Abstracted from a portion of my response to a comment…”
Depending on how it is used, “Southern Heritage” does not necessarily mean “Confederate heritage.” To be Southerner does not mean that one had to be Confederate. For that matter, to have “Southern Heritage” does not mean that the ancestry alive at the time of the war, was “exclusively Confederate.”
My own “Southern Heritage” includes eager volunteers for Virginia’s ranks, reluctant volunteers, men wounded and/or killed in action, died of disease, died in POW camps, men who were still present with the ANV in 1865, conscripts, deserters, men who were killed by conscript hunters, AND… much to the disgust of those who like to look at history in the silly manner in which they do… what some would call the “detested” Southern Unionists and “Yankee” soldiers.
I’m pretty sure that these Southern Unionists and Union soldiers did not see themselves as culturally, “Yankees” at all, but Southerners who opted for defense of Union. They were among the unconditional Unionists AND those who just hated the Confederate conscript patrols that wanted to take them to the Confederate army (Jimmy Stewart in the movie Shenandoah displayed more truth about people in the war than a lot of people realize).
Michael Aubrecht
September 5, 2008
Depending on how it is used, “Southern Heritage” does not necessarily mean “Confederate heritage.” THAT may be your most brilliant statement of all and one that I am trying to instill in my thinking. It’s far too easy to forget sometimes that ‘Southern Heritage’ actually covers Secessionists, Unionists and African-Americans. Guilty as charged…
cenantua
September 5, 2008
Nahhh, not guilty as charged. Consider your ideas of the war… as evolving. The ability to accept the fact that other possibilities exist is the first major hurdle.
Michael Aubrecht
September 5, 2008
Guilty in the sense that I still react prematurely at times. I just finished publishing a book that specifically looks at multiple perspectives, but I forget sometimes that not everyone who poses challenging and critical blogs about the nature of CW memory are on the attack. Although I spent a year researching and writing it, it has not ‘seeped into my brain’ to the point I don’t still get defensive about my own personal biases. Thanks.
cenantua
September 6, 2008
That realization of which you speak is not unlike what I encountered in preparing my book about the Summers-Koontz Incident. At the time that I was writing this, I was also working on my thesis. Both resulted in a flood of facts contrary to the war the way I used to understand it.