connecticut listening to stories read to him by his grandfather about the Civil War. When his grandfather died, his father continued to read to him and the seeds of the Civil War grew inside him. Twenty-five years later, after traveling and meeting his Australian born wife, Tony moved to Virginia near the Blue Ridge Mountains and his dormant interest in the Civil War began to resurface. Thus begins his Odyssey to visit the sites of the Civil War battles, the towns and hamlets surrounding the areas, and the monuments erected to honor the lost.

On his travels he records meetings with locals, including members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Horwitz describes these people in great detail, warts and all, and yet despite conversations that might lead a great many people to point out the flaws in their arguments or simply up and leave, Horwitz lets them have their say. In some cases, what they have to say is not pretty but I think Horwitz allows their personalities to shine through and gives the reader a wider sense of why those opinions are held.

In many rural areas of the south, especially those with battlefields in their backyards, the war from 1861-1865 is a lot closer and more present than even World War II. The soldiers who fought were family and those family histories have been painstakingly researched. Many still describe the war as the 'War of Northern Aggression', or the War of Secession.' Manning Williams, from Charleston, described the North and South as 'two irreconcilable cultures'; the idealized agrarian South and the industrialists of the North. Viewed through an ethnographic lens, "Southerners lost the war because they were too Celtic and their opponents were too English." [p.69]

This same belief that the war was a fight between the states leads many Southern communities to bridle at the mention of slavery. Furthermore, to suggest that the battle flag of the Confederate soldiers should be retired elicits strong emotional reactions from many people. As one man cried, "We may have lost the War, but at least we should have this to look back on."

It's difficult to read some of the angry rhetoric that a few community members unleash. On the one hand we have several genteel ladies and gentlemen whose interest and passion for the war can at least be understood in terms of family history and who shy deftly away from the question of slavery. On the other hand we have 'Walt' who believes African Americans are barely human and shouldn't mix with whites at all. Clearly there are some ugly beliefs still hiding amongst polite society. Horwitz says, “I had to explore two pasts and two presents; one white, one black, separate and unreconcilable. The past has poisoned the present and the present, in turn, now poisoned remembrance of things past.” [p.208] I wonder, is it possible for southern blacks and southern whites to ever reconcile?

Paper dolls and Confederate coloring books: whose past is it anyway?

We've talked about whitewashing the past before - those historic homes you can visit in some parts of the South that attempt to display the past without admitting that it rested on brutality and enslavement. We've talked about the nature of the past; how it is mutable and shifting and how hard it can be to pin it to one place or one perspective. History is made by those who won the battles, by the people who left behind more than just sweat and tears. The poor have little to leave, the disenfranchised have little to say. The past is remembered in personal and public ways that very seldom intersect.

If those old southern plantation homes like to hide the fact that their fortunes were made with slave labor, the 'Sons of Confederate Veterans' seem to believe that shouting about everything but slavery will do just as good a job. I took a look at the website and their facebook page and could find only one small reference to enslaved African Americans during the Civil War. If you want to reenact a battle, learn about a Confederate relative or perhaps join your child in coloring a nice Confederate flag or pin you won't be disappointed but don't expect to see anything about non-white Civil War history; it doesn't appear to exist.

On the other hand, is Confederate history so shameful that we should never speak of it or the men and women who lived and fought for their cause? Should we tear down all the monuments and plaques that commemorate the soldiers and generals who lost the war? Isn't that just the same as pretending it never happened? It's a heated topic and one that continues to cause anger and frustration. In the Daily Beast's article, Removal of Confederate Monuments Compared to ISIS, the community members of Wallace, Louisiana were divided. “You do not see streets in Germany named for Hitler!" cried a young Lyrica Neville, reading her text from an I-phone. "It’s psychologically damaging to walk past these murderers,” Another town member shouted “This is a Pandora’s box you’re opening, Bienville owned slaves. Why stop there? This is not going to end! We’re a historic city, a living museum.”

A living museum is definitely a good way to describe Wallace and other places like it. It has a shared history even if there were two sides. So how do we connect the two sides instead of denying them? In this instance I think museums and archives can be that bridge. It is possible to show history with the full light of day shining on it. Blogger, Historiann, points out that openly discussing the 'shameful' parts of history not only engages those people whose pasts were hidden but can actually benefit the entire community both economically and socially. "Historic Stagville Plantation, north of Durham, has learned that. Visitors increased from 6,000 in 2007 to nearly 13,000 in 2008, said site manager Frachele Scott, who made slavery a key part of the tour when she arrived in 2007. Stagville, now owned by the state, was one of the South’s largest plantations, encompassing 30,000 acres and 900 slaves."