I know, I’ve talked about this before, but clearly, the view of the Civil War in terms of “Southern perspective” suggests something… singular… even an implied “unity” as a people in support of “Cause.” It is reflected in the way that some people represent “Southern perspective” as “Confederate perspective.” Plurality is missing, and therefore the singular representation misleads, sometimes to the point of inducing delusion. Furthermore, the delusional suggestion that perceived affronts to Confederate heritage are attacks against Southern culture is to suggest that Southern culture and Confederate culture are one in the same, which is, of course, absurd… since they are not. Therefore, is not Confederate remembrance rather selective in its representation of the Southern people and culture? It appears that representation, therefore, is actually misrepresentation. Would not even true Confederate perspective of the war, in terms of those who were Southern participants, be multi-faceted (thus, Confederate perspectives) and rather complicated to accurately serve in “remembrance” activities?
Nevertheless, I was just thinking… if one work were to capture the many perspectives that made up the Southern perspective… excuse me… I mean “Southern perspectives” of the American Civil War, just how many categories of perspectives would there be? Could a single work even come close to capturing all of the perspectives without becoming unwieldy? More importantly, how would such a work diminish the suggestion that, in terms of reflecting on the Civil War, Confederate perspective is Southern perspective?
Cenantua's Blog 
Noel
February 9, 2009
Robert, And even within the same, ostensibly unified “Confederate” entity—the Stonewall Brigade Band—I detected both a reconciliation impulse and a defiance impulse, during the same postwar period when the veterans were still alive. The (albeit brief) account of the band that I wrote for two of the Valley of the Shadow Project’s sections was built around this “split personality.”
cenantua
February 9, 2009
Noel,
Excellent point.
I’m making a link to the piece that you wrote… here.
Noel
February 10, 2009
Thanks, Robert. That particular link accesses the section describing the Band in its postwar “defiant” mode, while a separate section carries my interpretation of its postwar “reconciliation” mode.
In writing both, I drew considerable inspiration from Carol Reardon’s Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory, from 1997, which examined another set of fractures within the ostensibly monolithic “Confederate”-veteran facade, although her story was more one of semi-permanent divisions (mainly North Carolina veterans vs. Virginia veterans) than of the temporary or provisional moods that I detected in the Band. Prof. Reardon’s book is a vital reminder that race, or social justice, is not the only noteworthy stone in the arch of Civil War memory, although I readily acknowledge that it’s usually the keystone.
cenantua
February 10, 2009
Noel,
I’ll update the links to the two Stonewall Brigade band pieces you mention… both found under “Remembering the War: Popular Culture in Augusta County, 1860s-2006.”
1855-1927 (“defiant mode”)
1870-2006 (“reconciliation mode”)
JW
February 10, 2009
I’m a native San Franciscan, and have lived my life within 60 miles of the City. Nearly twenty years ago, I spent a vacation touring the battlefields of Virginia with my father (now deceased). Outside Appomattox, we stopped in a roadside curio shop, where I wallowed like a pig in mud. While speaking with the shop’s owner, who until that point had obviously appreciated my CW enthusiasm, I mentioned that had I been alive in 1865 I would have worn the blue. He smiled, but his eyes didn’t. It remains as vivid a memory as another encounter I had during the same trip, in a small grocery near Todd’s Tavern. Picture the movie Deliverance, minus the kid with the banjo.
cenantua
February 10, 2009
LOL!
cenantua
February 10, 2009
JW, I’m familiar with some areas where one might get that same reaction today. The major thing that I find funny (and I mean both odd and “ha ha” funny) is when I come across someone who I know is descended from a Union veteran (and who was also a Southerner), and yet culturally this descendant reflects “memory” that has been awash in the Lost Cause myth while the “memory” of the facts of true ancestral heritage was purged. Of course, it leaves the descendant appalled at the suggestion of a Yankee in the bloodline. I sort of think this sort of white-washing heritage among some Southerners resembles something akin to an earlier form of “political correctness,” or socially “corrected” view of what heritage should be and not at all what it really is/was.
JW
February 11, 2009
Hunter Thompson (of the Kentucky Thompson’s) once speculated that those children reared by the “generation of swine” (think the Reagan generation) would inevitably turn on their parent’s world view. He just might have been right. Time’s, and perspectives, change.
Although he surely would have had a horse laugh over the fool who put the Phelps bong up for sale on E-Bay. What was that guy thinking?
cenantua
February 11, 2009
JW, Really? I’ve never heard that before (Hunter Thompson’s thought). Interesting though. Why did he suggest this (especially in terms of the Reagan generation)?
JW
February 11, 2009
In a nutshell: those who opposed allowing blacks the vote, who supported the war in Vietnam long after their eyes should have been opened, and who lacked the guts to admit American drug laws are oppressive, well… those people sired children (circa 1970-1985). And those children were bound to see through their parents hypocrisy, and wise up. Even if just a little bit. The smart ones, I mean.