Why do present-day Southerners have such passion for the 'Lost Cause?'

[kyreb]

Just wanted to add a few thoughts on this subject. I have often wondered why I feel so strongly. But the more I study and learn the more "southern" I become. Think of Vicksburg and those women and children living in caves while being bombed and starved and wonder how anyone who had family there could forget. All those brave men and women of the south who gave up their homes and even their lives. To add injury to insult, today if you want to honor those brave souls, you are branded "unAmerican" or a racist. NO I will never forget.

[unionblue]

BJ Hayden, honoring brave souls and your ancestors is one thing. But the passion at which persons born in the 20th century adopt the ideals of the cause of secession as to almost make it a religion is what is puzzling to me.

Unionblue

[creed]

I'd like to add a question to this posting. How have books (such as Gone with the Wind) and film added to or detracted to the "Lost Cause" myth? Women, in particular, are drawn to the "Gone with the Wind" ideas of chivalry, duty and honor. Noble ideas they are, but yet, if you really look at how people lived in those days, you will find evidence of a "Gone with the Wind" society less and less. Only the plantation class could afford the grand clothing and afluent mannerisms. For the lesser gentry, life was a bit harder. From my readings, the plantation class, for all their high strutting, were probably a bit more immoral than the "commoners" they looked down upon. I think that the truth of what life then actually was may actually be stranger than the fiction depicted in cinema and literature.

[tamaroa]

Want to know what life was really like? First read Booker T. Washington's autobiography "Up From Slavery," Apply a dose of slight jaundice to counteract some of his musings, please. Its a great book, but when you read it you can't help but think he is pandering somewhat to the white populace of the time. Nevertheless it gives you an idea of life on a tobacco farm in Virginia in the 1850's and beyond.

Here is the National Park service Site:

http://www.nps.gov/bowa/home.htm