{"id":40682,"date":"2017-11-02T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40682"},"modified":"2017-11-01T15:44:20","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T19:44:20","slug":"the-united-states-made-a-collective-choice-to-let-the-south-have-a-mythology-in-place-of-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/11\/02\/the-united-states-made-a-collective-choice-to-let-the-south-have-a-mythology-in-place-of-independence\/","title":{"rendered":"“… the United States made a collective choice to let the South have a mythology in place of independence”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh<\/a> is cheering on the carnage of the US-Civil-War-revisionism war that appears to have broken out to our south:<\/p>\n

As someone who is relishing the United States\u2019s outburst of Civil War revisionism, I am a little confused by the controversy over a remark by the White House chief of staff, John Kelly. Kelly is being assailed for saying in a Fox News interview that \u201cthe lack of an ability to compromise led to the (American) Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was part of a familiar-sounding encomium to Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy\u2019s warlord. It is the kind of thing, until recently an accepted part of the American civil religion, that is being instantly challenged in our tempestuous moral climate. And I think this is, on the whole, terrific. About time, and then some.<\/p>\n

But I would have thought that the objectionable part of Kelly\u2019s comment was the stuff about \u201cmen and women of good faith\u201d \u2014 as if Southern whites had not made war for the purpose of preserving a caste\u2019s economic advantage and its political dominance within the federation. Did \u201cgood faith\u201d always characterize the Confederacy\u2019s collective behaviour before and during the war? One thinks of Andersonville, or Fort Pillow, or Bleeding Kansas, or \u2014 to throw in a Canadian angle \u2014 the Confederacy\u2019s use of British North America as a base for conspiracies and violence. We may even recall Preston Brooks beating Charles Sumner nearly to death in the United States Senate in 1856, and being lionized throughout the South for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood faith,\u201d eh? This reflects the toxic part of the schoolhouse account of history given to Americans: faced with the problem of being bound together in a Union as a victorious nation and a vanquished one, the United States made a collective choice to let the South have a mythology in place of independence. An account of the war as a fateful collision between \u201cways of life\u201d was allowed to stand \u2014 perhaps in the absence of acceptable alternatives \u2014 and the South was permitted to commemorate and celebrate war heroes without inviting odium or reprisal. Those heroes ultimately remained part of the ruling class in the South.<\/p>\n

It is easy to recognize talk of \u201cgood faith\u201d (or \u201cways of life\u201d) as the thinking of somebody still under the cultural spell of Gone With the Wind<\/em>. The puzzle is that it does not seem to be the \u201cgood faith\u201d part of Kelly\u2019s comment that is inviting the strongest objections. He is being vilified by the \u201clack of an ability to compromise\u201d part.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh is cheering on the carnage of the US-Civil-War-revisionism war that appears to have broken out to our south: As someone who is relishing the United States\u2019s outburst of Civil War revisionism, I am a little confused by the controversy over a remark by the White House chief of staff, John Kelly. Kelly is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,53,13],"tags":[650,347,822,269],"class_list":["post-40682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-politics","category-usa","tag-civilwar","tag-debunking","tag-mythology","tag-propaganda"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aAa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40683,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40682\/revisions\/40683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}