Reply to Why are southerners so obsessed with being southern?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The south is so much more complicated and varied than most want to acknowledge.  There were plenty of northerners who considered black people to be sub-human, or at least saw no reason to outlaw slavery.  And there were lots of southerners opposed to the war for a variety of reasons, whether they were anti-slavery, anti-secession, anti-violence, or anti-don't-want-my-sons -killed.

In the case of my 4th great grandfather, he was pro-Union because his own father had fought in the revolutionary war.  He considered himself a patriot.  Yes, the math works.  My fifth great grandfather was young in the revolutionary war and had his son late in life; my 4th great grandfather was older by the time of the Civil War and forbade his adult sons (unsuccessfully) from fighting for the Confederates.  To complicate it further, he enslaved 15 people, including a woman he had children with.  How could he be pro-union and an enslaver?  Because he "hated Jeff Davis and all democrats," and he thought that an economic solution would be reached that would free his slaves but compensate him so that he could continue to run his farm.  I'm not saying that his pro-Union stance made him a good human.

Other groups opposed to the war were mountain people who didn't want to send their sons to die for rich farmers.  And enclaves of recent immigrants, such as German populations that abhorred the institution of slavery and spoke out against it.

It's no wonder that northerners don't know these facts about the south.  The south itself suppressed knowledge of this diversity of views.  History not only sides with the winning side.  On the losing side, the narrative is controlled by those with economic power.   [/quote]

It's true that there was a lot of disagreement at the time of the Civil War, but as you say it was suppressed and the result is that most modern Southerners with roots that far back see the Confederacy as "their side." That Faulkner line about how "for every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863" was my experience growing up and I'm not that old. Whatever anyone's ancestors were doing (mine fought for the Confederacy) if you were from the South, that was how you saw it.[/quote]

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