Newcomers to the South often remark that southerners, at least white southerners, are still fighting the Civil War -- a strange preoccupation considering that the war formally ended more than one hundred and thirty-five years ago and fewer than a third of southerners today can claim an ancestor who actually fought in the conflict. But even if the war is far removed both in time and genealogy, it survives in the hearts of many of the region's residents and often in national newspaper headlines concerning battle flags, racial ...
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Newcomers to the South often remark that southerners, at least white southerners, are still fighting the Civil War -- a strange preoccupation considering that the war formally ended more than one hundred and thirty-five years ago and fewer than a third of southerners today can claim an ancestor who actually fought in the conflict. But even if the war is far removed both in time and genealogy, it survives in the hearts of many of the region's residents and often in national newspaper headlines concerning battle flags, racial justice, and religious conflicts. In this sweeping narrative of the South from the Civil War to the present, noted historian David Goldfield contemplates the roots of southern memory and explains how this memory has shaped the modern South both for good and ill. He candidly discusses how and why white southern men fashioned the myths of the Lost Cause and the Redemption out of the Civil War and Reconstruction and how they shaped a religion to canonize the heroes and reify the events of those fated years. Goldfield also recounts how blacks and white women eventually crafted a different, more inclusive version of southern history and how that new vision has competed with more traditional perspectives. As Goldfield shows, the battle for southern history, and for the South, continues -- in museums, public spaces, books, state legislatures, and the minds of southerners. Given the region's growing economic power and political influence, the outcome of this war is more than a historian's preoccupation; it is of national importance. Integrating history and memory, religion, race, and gender, Still Fighting the Civil War will help newcomers, longtime residents, and curious outsiders alike attain a better understanding of the South and each other.
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The American South has always been a paradox. It has been viewed, both by those within and without it, as a distinctive region of the United States with its own character and identity. This separateness is the source of much of the fascination with the South. But in addition to its distinct character, the South has also been viewed as internally monolithic. As David Goldfield, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, states in the introduction to this book: [Southern] culture is rich in music, food, conversation, and literature; yet, it can be a barren place, a tundra of conformity, a murderer of imagination, inquiry, and innovation." (p.1)
Professor Goldfield states that the aim of his book, "Still Fighting the Civil War", is not simply to write a history of what the South is and of how it is different. Rather the book attempts to explore why Southerners have understood their history the way they do. Thus the goal of the book is to achieve some self-understanding of the South by people who consider themselves Southerners and to achieve better understanding of what has made the South what it is by those not Southerners. Equally important, Professor Goldfield suggests approaches for a more inclusive way in which the South might use its history to emphasize the common past shared by all Southerners, white and black, and the contributions that both races have made to the development of the South. Attempts at self-understanding, of persons or regions, are notoriously difficult. Professor Goldfield commendably admits that although he has spent much more than half his life in the South, "I do not pretend to understand it yet. Perhaps I never will." (p. 1)
Professor Goldfield emphasizes the manner in which white Southerners have viewed the Civil War and Reconstruction. With the total military defeat, loss of life and property, and destruction of slavery, Southerners created a vision of the War and their society to save themselves. This vision included a romanticizing of the Old South, (exemplified in, "Birth of a Nation", "Gone with the Wind" and many other sources), a myth of the "Lost Cause" with glorification of leaders such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, and a story of "the Redeemers" who ended the Reconstruction efforts in the South through intimidation and violence and instituted segregation and white supremacy. (For a current example of the glorification of the Southern War effort and its generals, I suggest a viewing of the newly-released movie, "Gods and Generals.")
Professor Goldfield discusses how and why the South used its myth of its past in the development of its evangelical religion and its implementation of Jim Crow. He devotes a great deal of space to the place of gender in the South. Professor Goldfield points out that white male Southerners tried to justify Jim Crow by the alleged need to protect white women from the sexuality of black men, but he goes further than that. He states that white men attempted to put white women on a pedestal following the Civil War, and he attributes a great deal of gender discrimination to this attempt. I am not convinced by all this and I am not sure that Professor Goldfield shows how women's issues differed in the South from those in the North. Certainly, the relationship between women and men has changed markedly in both regions.
Professor Goldfield talks about the changes wrought in the South by the Civil Rights movement culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1965. He applauds the changes and the fall of segregation, but he offers strong reasons to doubt if the change is as extensive as it seems. He believes that black and white people still live essentially separate lives in the South with too little in the way of intimacy and fellowship between people of the different races. He believes that there is a great deal of racism left in the South under the veneer of desegregation.
The book is at its strongest and most eloquent when it points to the common heritage that both black and white Southerners share. Blacks in the region consider themselves as Southerners no less than do the whites, and the Region shares a common culture in music (blues, jazz, early rock, country), literature, food, religion, and in the pace of life. In addition Professor Goldfield writes that that the division of the races under Jim Crow belied the affection between individuals of different races that was a frequent pattern of life in the South.
Professor Goldfield concludes that the South is inescapably a product of its history. He suggests a modification of this history in the minds of Southerners and others to eliminate the myths, to accept and understand the end of the Civil War and of racism, and to focus on the many valuable things that white Southerners and black Southerners, separately and in common, have done to make the South what it is and to allow it to move forward. This is a worthy goal. Professor Goldfield's book may be a small step in bringing it about.
