While browsing for a book on Greek mythology in the history section at a local Borders, my eyes were drawn to a bright green paperback with a black and white picture of a surly, odd-looking confederate soldier on the cover, bearing the obscure title;
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. Something about this book called to me. On an impulse, I purchased the book, curious to see what stories about humanity were captured between the two covers.
The South and their role in the Civil War has always intrigued me. I had gone to visit my penpal in Lousiana over spring break my senior year. I tagged along with my friend to her classes since my friend was *not* on spring break. When one of her teachers asked where I was from, I heard some snickers throughout her classroom and a boy shout out in disgust "So you're a Yankee!?!" I was very confused. We studied the Civil War in school but that is where us "Northerners" interests in the war ended. My friend then kindly informed me that some people in the South were still upset about loosing the war. In fact, some people were still fighting the war in their hearts.
I started reading the book yesterday and haven't been able to put it down. The author decides to tour the South and write sort of an ethnography about the people and situations he encounters - from attending a Daughters of the Confederacy birthday party for Robert E. Lee to marching in an authentic reinactment of Gettysburg, Tony Horwitz opens up a world that us "Northerners" could never understand.
Here is just a small taste:
The War of Northern Agression had little to do with slavery. Rather, it was a culture war in which Yankees imposed their imperialist and capitalist will on the agrarian South, just as the English had done wo the Irish and Scots--and as America did to the Indians...
Amazing how history changes with the eyes that view it.
