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I've found it pretty interesting how the South lost the civil war, but there's still plenty of people waving the flag and revering figures from that side of the

I've found it pretty interesting how the South lost the civil war, but there's still plenty of people waving the flag and revering figures from that side of the war. I think in most places if there's a war, the losing side doesn't get that kind of treatment. One thing I always wondered what what the "Southern way of life" means to people. Aside from slavery, which most modern people don't defend, what are the distinguishing characteristics? What makes it worthy of admiration? I ask because I hear the idea brought up a lot, but there's never any explanation about what exactly is different. Is it perhaps to do with religion?

metrokoi 6y ago
>I think in most places if there's a war, the losing side doesn't get that kind of treatment. They would if the winning side actually wanted the losing side to participate in the greater country as a whole, as the Union wanted after the war. You could completely crush the losing side and destroy all of their history, symbols, heroes, and values and anything that connects them together (which we have been seeing in today's times) but Lincoln and the Union leaders did not want resentment and spite from either side lead to the complete dissolution of the country. A state cannot be successful if half it's population is forced against it's will to participate. That's why the Union declared that Confederate veterans would be treated the same as Union veterans and given proper honor and burial. It did work out quite well, because there was not another civil war US is still standing so far. Most civil wars ended with either another conflict not too long after, or a complete rewriting of the previous system. As for the question of Southern Characteristics, have you asked people who are really from the South that? I think people too often rely on what others say of Southern characteristics. I cannot speak for them, but I have been told they value Jesus, freedom of speech and firearms, being friendly and giving, enjoying nature and the land they live on, and honest work. I think it's not often put into words because these values are so inherent that they don't often realize those values are unique until they go outside the south. Even as an outsider it can be difficult to quantify, but visiting there I can certainly sense subtle but very distinct differences in how people interact with each other and live their day-to-day lives.
- impendia 6y ago
  > It did work out quite well, Southerner here. In my opinion the reason that "it worked out quite well" is that the Union caved and ended Reconstruction in 1877. This was followed by the "Redemption" period in which Jim Crow was set into place and white supremacy was entrenched. For Southerners, both white and black, things were in many ways similar to pre-1861. White people had relatively little to complain about, and black people who shook up the status quo were subject to reprisals up to and including murder. Meanwhile, my impression is that one thing valued in the contemporary South is "pleasantness". This showed up, for example, in the myth that slaves were happy. Today, conversation tends to be more indirect. For example, if you want to tell somebody that they're an idiot, "Bless your heart" will do the trick. That said, despite having grown up here I never really identified with the culture, so I can't really answer the question all that reliably.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    I had been sceptical about the Iraq adventure in part because my observations tell me the US attempted nation-building, in its own back yard, in 1866 and still hadn't fully managed it by 1966[1]. Looking for mid-nineteenth century civil wars, I find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 and maybe I'm just too ignorant of domestic politics in these countries, but it doesn't seem that any of them still have divisions rooted in those conflicts, or even still had in the mid-twentieth century. It's unclear how much geographic sectarian division there is in the current US. I would hope most yankees would agree that Sherman was an arsonist, and most southerners would agree that lynching is despicable (and most memes I run across on the internet to the contrary of either originate in a relatively small community of trolls?). As to the original question, try a web search on "you know you're a southerner when". There are definitely cultural differences which can be, and usually are, celebrated without any reference to the Lost Cause. (In some ways, southern culture may be more familiar to europeans. A german[2] colleague of mine once asked me "how do you confuse an american?". "How?", I replied. "Answer them, when they ask you how you're doing.") [1] there is hope for 2066: compare George Wallace with his grandson https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23574675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23574675 [2] Wessi oder Ossi? mox nix.
belorn 6y ago
Are they revering figures from that side of the war, or are people seeing idolatry when others are simply observing historical landmarks? The distinction is quite significant. Every country is full of cultural and ritual symbols of the past, but few are actually celebrate for the original values that they once mark. To take an example of ritual, are people dancing around a may pole because they enjoy dancing or are they spinning around an erect phallus in order to impregnate mother earth? If a person go into an old church is it because the person is religious or are they a tourist looking at architecture? If you live in the southern part of the US, maybe they want objects that show that the southern has a history that stretches back further than what living people remember. Here in Sweden we have a designation called historical memory. Any object can be designated such status and once it has there is a bunch of law that exist to preserve them. The law does not care about the values behind the object. The purpose of the law is explicitly so that further generations may have access to memories of the past. Anything from a old house, a tree, a wreck, a whole in the ground, a stone, to whole living forests. Anything older than 1850 is automatically given this status, with younger objects being designated per case based on a large number of properties like historical/cultural significance and uniqueness. No one talks about revering those symbols, even if they come from past wars where people died.
- ascotan 6y ago
  I'd say that unlike a 'normal' war between countries this was a civil war. This was a brother vs. brother, father vs. son battle. Over 600,000 people died in what was pretty gruesome conditions (lead bullets, the first gattling gun, 23K people killed/wounded in a single day of fighting, etc.). Blood was spilled, homes were burned and not everyone agrees on who the 'heroes' and 'villians' were in this conflict. Most of the conflict was fought in the south. After the war, there was a need to bring together a divided nation. The divisions were not all territorial. The need to show the courage of the men who died and remember the fallen needed to be done before that generation passed away. Today the symbols of the south (the confederate flag, monuments, street names) are all reminders of many Americans that their parents struggled though slavery, abuse and poverty. Other Americans that don't have that legacy don't necessarily see the same things and I think the challenge that this article presents, is how to get some Americans to see these problems today. The sterotypes are not real. Not all southerners owned slaves, most were conscripted, many didn't want to be there, many were kind, many were courageous. I visited a statue of a southern solider that ran out into a hail of bullets to the rescue northern wounded in the "no mans land" and bring them to the northern lines. George Washington was a slave owner and so was Thomas Jefferson, both unarguably 2 of the most influential men in American history. But, as with so many things in life, the backstory is more complicated than the picture hanging on the wall. The civil war was and is a divisive issue. In my personal opinion, like in our own lives, we should recognize and acknowledge were we are wrong and strive to be better. We should also seek to make the future better place to live and leave the skeletons were they're buried. Digging them up will do few people any good.
s5300 6y ago
This isn't amazingly relevant to your question, but I'd like to throw it out there.... If you haven't read this - I highly recommend you should. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-so... I've been meaning to make a serious post about it on HN for a bit, have just been quite heavily procrastinating. In short tho - the underlying implications of this article really baffle me whenever (which is just about all the time) I think about our ideas of what consciousness/sentience means amongst all of humanity. Like, yeah, this fucked up the South a little bit - but WHO has estimated that ~1 Billion suffer worldwide. Absolutely insane
catherd 6y ago
I don't think there is a single "Southern way of life" since the South is a pretty big place. I'm not particularly interested in history, but from the little I paid attention, the part I grew up in was too steep, rocky, and poor to have (any?) slaves. What we did have was a large number of Scotch-Irish who have a strong tradition of: - insularity - contrarianism - hardscrabble self-sufficiency - anti-authority - love nothing more than maintaining a good feud - religion (protestant roots) - loving "the land" (hunting, your farm, etc.) Ignoring the morals of the situation, from an economic perspective the North could afford to give up slavery. They were richer and their more industrialized economy wasn't based on slavery. The Southern economy was (completely?) reliant on slavery, and when the Northerners legislated their economy away the rebellion was somewhat predictable. Painting anyone involved as a racist is easier and true to a large extent, but there were strong components of "don't tell me what to do" and just not having any viable economic alternatives that also contributed. In my mind at least, a lot of modern day Southerners of a certain type (the poor white trash type, not the Gone With The Wind aristocratic plantation owner type that doesn't really exist any more) just love telling outsiders they can fuck off, and waving the rebel flag/preserving statues are pretty handy avenues for that.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Note that the owners of the big plantations who served as the Confederacy’s ideologues and political elites were not those "insular Scotch-Irish". On the contrary, they often boasted of their descent from prominent English families and set themselves apart from the poorer whites of less prestigious ethnic origin. Meanwhile, among those Scotch-Irish, quite a lot of them from Appalachia actually went north to fight for the Union. This is because as poor tenant farmers, they often owned no slaves themselves and were not invested in the big plantation economy based on slavery that the Confederacy’s elites sought to protect. This fact sadly gets overlooked today in, say, northern Alabama where many whites are enamored of Confederate symbolism and Lost Cause mythology, but if they actually dabbled in genealogy and looked at where their forefathers were during the Civil War, those forebears may well have been fighting for the Union.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
unishark 6y ago
If you view the US federal system as a sort of empire and the south as a breakaway region that fought a failed war of independence, it isn't that unusual. Empires don't generally obliterate provinces they maintain control over.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  ... in fact, the European colonization of the Americas is an absolutely massive exception to this rule. In the Americas, obliteration of the peoples and cultures that were already here rapidly became an explicit goal of the settlers. A good part of the work was done for them by smallpox (1), before significant numbers of settlers arrived. The rest was done with brutal military force later. But you're right that this is unusual. Ghengis Kahn didn't do this, the Roman and Byzantine empires didn't, the many different empires associated with China generally didn't. Hell, even the British empire, as cruel and rapacious an empire as any (and the largest), didn't. Only in what would come to be known as America ... (1) roughly 20% of the planet's total human population was killed by smallpox within 30-50 years of its arrival in N & S America.
spamizbad 6y ago
One reason that’s been under examined is the broader political context after the American Civil War. For example, during and immediately after the war the British Empire was offering wealthy southern slave owners exile and said they could keep their slaves (provided they kept them on certain island territories). So the US may have ultimately chosen an extraordinary reconciliation with the South because it feared wealth flight.
- stephenhuey 6y ago
  Do you have a reference? The British had already outlawed slavery. The only thing I found was Confederates going to Mexico and Brazil, and I think without their slaves: Confederate colonies - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_colonies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_colonies Here’s a picture of Jimmy Carter with Confederados in Brazil: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederados https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederados
  - genoapol 6y ago
    Slaves were securitized and traded in European markets long after slavery was outlawed. These financial ties make the claim very possible, slaves were part of many wealthy British family's portfolios. Roughly 8-10 million slaves, each approximately the price of a single family home.
    - stephenhuey 6y ago
      Yes, I'm with you on this, but it seems the timeline mentioned above is off. However, the figures you refer to are impressive and show the power of money to corrupt people to take advantage of others at all costs. In reading up on the Jane Austen novel Mansfield Park a couple months ago, I came across this startling assertion about how so much of Britain's wealth came from slavery: "By the end of the eighteenth century, the sugar plantations of the West Indies (like Sir Thomas’s plantation in Antigua) were pumping four million pounds into Britain as compared with only one million pounds from Britain’s interests in the rest of the world (The Abolition Project)." https://consideringausten.wordpress.com/austen-and-antigua-slavery-in-her-time/ https://consideringausten.wordpress.com/austen-and-antigua-s...
prurient_one 6y ago
As far as to your first assertion of, "... if there's a war, the losing side doesn't get that kind of treatment." Then read more than what your state supplied history books tech my friend. I believe it there is a story of when the U.S. troops went through a city in WW1 I believe, possibly two but a civilian asked, "well what now? You mean to say you're gonna come blow up everything and then leave?! We arent now under your serfdom?" "No!" he replied with a grin and continued his march. "Well what of us then..? Are you not the americans?" meaning to imply this is and has been the norm up until this point. The man chuckles and says, "it's because we ARE americans that I'm doing it." Meaning that we here, hold the idea of freedom to be worth dying for, for all if they so choose to do so. Now with that established, on to your second paragraph. You asked what the, "southern way of life" meant to someone today other than slavery. As if that were the only thing notable of the southern states but yes, let's unpack this real quick: 1.) Now I understand that you may be offended by history because of what the prevailing ideas of that era were and for that, "waaaah... boo-hooo." Sob somewhere other than here because I sure dont see anyone going to any one of the countries numbered in the double digits and marching with these god damn signs... or the mass people attacking the ones, the first and ONLY ones who fought to end the practice altogether. That's... not smart, but if anything you might want to welcome whites with open arms for ending slavery as a trade instead of attacking them for it. Why? Let's be honest, POC feel that it's all about color but not all white people are the same. Look at the jewish community... not all whites are the same because they were the ones who owned the boats that transported the slaves, not ethnic europeans. No, they were the ones beyond sickened by the practice who sought to end the large number of their plantations in where? The antebellum south. That's righ, I said it. A small minority did not have slaves but instead themselves mostly ethnic slaves themselves. Now to be more direct on the reason for wanting the flag. In the original ideals of THIS COUNTRY our state's rules, laws, and representation, superseded the federal government power meaning like if now, CA wanted %100 amnesty for illegal immigrants then they would and COULD have it by that standard. The federal government had taken their stand against Great Britain, accrued a large debt as a result, so to finance the countries aftermath (which POC fought in willingly btw) there was to be an alliance, or collective body, of the colonies... of those, taxes were levied... and under the "protection" from GB by the government of the south opposed the collectivization of power to speak for the individual affairs of the south and as well each colony of the 13 original. So on many moral reasons o tree her than slavery, they opposed federal intervention in the affairs of the states. "Its about heritage." you'll often hear them say. That means the heritage of the desire, that internal drive, to be free. To be free from oppression... all forms.... and you want to chastise that? Why? People should rally behind that because of the statement it makes to our government not because of the source of income the men had back then and other nations STILL HAVE TODAY. Again, I don't see these special interest groups protesting injustice in say, tel aviv for the african migrants there.. or over in juadong province against xi jinping and his tyranny. Nope...Only here in america, where that type of top/down oppression is ALREADY illegal. Only here in america where we are the ONLY country not under some form of serfdom already. (i.e. GreatBritain: the queen. China: political aristocracy and so on) So there's no glory, no issue and if it continues that key difference of us from them would be gone forever. I'd start by asking who it was that owned the ships and are they still in slavery today? Caveat: it ain't white folks. and yes they are. They sometimes look white, that's all.
zxcmx 6y ago
Honor culture.
roenxi 6y ago
At the end of the day a slim win by voting is enough in a democracy. However it would usually be considered poor form to use even a solid majority as justification a program of cultural eradication. Not to say it doesn't happen from time to time. Besides, military action is kinda special. You need soldiers to have confidence that even if the orders are terrible they will get respect for obeying them - that is part of the deal they get for risking their lives in the army. It isn't wise to put that aside and ignore it.
- deleted 6y ago
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- brnt 6y ago
  > At the end of the day a slim win by voting is enough in a democracy. No. That is a feature of a specific form of democracy, first part the post voting, which apart from anglophone countries most Western democracies do not share. They almost seem to be missing many of the type of problems that anglophone countries have nowadays, which have been linked in literature to the style specifically.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > You need soldiers to have confidence that even if the orders are terrible they will get respect for obeying them Absolutely not, that is how you get wat crimes. Modern German conscripts are explicitly taught that they have a constitutional duty not to follow immoral orders. For obvious historical reasons.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    Modern Germany is a product of a post-WWII occupation and re-education plan designed to make them unable to carry out offensive wars. I wouldn't pick them as my first case study on how to create an effective morale in the armed forces. There is a pretty good argument that armies shouldn't be used offensively full stop, but looking at what America did after the civil war it is pretty clear that isn't the dominant philosophy. I've got no data, but by their nature invading foreign forces will tend to commit war crimes.
throwanem 6y ago
The "Southern way of life" is a palimpsest and a shibboleth. I wouldn't put that much stock in it. What's supposed to be unique about it is only typical of any largely rural, largely working-class region. Cities in the South are the same as cities anywhere else in the US. Twenty years ago I might have added "with a bit more income inequality", but these days I think that's getting to be also pretty much the same all over. Focusing on the South in a discussion of what's wrong with white people in this country is a mistake. It's a ubiquitous mistake and a deliberate one, because making it all about someone else is an easy way to let yourself off the hook. But it's still a mistake. Partly it's a mistake because of the resentment it elicits from the people you place in the role of your sin eaters. That's the sort of thing that would make anyone unwilling even for a moment to consider abandoning their heroes, no matter how ill served they may be to preserve them. But mainly it's a mistake because it gives you an excuse not to think about, or even notice, the part of the problem that you yourself are being, that the white people around you are being. White people in the South have had a hundred and fifty years of hearing from everybody else white in the country how terrible they are. I know; I grew up there. Imagine my surprise when, on leaving home to make a life for myself somewhere with better prospects, I discovered that no one anywhere else is any better. Imagine my surprise when I discovered there were people who'd assume from my origins and my way of speaking that, in me, they had at last found someone with whom they could air their real feelings. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I'd been wrong all those years to think, as so many were so anxious to convince us all, that there was something uniquely wrong with the South. Well, I was oblivious to a lot of things, growing up. But, as my back and my knees let me know every morning, that was a long time ago. To remain oblivious now, despite the historical moment unfolding all around us - I don't know what that would take. A lot of effort, I imagine. I have family who to this day won't speak the name of William Sherman without a curse - not that I blame them; my family is one of many who still bear the scars of his attempt to make a point - and even some of them are starting to think thoughts new to them. It bewilders me to imagine how anyone, in the current moment, could avoid new ways of thinking. If we're going to try to figure out anything here, why don't we make it that?
- charlescearl 6y ago
  One side of my family was literally freed when Sherman’s army arrived in town (Covington, GA). I long imagined what a conversation between the two “sides” of the family would be. A great grandfather’s father was his enslaver. If the South gets through these conversations...
charlescearl 6y ago
There are many “Souths”. Since we are on the subject of James Baldwin, i would recommend his essay collection “Nobody Knows My Name”. The essay itself is insightful even today into the killing of Rayshard Brooks, the subsequent uprising, and the subsequent response of largely Black leadership in Atlanta. To quote (the essay was written in 1959): “ On any night, in that other part of town, a policeman may beat up one Negro too many...And the island on which these Negroes have built their handsome houses will simply disappear“. An anecdote that may complexify things a bit. My grandfather’s grandfather was a Black Civil War veteran who settled in Alabama near Opelika after the war. We believe one of son was lynched by the Klan. The founders of the Black Panther party grew up in the surrounding area. The South has many stories and perspectives.
wpietri 6y ago
It's not an accident that the South is like that. I suggest reading some of the "Daughter of the Confederacy Catechism" booklets you can find online. Here's a transcription of one: https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Children_U_D_C_Catechism_for_1904 https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Children_U_D_C_Catechis... As the word catechism suggests, the Lost Cause view of history [1] is basically a folk religion. The modern version of it quite often includes a denial that the Civil War was about slavery at all. "States rights!" they will cry. When you ask them what right exactly was worth going to war over, the answers quickly get hazy. But contemporary documents like the Cornerstone Speech [2] and many of the declarations of secession make clear that it's slavery and violently enforced white supremacy that are the core. And it's not like those views went away. The building of confederate statues was popular [3] during a period known as the Nadir [4], an extended period after Reconstruction when white anti-black sentiment took a turn for the worse. That peaked of course with the Tulsa Massacre [5], which white people covered up for decades. But it includes widespread violence and ethnic cleansing across the US, and even includes the only successful coup against an American government. [6] Historians are still finding smoking guns that the statues are monuments to white supremacy. [7] So when the inheritors of the Lost Cause talk about heritage, it's necessarily fuzzy, because they can no longer just come right out and say it's about protecting white dominance. But you'll note that they aren't celebrating certain major cultural heritage elements rooted in the South, like the blues, jazz, and soul music. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech [3] https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_whose_heritage_timeline_print.pdf https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_whose_heri... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relatio... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_189... [7] e.g.: https://twitter.com/ProfessorTwitty/status/1272219322765672450 https://twitter.com/ProfessorTwitty/status/12722193227656724...
- antepodius 6y ago
  I mean, if they celebrated those things, white people would just accuse them of cultural appropriation anyway.
ekianjo 6y ago
> I think in most places if there's a war, the losing side doesn't get that kind of treatment. Japan received that treatment after WW2. They could keep their emperor who led them to war, and most of their culture intact. The US had no will to destroy it, as it needed Japan for the battles to come.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course I wonder if anything similar happened with regard to Reconstruction? There are various indian wars, but they shouldn't have been big enough to roll back Reconstruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sioux_War_of_1876 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sioux_War_of_1876 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nez_Perce_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nez_Perce_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cheyenne_Exodus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cheyenne_Exodus On topic: Custer lost decisively at Greasy Grass, but he still has statues.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > I wonder if anything similar happened with regard to Reconstruction? What ended Reconstruction was the "corrupt bargain" that put Hayes in the White House in 1877. There were disputes about the electoral votes of several states in the election of 1876, which meant the outcome of the Presidential election was unresolved; what resolved it was a deal between the Democrats and the Republicans, in which the Democrats agreed to give Hayes the disputed electoral votes in exchange for the Republicans ending Reconstruction. This is basically what started the Jim Crow era.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      Thank you. Yet another instance of electoral result not reflecting popular vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidentia...
      - 6y ago
rayiner 6y ago
As with everything politics, there is a tactical aspect to all this as well. Alumni of my high school in Virginia want to rename the school (which is named after Thomas Jefferson). Statues of George Washington are being torn down. The Mayor of Albany recently ordered the removal of a statue of Philip Schuyler (the father of Alexander Hamilton's wife, featured in the musical Hamilton). And we're just getting started. Obviously the slippery slope doesn't change the propriety of any given thing: I still think tearing down statues of confederates is warranted. But politics is tactical. Each side is always thinking about the next battlefield. There are many people who are calling for a "fundamental" restructuring of America. They attack everything from the Constitution to capitalism--the very bones of our Republic--and demand relitigation of our very founding principles. (And it's hard to blame them! There is no denying that, however marvelous our Constitution may be, not a single one of the millions of enslaved Americans ratified it.) They aren't just radicals, either--their books are being included on everything from school to corporate reading lists, and are routinely quoted in the New York Times, etc. I don't know if southerners who cling to the "southern way of life" think about it expressly in those terms, but I do think that they have the feeling that it does not end with the confederate flag and the statues of Jefferson Davis, but there is a reckoning ahead that's much larger.
greenie_beans 6y ago
There’s a lot to unpack there, but essentially, the southern way of life is a myth rooted in nostalgia for the “Old South,” or the plantation south. It started after southern Democrats “redeemed” the south from Reconstruction. They invented a revisionist history known as “The Lost Cause,” which was about the so-called noble Confederacy fighting “The War of Northern Aggression.” This ideology crossed into the mainstream, most notably when they released the film “The Birth of a Nation.” It’s this period of time when the Jim Crow laws were created and white southerners created systems to keep white supremacy in power. Today, this legacy has created the folks who wave their flags. Religion was just one way they spread that message. And, aside from that unfortunate part of southern culture, the south is a multi-cultural, complicated place.

metrokoi 6y ago

>I think in most places if there's a war, the losing side doesn't get that kind of treatment. They would if the winning side actually wanted the losing side to participate in the greater country as a whole, as the Union wanted after the war. You could completely crush the losing side and destroy all of their history, symbols, heroes, and values and anything that connects them together (which we have been seeing in today's times) but Lincoln and the Union leaders did not want resentment and spite from either side lead to the complete dissolution of the country. A state cannot be successful if half it's population is forced against it's will to participate. That's why the Union declared that Confederate veterans would be treated the same as Union veterans and given proper honor and burial. It did work out quite well, because there was not another civil war US is still standing so far. Most civil wars ended with either another conflict not too long after, or a complete rewriting of the previous system. As for the question of Southern Characteristics, have you asked people who are really from the South that? I think people too often rely on what others say of Southern characteristics. I cannot speak for them, but I have been told they value Jesus, freedom of speech and firearms, being friendly and giving, enjoying nature and the land they live on, and honest work. I think it's not often put into words because these values are so inherent that they don't often realize those values are unique until they go outside the south. Even as an outsider it can be difficult to quantify, but visiting there I can certainly sense subtle but very distinct differences in how people interact with each other and live their day-to-day lives.

impendia 6y ago
> It did work out quite well, Southerner here. In my opinion the reason that "it worked out quite well" is that the Union caved and ended Reconstruction in 1877. This was followed by the "Redemption" period in which Jim Crow was set into place and white supremacy was entrenched. For Southerners, both white and black, things were in many ways similar to pre-1861. White people had relatively little to complain about, and black people who shook up the status quo were subject to reprisals up to and including murder. Meanwhile, my impression is that one thing valued in the contemporary South is "pleasantness". This showed up, for example, in the myth that slaves were happy. Today, conversation tends to be more indirect. For example, if you want to tell somebody that they're an idiot, "Bless your heart" will do the trick. That said, despite having grown up here I never really identified with the culture, so I can't really answer the question all that reliably.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  I had been sceptical about the Iraq adventure in part because my observations tell me the US attempted nation-building, in its own back yard, in 1866 and still hadn't fully managed it by 1966[1]. Looking for mid-nineteenth century civil wars, I find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 and maybe I'm just too ignorant of domestic politics in these countries, but it doesn't seem that any of them still have divisions rooted in those conflicts, or even still had in the mid-twentieth century. It's unclear how much geographic sectarian division there is in the current US. I would hope most yankees would agree that Sherman was an arsonist, and most southerners would agree that lynching is despicable (and most memes I run across on the internet to the contrary of either originate in a relatively small community of trolls?). As to the original question, try a web search on "you know you're a southerner when". There are definitely cultural differences which can be, and usually are, celebrated without any reference to the Lost Cause. (In some ways, southern culture may be more familiar to europeans. A german[2] colleague of mine once asked me "how do you confuse an american?". "How?", I replied. "Answer them, when they ask you how you're doing.") [1] there is hope for 2066: compare George Wallace with his grandson https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23574675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23574675 [2] Wessi oder Ossi? mox nix.

belorn 6y ago

Are they revering figures from that side of the war, or are people seeing idolatry when others are simply observing historical landmarks? The distinction is quite significant. Every country is full of cultural and ritual symbols of the past, but few are actually celebrate for the original values that they once mark. To take an example of ritual, are people dancing around a may pole because they enjoy dancing or are they spinning around an erect phallus in order to impregnate mother earth? If a person go into an old church is it because the person is religious or are they a tourist looking at architecture? If you live in the southern part of the US, maybe they want objects that show that the southern has a history that stretches back further than what living people remember. Here in Sweden we have a designation called historical memory. Any object can be designated such status and once it has there is a bunch of law that exist to preserve them. The law does not care about the values behind the object. The purpose of the law is explicitly so that further generations may have access to memories of the past. Anything from a old house, a tree, a wreck, a whole in the ground, a stone, to whole living forests. Anything older than 1850 is automatically given this status, with younger objects being designated per case based on a large number of properties like historical/cultural significance and uniqueness. No one talks about revering those symbols, even if they come from past wars where people died.

ascotan 6y ago
I'd say that unlike a 'normal' war between countries this was a civil war. This was a brother vs. brother, father vs. son battle. Over 600,000 people died in what was pretty gruesome conditions (lead bullets, the first gattling gun, 23K people killed/wounded in a single day of fighting, etc.). Blood was spilled, homes were burned and not everyone agrees on who the 'heroes' and 'villians' were in this conflict. Most of the conflict was fought in the south. After the war, there was a need to bring together a divided nation. The divisions were not all territorial. The need to show the courage of the men who died and remember the fallen needed to be done before that generation passed away. Today the symbols of the south (the confederate flag, monuments, street names) are all reminders of many Americans that their parents struggled though slavery, abuse and poverty. Other Americans that don't have that legacy don't necessarily see the same things and I think the challenge that this article presents, is how to get some Americans to see these problems today. The sterotypes are not real. Not all southerners owned slaves, most were conscripted, many didn't want to be there, many were kind, many were courageous. I visited a statue of a southern solider that ran out into a hail of bullets to the rescue northern wounded in the "no mans land" and bring them to the northern lines. George Washington was a slave owner and so was Thomas Jefferson, both unarguably 2 of the most influential men in American history. But, as with so many things in life, the backstory is more complicated than the picture hanging on the wall. The civil war was and is a divisive issue. In my personal opinion, like in our own lives, we should recognize and acknowledge were we are wrong and strive to be better. We should also seek to make the future better place to live and leave the skeletons were they're buried. Digging them up will do few people any good.

s5300 6y ago

This isn't amazingly relevant to your question, but I'd like to throw it out there.... If you haven't read this - I highly recommend you should. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-so... I've been meaning to make a serious post about it on HN for a bit, have just been quite heavily procrastinating. In short tho - the underlying implications of this article really baffle me whenever (which is just about all the time) I think about our ideas of what consciousness/sentience means amongst all of humanity. Like, yeah, this fucked up the South a little bit - but WHO has estimated that ~1 Billion suffer worldwide. Absolutely insane

catherd 6y ago

I don't think there is a single "Southern way of life" since the South is a pretty big place. I'm not particularly interested in history, but from the little I paid attention, the part I grew up in was too steep, rocky, and poor to have (any?) slaves. What we did have was a large number of Scotch-Irish who have a strong tradition of: - insularity - contrarianism - hardscrabble self-sufficiency - anti-authority - love nothing more than maintaining a good feud - religion (protestant roots) - loving "the land" (hunting, your farm, etc.) Ignoring the morals of the situation, from an economic perspective the North could afford to give up slavery. They were richer and their more industrialized economy wasn't based on slavery. The Southern economy was (completely?) reliant on slavery, and when the Northerners legislated their economy away the rebellion was somewhat predictable. Painting anyone involved as a racist is easier and true to a large extent, but there were strong components of "don't tell me what to do" and just not having any viable economic alternatives that also contributed. In my mind at least, a lot of modern day Southerners of a certain type (the poor white trash type, not the Gone With The Wind aristocratic plantation owner type that doesn't really exist any more) just love telling outsiders they can fuck off, and waving the rebel flag/preserving statues are pretty handy avenues for that.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Note that the owners of the big plantations who served as the Confederacy’s ideologues and political elites were not those "insular Scotch-Irish". On the contrary, they often boasted of their descent from prominent English families and set themselves apart from the poorer whites of less prestigious ethnic origin. Meanwhile, among those Scotch-Irish, quite a lot of them from Appalachia actually went north to fight for the Union. This is because as poor tenant farmers, they often owned no slaves themselves and were not invested in the big plantation economy based on slavery that the Confederacy’s elites sought to protect. This fact sadly gets overlooked today in, say, northern Alabama where many whites are enamored of Confederate symbolism and Lost Cause mythology, but if they actually dabbled in genealogy and looked at where their forefathers were during the Civil War, those forebears may well have been fighting for the Union.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago

unishark 6y ago

If you view the US federal system as a sort of empire and the south as a breakaway region that fought a failed war of independence, it isn't that unusual. Empires don't generally obliterate provinces they maintain control over.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
... in fact, the European colonization of the Americas is an absolutely massive exception to this rule. In the Americas, obliteration of the peoples and cultures that were already here rapidly became an explicit goal of the settlers. A good part of the work was done for them by smallpox (1), before significant numbers of settlers arrived. The rest was done with brutal military force later. But you're right that this is unusual. Ghengis Kahn didn't do this, the Roman and Byzantine empires didn't, the many different empires associated with China generally didn't. Hell, even the British empire, as cruel and rapacious an empire as any (and the largest), didn't. Only in what would come to be known as America ... (1) roughly 20% of the planet's total human population was killed by smallpox within 30-50 years of its arrival in N & S America.

spamizbad 6y ago

One reason that’s been under examined is the broader political context after the American Civil War. For example, during and immediately after the war the British Empire was offering wealthy southern slave owners exile and said they could keep their slaves (provided they kept them on certain island territories). So the US may have ultimately chosen an extraordinary reconciliation with the South because it feared wealth flight.

stephenhuey 6y ago
Do you have a reference? The British had already outlawed slavery. The only thing I found was Confederates going to Mexico and Brazil, and I think without their slaves: Confederate colonies - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_colonies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_colonies Here’s a picture of Jimmy Carter with Confederados in Brazil: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederados https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederados
- genoapol 6y ago
  Slaves were securitized and traded in European markets long after slavery was outlawed. These financial ties make the claim very possible, slaves were part of many wealthy British family's portfolios. Roughly 8-10 million slaves, each approximately the price of a single family home.
  - stephenhuey 6y ago
    Yes, I'm with you on this, but it seems the timeline mentioned above is off. However, the figures you refer to are impressive and show the power of money to corrupt people to take advantage of others at all costs. In reading up on the Jane Austen novel Mansfield Park a couple months ago, I came across this startling assertion about how so much of Britain's wealth came from slavery: "By the end of the eighteenth century, the sugar plantations of the West Indies (like Sir Thomas’s plantation in Antigua) were pumping four million pounds into Britain as compared with only one million pounds from Britain’s interests in the rest of the world (The Abolition Project)." https://consideringausten.wordpress.com/austen-and-antigua-slavery-in-her-time/ https://consideringausten.wordpress.com/austen-and-antigua-s...

prurient_one 6y ago

As far as to your first assertion of, "... if there's a war, the losing side doesn't get that kind of treatment." Then read more than what your state supplied history books tech my friend. I believe it there is a story of when the U.S. troops went through a city in WW1 I believe, possibly two but a civilian asked, "well what now? You mean to say you're gonna come blow up everything and then leave?! We arent now under your serfdom?" "No!" he replied with a grin and continued his march. "Well what of us then..? Are you not the americans?" meaning to imply this is and has been the norm up until this point. The man chuckles and says, "it's because we ARE americans that I'm doing it." Meaning that we here, hold the idea of freedom to be worth dying for, for all if they so choose to do so. Now with that established, on to your second paragraph. You asked what the, "southern way of life" meant to someone today other than slavery. As if that were the only thing notable of the southern states but yes, let's unpack this real quick: 1.) Now I understand that you may be offended by history because of what the prevailing ideas of that era were and for that, "waaaah... boo-hooo." Sob somewhere other than here because I sure dont see anyone going to any one of the countries numbered in the double digits and marching with these god damn signs... or the mass people attacking the ones, the first and ONLY ones who fought to end the practice altogether. That's... not smart, but if anything you might want to welcome whites with open arms for ending slavery as a trade instead of attacking them for it. Why? Let's be honest, POC feel that it's all about color but not all white people are the same. Look at the jewish community... not all whites are the same because they were the ones who owned the boats that transported the slaves, not ethnic europeans. No, they were the ones beyond sickened by the practice who sought to end the large number of their plantations in where? The antebellum south. That's righ, I said it. A small minority did not have slaves but instead themselves mostly ethnic slaves themselves. Now to be more direct on the reason for wanting the flag. In the original ideals of THIS COUNTRY our state's rules, laws, and representation, superseded the federal government power meaning like if now, CA wanted %100 amnesty for illegal immigrants then they would and COULD have it by that standard. The federal government had taken their stand against Great Britain, accrued a large debt as a result, so to finance the countries aftermath (which POC fought in willingly btw) there was to be an alliance, or collective body, of the colonies... of those, taxes were levied... and under the "protection" from GB by the government of the south opposed the collectivization of power to speak for the individual affairs of the south and as well each colony of the 13 original. So on many moral reasons o tree her than slavery, they opposed federal intervention in the affairs of the states. "Its about heritage." you'll often hear them say. That means the heritage of the desire, that internal drive, to be free. To be free from oppression... all forms.... and you want to chastise that? Why? People should rally behind that because of the statement it makes to our government not because of the source of income the men had back then and other nations STILL HAVE TODAY. Again, I don't see these special interest groups protesting injustice in say, tel aviv for the african migrants there.. or over in juadong province against xi jinping and his tyranny. Nope...Only here in america, where that type of top/down oppression is ALREADY illegal. Only here in america where we are the ONLY country not under some form of serfdom already. (i.e. GreatBritain: the queen. China: political aristocracy and so on) So there's no glory, no issue and if it continues that key difference of us from them would be gone forever. I'd start by asking who it was that owned the ships and are they still in slavery today? Caveat: it ain't white folks. and yes they are. They sometimes look white, that's all.

zxcmx 6y ago

Honor culture.

roenxi 6y ago

At the end of the day a slim win by voting is enough in a democracy. However it would usually be considered poor form to use even a solid majority as justification a program of cultural eradication. Not to say it doesn't happen from time to time. Besides, military action is kinda special. You need soldiers to have confidence that even if the orders are terrible they will get respect for obeying them - that is part of the deal they get for risking their lives in the army. It isn't wise to put that aside and ignore it.

deleted 6y ago
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brnt 6y ago
> At the end of the day a slim win by voting is enough in a democracy. No. That is a feature of a specific form of democracy, first part the post voting, which apart from anglophone countries most Western democracies do not share. They almost seem to be missing many of the type of problems that anglophone countries have nowadays, which have been linked in literature to the style specifically.
pjc50 6y ago
> You need soldiers to have confidence that even if the orders are terrible they will get respect for obeying them Absolutely not, that is how you get wat crimes. Modern German conscripts are explicitly taught that they have a constitutional duty not to follow immoral orders. For obvious historical reasons.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Modern Germany is a product of a post-WWII occupation and re-education plan designed to make them unable to carry out offensive wars. I wouldn't pick them as my first case study on how to create an effective morale in the armed forces. There is a pretty good argument that armies shouldn't be used offensively full stop, but looking at what America did after the civil war it is pretty clear that isn't the dominant philosophy. I've got no data, but by their nature invading foreign forces will tend to commit war crimes.

throwanem 6y ago

The "Southern way of life" is a palimpsest and a shibboleth. I wouldn't put that much stock in it. What's supposed to be unique about it is only typical of any largely rural, largely working-class region. Cities in the South are the same as cities anywhere else in the US. Twenty years ago I might have added "with a bit more income inequality", but these days I think that's getting to be also pretty much the same all over. Focusing on the South in a discussion of what's wrong with white people in this country is a mistake. It's a ubiquitous mistake and a deliberate one, because making it all about someone else is an easy way to let yourself off the hook. But it's still a mistake. Partly it's a mistake because of the resentment it elicits from the people you place in the role of your sin eaters. That's the sort of thing that would make anyone unwilling even for a moment to consider abandoning their heroes, no matter how ill served they may be to preserve them. But mainly it's a mistake because it gives you an excuse not to think about, or even notice, the part of the problem that you yourself are being, that the white people around you are being. White people in the South have had a hundred and fifty years of hearing from everybody else white in the country how terrible they are. I know; I grew up there. Imagine my surprise when, on leaving home to make a life for myself somewhere with better prospects, I discovered that no one anywhere else is any better. Imagine my surprise when I discovered there were people who'd assume from my origins and my way of speaking that, in me, they had at last found someone with whom they could air their real feelings. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I'd been wrong all those years to think, as so many were so anxious to convince us all, that there was something uniquely wrong with the South. Well, I was oblivious to a lot of things, growing up. But, as my back and my knees let me know every morning, that was a long time ago. To remain oblivious now, despite the historical moment unfolding all around us - I don't know what that would take. A lot of effort, I imagine. I have family who to this day won't speak the name of William Sherman without a curse - not that I blame them; my family is one of many who still bear the scars of his attempt to make a point - and even some of them are starting to think thoughts new to them. It bewilders me to imagine how anyone, in the current moment, could avoid new ways of thinking. If we're going to try to figure out anything here, why don't we make it that?

charlescearl 6y ago
One side of my family was literally freed when Sherman’s army arrived in town (Covington, GA). I long imagined what a conversation between the two “sides” of the family would be. A great grandfather’s father was his enslaver. If the South gets through these conversations...

charlescearl 6y ago

There are many “Souths”. Since we are on the subject of James Baldwin, i would recommend his essay collection “Nobody Knows My Name”. The essay itself is insightful even today into the killing of Rayshard Brooks, the subsequent uprising, and the subsequent response of largely Black leadership in Atlanta. To quote (the essay was written in 1959): “ On any night, in that other part of town, a policeman may beat up one Negro too many...And the island on which these Negroes have built their handsome houses will simply disappear“. An anecdote that may complexify things a bit. My grandfather’s grandfather was a Black Civil War veteran who settled in Alabama near Opelika after the war. We believe one of son was lynched by the Klan. The founders of the Black Panther party grew up in the surrounding area. The South has many stories and perspectives.

wpietri 6y ago

It's not an accident that the South is like that. I suggest reading some of the "Daughter of the Confederacy Catechism" booklets you can find online. Here's a transcription of one: https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Children_U_D_C_Catechism_for_1904 https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Children_U_D_C_Catechis... As the word catechism suggests, the Lost Cause view of history [1] is basically a folk religion. The modern version of it quite often includes a denial that the Civil War was about slavery at all. "States rights!" they will cry. When you ask them what right exactly was worth going to war over, the answers quickly get hazy. But contemporary documents like the Cornerstone Speech [2] and many of the declarations of secession make clear that it's slavery and violently enforced white supremacy that are the core. And it's not like those views went away. The building of confederate statues was popular [3] during a period known as the Nadir [4], an extended period after Reconstruction when white anti-black sentiment took a turn for the worse. That peaked of course with the Tulsa Massacre [5], which white people covered up for decades. But it includes widespread violence and ethnic cleansing across the US, and even includes the only successful coup against an American government. [6] Historians are still finding smoking guns that the statues are monuments to white supremacy. [7] So when the inheritors of the Lost Cause talk about heritage, it's necessarily fuzzy, because they can no longer just come right out and say it's about protecting white dominance. But you'll note that they aren't celebrating certain major cultural heritage elements rooted in the South, like the blues, jazz, and soul music. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech [3] https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_whose_heritage_timeline_print.pdf https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_whose_heri... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relatio... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_189... [7] e.g.: https://twitter.com/ProfessorTwitty/status/1272219322765672450 https://twitter.com/ProfessorTwitty/status/12722193227656724...

antepodius 6y ago
I mean, if they celebrated those things, white people would just accuse them of cultural appropriation anyway.

ekianjo 6y ago

> I think in most places if there's a war, the losing side doesn't get that kind of treatment. Japan received that treatment after WW2. They could keep their emperor who led them to war, and most of their culture intact. The US had no will to destroy it, as it needed Japan for the battles to come.

082349872349872 6y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course I wonder if anything similar happened with regard to Reconstruction? There are various indian wars, but they shouldn't have been big enough to roll back Reconstruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sioux_War_of_1876 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sioux_War_of_1876 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nez_Perce_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nez_Perce_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cheyenne_Exodus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cheyenne_Exodus On topic: Custer lost decisively at Greasy Grass, but he still has statues.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > I wonder if anything similar happened with regard to Reconstruction? What ended Reconstruction was the "corrupt bargain" that put Hayes in the White House in 1877. There were disputes about the electoral votes of several states in the election of 1876, which meant the outcome of the Presidential election was unresolved; what resolved it was a deal between the Democrats and the Republicans, in which the Democrats agreed to give Hayes the disputed electoral votes in exchange for the Republicans ending Reconstruction. This is basically what started the Jim Crow era.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Thank you. Yet another instance of electoral result not reflecting popular vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidentia...
    - 6y ago

rayiner 6y ago

As with everything politics, there is a tactical aspect to all this as well. Alumni of my high school in Virginia want to rename the school (which is named after Thomas Jefferson). Statues of George Washington are being torn down. The Mayor of Albany recently ordered the removal of a statue of Philip Schuyler (the father of Alexander Hamilton's wife, featured in the musical Hamilton). And we're just getting started. Obviously the slippery slope doesn't change the propriety of any given thing: I still think tearing down statues of confederates is warranted. But politics is tactical. Each side is always thinking about the next battlefield. There are many people who are calling for a "fundamental" restructuring of America. They attack everything from the Constitution to capitalism--the very bones of our Republic--and demand relitigation of our very founding principles. (And it's hard to blame them! There is no denying that, however marvelous our Constitution may be, not a single one of the millions of enslaved Americans ratified it.) They aren't just radicals, either--their books are being included on everything from school to corporate reading lists, and are routinely quoted in the New York Times, etc. I don't know if southerners who cling to the "southern way of life" think about it expressly in those terms, but I do think that they have the feeling that it does not end with the confederate flag and the statues of Jefferson Davis, but there is a reckoning ahead that's much larger.

greenie_beans 6y ago

There’s a lot to unpack there, but essentially, the southern way of life is a myth rooted in nostalgia for the “Old South,” or the plantation south. It started after southern Democrats “redeemed” the south from Reconstruction. They invented a revisionist history known as “The Lost Cause,” which was about the so-called noble Confederacy fighting “The War of Northern Aggression.” This ideology crossed into the mainstream, most notably when they released the film “The Birth of a Nation.” It’s this period of time when the Jim Crow laws were created and white southerners created systems to keep white supremacy in power. Today, this legacy has created the folks who wave their flags. Religion was just one way they spread that message. And, aside from that unfortunate part of southern culture, the south is a multi-cultural, complicated place.