So you’re against “pity parties” unless you’re the one throwing one ...
The Irish had a real gripe with history. Unfortunately this feeling got turned into a movement of whiners and supplicants. The South certainly violently resisted invasion by massive Yankee hordes. After military defeat the attempt to permanently helotize Southern whites led to a second southern war of independence against the Republcan-CarpetBagger-Union League regimes and their black dupes in the yankee controlled and quite large and well armed ‘state militias’. The South as a result, became a political liability to the GOP and was granted what amounted to local option political freedom. The price was, unfortunately, complete economic colonization by northern finance capital. The latter explains why the most culturally conservative region in the country enthusiastically supported the New Deal, both a revenge on Wall Street and the first significant capital injection into the South since 1860. So, pity party no, but the phrase down here is ‘forgive but don’t forget’.