What follows is a piece I wrote over a year ago when I had Georgia on my mind. I’m reviving it here, slightly adapted, for Jeremy Janson, a student at Georgia Tech, a friend, a scholar, a fellow blogger, and a Southern Gentleman, by adoption if not by origin. :-)
I’ve mentioned before that mother and father have very good friends in Georgia, a place called Moultrie, really nice people, Old South, I suppose. We have been visiting them and they have been visiting us on and off for as long as I can remember. I was told that with a name like mine I really should have been born in the antebellum period, of grand ladies and even grander houses. Yes, I think I could envisage myself as the mistress of Tara.
I love Moultrie and I love rural Georgia. The town itself is really pleasant, a survival, I suspect, of a gentler and older America. It’s where I learned to shoot, amongst other things. The people in question own a lot of land around the town, some of it cotton-growing country. I was taken out one Sunday afternoon with a .22 rifle to a place where there is a large body of water. A little water was put in the some balloons which were tied and then set off to float. Our task was to hit these targets in motion. What fun it truly was. I was also given the opportunity to try a .30 hand gun, but that was beyond me. It seemed to come alive in my hand; I could not hit a thing!
What surprised and interested me in getting to know the local people as I have is how strong respect and reverence for the Confederacy still is. Oh, not for slavery and everything that culture represented, just respect for simple courage and settled tradition. I’ve continually heard the struggle of the 1860s referred to the ‘war of northern aggression’. We once went to a function, with lots of people in attendance, where the band played Dixie. Everyone, but everyone, stood up without being prompted. We did too, carried off by the force of the moment. Oh, yes, I wish I was in Dixie. :-)
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ReplyDeleteGosh, I'm not sure about that. Perhaps if they brought the Seventh Cavalry with them I might!
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ReplyDeleteAdam, I'm sorry; I seem to have removed your second post by accident. Please add it again.
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ReplyDeleteThere's a great deal more to the history of the Southeast than slavery and the Confederacy . . . but no one seems to care. Nice turtles and salamanders but rather too humid for me.
ReplyDeleteThere is indeed. We tend to go in January or February. It's really quite pleasant then.
ReplyDeleteThe civil war (1861-1865) was mostly over states rights and economics.The northerners were envious over the southern lifestyle and slavery was used to demonize the south.The great state of Texas fought for the confederacy and supplied many soldiers,but the industrial capacity and manpower of the north prevailed.Reconstruction after the war was a slow painful process due to northern greed.Importing slaves was never a good idea , look at the mess we have today, may the stars and bars forever wave.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ana so much for thinking of me and writing this. Stuff like a war on that level, an American Illiad, doesn't go away. I may not have grown up in the South, but I am the descendent of a few Confederate soldiers and sailors (more sailors actually), part of my family does come from Louisiana and Tennessee where they were a great maritime family (Captain Leathers is one of my ancestors as well), and, you know, there's just something really deep about that, and I know it's a part of me. That kind of valor, that kind of heroism, a shared trial of an entire region, that's the kind of stuff that culture is made of, that's the stuff that builds countries and nations. The only difference is that Southerners are far more aware of this than most of the rest of humanity, though I think the Scottish and the Greeks and traditionally the Chinese and Japanese understand this pretty well too. The South definitely has a lot of contradictions, but a deep reverence for history of all kinds is one thing they are very consistent on, and I think it's the thing I most love about the South.
ReplyDeleteCould see you as the mistress of Tara though! ;) Though I will say that my relatives in Louisiana are a perfect testament to the fact that, in some parts of the South (though Georgia is actually not really among them) it very much is still the day of ladies and gentlemen.
@anthony: The film "Gangs of New York" is sickeningly funny to those who know the REAL history behind those riots.
@MGON: LOL! And we thought Senator Foghorn Leghorn was bad
Thank you for this, Jeremy, and for your continuing friendship. Speaking personally I've only ever come across ladies and gentlemen in the South. :-)
ReplyDelete@ JJ:The riots in new york, were they about how the poor were conscripted and those with wealth could buy their way out of military service ? Kind of like the college deferments of the Viet Nam war era ?
ReplyDeleteAna, you have still to meet the coonasses of the south .
ReplyDeleteGosh, Anthony, I have no idea who or what that is!
ReplyDeleteDat be da cajun folk in Louisiana, chere ;-)
ReplyDeleteSince you've been to Georgia, there's no excuse to not see me in Texas ;-) Barbecue's on me.
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A cajun term , some take it as funny some as an insult somthing like the more recent " trailer trash " There is a web site " urban dictionary" which covers American slang. Also during the civil war, The union took immigrants straight off the ships from Europe and coercesd them to join the army and sent them straight to war.
ReplyDeleteColl, it's a date!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anthony. :-)
ReplyDelete@Anthony: No. They were primarily about the Irish beating up on the freed black population in New York and paranoia about freeing the slaves and what it might due to their wages. Actually most of those Irish signed up voluntarily partially for money (war pay was better then working in the factories) and partially because the Irish have a proud tradition of doing things like that.
ReplyDeleteAnastasia
ReplyDeleteI saw this a little late maybe but it made me go down memory lane.
You must tell your friends at Georgia Tech about Andersonville. It’s just an easy 3 hours from Atlanta down Scenic Route 19 to Americus [how my heart aches for it now?] and a short hop east from there. It is probably not much more than an hour from your favorite Moultrie.
They will know that it is a National State Heritage site and beautifully maintained and they used to have an annual Festival every year in October to commemorate and honor the past. North and South would attend in the costumes of old; there would be a mock battle and days in the fall with the people of Main Street Small-town America.
My driving days ended abruptly in 2000 due to an eye ailment but they still had it shortly before then.
Apart from the book that I “reviewed” they may look for another one by one Peggy Sheppard also just the title Andersonville. It’s a bit “Southernish” but well worth reading by scholars in American History. In fact, I do believe it to be a “must read” for the serious scholar.
You must still one day tell me how I must go about subscribing to your Site to get Gmail notifications of new Posts.
Do keep well.
Thanks, Ike. I've never been to Andersonville but I intend to go next time I'm in Georgia. It's a couple of years since I've been, so a visit is overdue. Oh, I have McKinlay's novel now thanks to your recommendation. I'll add a review in due course, if ever I get to the top of my book mountain, that is!
ReplyDeleteIke, there is a subscribe by email option. Does that not work?