[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Confederacy, since non-Confederate border states such as
Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, as well as the Indian
Territory that eventually became the state of Oklahoma,
came to have enduringly Southern characteristics, as do even
the southernmost parts of Illinois and Indiana. There are
significant differences among Southern states one thinks of,
say, Texas and Virginia to which one must add that, in
Southern states such as Louisiana and Florida, one has to go
north to go south, culturally speaking, since the southern-
most parts of those states are not really Southern.
89
WilfredM. McClay
Nor is it easy to say exactly when the South became the
South in Americans minds. But certainly by the time the
Constitution had been adopted, and the Northern states had
abolished slavery, the two sections had begun to diverge. This
was almost immediately reflected not only in growing inter-
sectional antagonism over economic issues, but also in issues
of regional identity. While Northerners deplored the South s
use of slave labor as an anachronism and moral evil, Southern-
ers (or at any rate, Southern intellectuals) increasingly mounted
a defense that presented the South as a defender of pre-mod-
ern, organic, hierarchical institutions, in contrast to the North s
inhuman and exploitative free-labor, cash-nexus economy.
There was myth and exaggeration in such defenses, but
even so, they accurately reflected the growth of a very distinc-
tive civilization in the Old South: one that was less urban,
more agricultural, economically underdeveloped, strikingly
biracial, and strongly hierarchical, with a clear-cut ladder of
social organization, marked disparities of wealth and poverty,
and a powerful guiding ethos (in the white elites) that melded
the ubiquitous Protestant Christianity with neomedieval
chivalric ideals, including especially a fierce and combative
sense of honor. From the time that the South emerged as a
distinct region with distinctive folkways, it played an impor-
tant role in the national identity, by serving as the opposite
number or the Other, against which modern American egali-
tarian and free-labor ideals could define themselves.
Its cultural distinctiveness survived the Civil War, and
survived well into the twentieth century. The generosity of
90
A Student s Guide to U.S. History
Southern entertaining, the gregarious warmth of Southern
social relations, the respectful formality of Southern manners,
the vitality of Southern family life, the emotive and evangelical
quality of Southern religion these differentia are not myths,
and they are to a striking degree characteristics shared by
nearly all Southerners, black and white. Nor, alas, is the rela-
tive poverty and marginalization of African Americans a point
of differentiation between North and South. If anything, there
is reason to believe that racial healing may have brighter pros-
pects in the South than in the Northern cities, a statement
that would have seemed absurd in the 1950s.
But all of that said, it is not clear how long the South s
distinctiveness will persist in the twenty-first century. The
city of Atlanta was once a potent symbol of Southern victim-
ization at the hands of the marauding General William T.
Sherman. Now it is an icon of Sunbelt business prosperity, a
by-word for marauding sprawl and frenetic growth, and an
emblem of the globalization of news propagation and con-
sciousness-molding, in the form of the all-pervasive Atlanta-
based Cable News Network an organization that is about
as Southern as a reindeer herd. Such a transformation does
not bode well for Southern distinctiveness.
So some kind of cultural assimilation to the American
(and global-American) ethos is underway. And yet, given the
strong ascendency of certain elements of Southern culture
one need only think, for example, of the extraordinary power
of the South in national politics, or of the domination of
American (and world) popular music in recent years by South-
91
WilfredM. McClay
ern-derived forms such as blues, rock-n-roll, country-west-
ern, bluegrass, etc. it is not always clear whether the South
is Americanizing, or America is Southernizing. Perhaps a bit
of both.
For additional reading, see William R. Taylor s Cavalier
and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character
(N.Y., 1961; revised edition, 1993), Edward L. Ayers s South-
ern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906 (Ox-
ford, 1995), Eugene D. Genovese s The Southern Tradition:
The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism
(Cambridge, Mass., 1994), John Shelton Reed s The Endur-
ing South: Subcultural Persistence in Mass Society (Lexington,
Mass., 1972; Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), Kenneth S. Lynn s
Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor (Boston, 1959; Westport,
Conn., 1972), David M. Potter s The South and the Sectional
Conflict (Baton Rouge, La., 1968), C. Vann Woodward s The
Burden of Southern History (Baton Rouge, La., 1960; reprinted
1993), W. J. Cash s The Mind of the South (N.Y., 1941; reprinted
1991), Tony Horowitz s Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches
from the Unfinished Civil War (N.Y., 1999), and the irresist-
ible Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989;
N.Y., 1991), edited by Charles Reagan Wilson.
caveats
Herein I offer a few useful observations about the practical
aspects of historical study, presented in negative form. I
92
A Student s Guide to U.S. History
choose to emphasize caveats, rather than dos and don ts,
because falsehood is easier to identify than truth; and it is
easier to specify how one shouldn t do history than to say how
one should.
1
Caveat 1
1: Avoid using the term political correctness to
1
1
describe an argument or position that seems to you contrived
or ideologically motivated. First, because it is a kind of
argumentum ad hominem, which fails to engage the issue at
hand on rational terms, preferring instead to cast doubt on [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szkicerysunki.xlx.pl
Confederacy, since non-Confederate border states such as
Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, as well as the Indian
Territory that eventually became the state of Oklahoma,
came to have enduringly Southern characteristics, as do even
the southernmost parts of Illinois and Indiana. There are
significant differences among Southern states one thinks of,
say, Texas and Virginia to which one must add that, in
Southern states such as Louisiana and Florida, one has to go
north to go south, culturally speaking, since the southern-
most parts of those states are not really Southern.
89
WilfredM. McClay
Nor is it easy to say exactly when the South became the
South in Americans minds. But certainly by the time the
Constitution had been adopted, and the Northern states had
abolished slavery, the two sections had begun to diverge. This
was almost immediately reflected not only in growing inter-
sectional antagonism over economic issues, but also in issues
of regional identity. While Northerners deplored the South s
use of slave labor as an anachronism and moral evil, Southern-
ers (or at any rate, Southern intellectuals) increasingly mounted
a defense that presented the South as a defender of pre-mod-
ern, organic, hierarchical institutions, in contrast to the North s
inhuman and exploitative free-labor, cash-nexus economy.
There was myth and exaggeration in such defenses, but
even so, they accurately reflected the growth of a very distinc-
tive civilization in the Old South: one that was less urban,
more agricultural, economically underdeveloped, strikingly
biracial, and strongly hierarchical, with a clear-cut ladder of
social organization, marked disparities of wealth and poverty,
and a powerful guiding ethos (in the white elites) that melded
the ubiquitous Protestant Christianity with neomedieval
chivalric ideals, including especially a fierce and combative
sense of honor. From the time that the South emerged as a
distinct region with distinctive folkways, it played an impor-
tant role in the national identity, by serving as the opposite
number or the Other, against which modern American egali-
tarian and free-labor ideals could define themselves.
Its cultural distinctiveness survived the Civil War, and
survived well into the twentieth century. The generosity of
90
A Student s Guide to U.S. History
Southern entertaining, the gregarious warmth of Southern
social relations, the respectful formality of Southern manners,
the vitality of Southern family life, the emotive and evangelical
quality of Southern religion these differentia are not myths,
and they are to a striking degree characteristics shared by
nearly all Southerners, black and white. Nor, alas, is the rela-
tive poverty and marginalization of African Americans a point
of differentiation between North and South. If anything, there
is reason to believe that racial healing may have brighter pros-
pects in the South than in the Northern cities, a statement
that would have seemed absurd in the 1950s.
But all of that said, it is not clear how long the South s
distinctiveness will persist in the twenty-first century. The
city of Atlanta was once a potent symbol of Southern victim-
ization at the hands of the marauding General William T.
Sherman. Now it is an icon of Sunbelt business prosperity, a
by-word for marauding sprawl and frenetic growth, and an
emblem of the globalization of news propagation and con-
sciousness-molding, in the form of the all-pervasive Atlanta-
based Cable News Network an organization that is about
as Southern as a reindeer herd. Such a transformation does
not bode well for Southern distinctiveness.
So some kind of cultural assimilation to the American
(and global-American) ethos is underway. And yet, given the
strong ascendency of certain elements of Southern culture
one need only think, for example, of the extraordinary power
of the South in national politics, or of the domination of
American (and world) popular music in recent years by South-
91
WilfredM. McClay
ern-derived forms such as blues, rock-n-roll, country-west-
ern, bluegrass, etc. it is not always clear whether the South
is Americanizing, or America is Southernizing. Perhaps a bit
of both.
For additional reading, see William R. Taylor s Cavalier
and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character
(N.Y., 1961; revised edition, 1993), Edward L. Ayers s South-
ern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906 (Ox-
ford, 1995), Eugene D. Genovese s The Southern Tradition:
The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism
(Cambridge, Mass., 1994), John Shelton Reed s The Endur-
ing South: Subcultural Persistence in Mass Society (Lexington,
Mass., 1972; Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), Kenneth S. Lynn s
Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor (Boston, 1959; Westport,
Conn., 1972), David M. Potter s The South and the Sectional
Conflict (Baton Rouge, La., 1968), C. Vann Woodward s The
Burden of Southern History (Baton Rouge, La., 1960; reprinted
1993), W. J. Cash s The Mind of the South (N.Y., 1941; reprinted
1991), Tony Horowitz s Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches
from the Unfinished Civil War (N.Y., 1999), and the irresist-
ible Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989;
N.Y., 1991), edited by Charles Reagan Wilson.
caveats
Herein I offer a few useful observations about the practical
aspects of historical study, presented in negative form. I
92
A Student s Guide to U.S. History
choose to emphasize caveats, rather than dos and don ts,
because falsehood is easier to identify than truth; and it is
easier to specify how one shouldn t do history than to say how
one should.
1
Caveat 1
1: Avoid using the term political correctness to
1
1
describe an argument or position that seems to you contrived
or ideologically motivated. First, because it is a kind of
argumentum ad hominem, which fails to engage the issue at
hand on rational terms, preferring instead to cast doubt on [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]