The bitterness is more recent. There wasn’t nearly as much bitterness in the immediate aftermath of the War.
If you ask me, the bitterness comes from the South having to endure a constant barrage of abuse from places like Hollywood and the New York elites who still think we’re all nothing but a bunch of gap-toothed racist crackers who use outhouses and bang our sisters on a regular basis. It comes from most of the South STILL having to run every little redistricting change by the Federal government almost fifty years after the Voting Rights Act.
I was born in 1966. I’m too young to remember segregated schools (my Virginia county was one of the last to desegregate in 1967-68). But I’m not too young to remember the race-based busing riots in Northern cities in the 1970s. Funny how they’re not the racists and we are.
But that’s OK. It’s a supreme irony that the South lost the War but, in a way, has won the peace. We are now the place where people want to live. We’re where the growth is. We’ve pulled millions of jobs from the wreckage of the industrial North. We may have never been able to beat the mighty cavalry of Michigan, but 150 years later, where would you rather live—Detroit, or Atlanta?
}:-)4
> If you ask me, the bitterness comes from the South having
> to endure a constant barrage of abuse
Spot on. I agree with this 100%.
When I grew up they simply did not do that.
Reagan and Buckley and Goldwater had more in common with and voted like Dixiecrats than they did liberal to moderate GOP.
and none of them touted all that PC Civil Rights stuff like Beck and hannity do now.
nope...this steady onslaught as exemplified by a handful here is a new thing
not sure why...just a symptom of the insidousness of political correctness that it's infected folks who call themselves social conservatives ...I think it makes some folks feel morally superior about race issues..something some northerners need to feel..some lib southerners do it too..a few
before all this most decent Yankees this side of Charles Schumer..er Sumner were willing to let the South view their distinctness as they wished
now it's a target for them same as it is for Sharpton or Jesse
if that's who freepers wish to lie with so be it
Southerness is just not something California as a rule understands here and they have let some liberal south bashers run here a long time on long leashes
that homo purge got a few ...hopefully..JR can think up another trap to bag a few more
it's funny that many northerners who harp on this don't even have ancestry here that far back..
my future son in law from Cornwall NY is all Dixie though...he came here to follow my daughter and get away from the rot of the north...he said it's sickening how weak people have become there ..at least in NYC area...and nauseatingly PC and ashamed and he loves Franklin TN
In Mississippi 90% of whites call themselves conservative and 88% vote GOP..nowhere else like that...something finger pointing ..slavery obsessed Yankees cannot have..shame
as we say down here...get yer own house in order...thanks
for the record..color me ambivalent on Lincoln...but his terms were better than the Radicals...the liberal Dems of the day
You're right. Union and Confederate vets held national reunion encampments together until the vets were so old they couldn't make the journey anymore. I don't remember any outcries against the CSA during the commemoration years for the 100th anniversary of the war. I think the demonization escalated in the late 60's with Dr. King's assassination, and in the early 70's, helped by big-mouths like Sharpton and Jackson, the growth of black power, the organization of the Black Panthers, and the increased militancy of the Nation of Islam. I also believe that the radical left, the anti-war crowd, and others helped to create the intolerant atmosphere that has been part and parcel of this country since that time.
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There was great bitterness at the end of the war -- an ocean of anger, hatred, resentment, enmity -- and it lasted for years. "Senator Claghorn" was a fictional character and a comical exaggeration ("When I'm in New York I'll never go the Yankee Stadium!" "I won't even go to see the Giants unless a Southpaw's pitchin'!" "I refuse to watch the Dodgers unless Dixie Walker's playin!" "I won't go into a room unless it's got Southern Exposure!") but the caricature touched on something real. Likewise for the song, "I'm a Good Ole Rebel." It was tongue in cheek, but touched on real animosity.
You've probably heard the stories about kindness or generosity or helpfulness or charity extended between Northerners and Southerners. I can't say there not true, but one reason we remember them is because they stood out so much at the time.
Also, hatred doesn't have to be personal. If you were a veteran, you might respect the fellow you fought against, but hate the North or the South as an abstraction. You might respect your honorable counterpart, but hate the "bummers" or stragglers who burned your barn or the "carpetbaggers" and do-gooders who tried to change things. Your wife or mother might be goodness personified but still spit on the ground whenever Sherman or Lincoln or Grant was mentioned (Hell hath no fury like a noncombatant).
And bitterness isn't necessarily hatred. You might be free of personal or group hatreds -- if you weren't you wouldn't be alone -- but still be exceptionally bitter and resentful about what had happened and what you had lost. Veterans could go off camping for a few days at Gettysburg, but that didn't mean that sectional animosities didn't run deep.
In time the resentments died down, but to pretend that everyone go along well after the war is just wrong. Look back at the battles of the Reconstruction years, and tell me that there was no bitterness. A century of the solidly Democratic South and there was no bitterness? Even Northerners weren't immune from bitterness. Remember "Waving the bloody shirt"?
I’m too young to remember segregated schools (my Virginia county was one of the last to desegregate in 1967-68). But I’m not too young to remember the race-based busing riots in Northern cities in the 1970s. Funny how they’re not the racists and we are.
Funny how Selma and Little Rock are ancient history but everybody talks about South Boston, like it was yesterday. You haven't come off so bad, you know.
It’s a supreme irony that the South lost the War but, in a way, has won the peace. We are now the place where people want to live. We’re where the growth is.
Sure, the Northern states, like Northern Britain, Northern Germany, Northern France, Southern Belgium, were the first to industrialize and the first to suffer the maladies of de-industrialization. It's not pretty. But don't think you're permanently immune to that disease.
Sherman didn't win many hearts and minds in his Campaign to the Sea. The bitterness was felt for a century afterwards.