Dear Bill & Anne,
At the risk of setting myself up for another online lynching, I would remind
this list that last Fall I took a beating from some other members of this
List for bringing up some of these
"unpleasantries" regarding how southern old-timers feel toward 'damn
Yankees'.
I think it might have been my referring to William T. Sherman as an "old
bastard" that set things off!
I wrote why it was that some of my southern relatives/ancestors and their
ilk felt such bitterness toward the North after the Civil War.
At the end of the War and for years following the War, during the period
that came to be known as
Reconstruction (the period during which both sets of my grandparents were
born: 3 of them in Tidewater Virginia; one of them in North Carolina; and
all of whose parents had been involved in the War), there was no Marshall
Plan for the South.
After Sherman's rampage which left a swath of destruction that involved the
burning of southerners' houses and dependencies, the
salting/poisoning/burning of southerners' fields and the ring-barking or
chopping down of their fruit and nut trees; the poisoning of their drinking
water; the slaughter and theft of their live stock; some rape and lots of
pillage, on the heels of that horror, came a type of  'peace' that brought
another long-term, enduring nightmare called  Reconstruction....which was
really a form of passive vengeance and revenge.
Two of my grandparents lived to be 100 and 102 years old; their bodies frail
but their minds and memories sharp. My 20 first-cousins and I were blessed
to have them until the oldest of us were nearly 40 years old. These lovely
people were educated and refined and were not ignorant bigots.
I vividly recall my grandmother washing my seven year brother's mouth out
with soap and locking him up in the family library to "think about his ugly
words" when he experimented with the N-Word.
My grandfather did not smoke, or drink, or curse, but it was always "damn
Yankees" when the subject arose.
Anne, there seems to be little modern day literature on the subject of post
bellum American history.
In fact, when one of my daughters was in school at a fine all girls boarding
school a few years back, her US History class brushed over the Civil War and
ignored the Reconstruction period entirely. Her teacher allowed my daughter
to "take the class"  herself and tell her classmates about what her great
grandparents had  had to say about and remember about that period of our
country's history.
Except for the other Southern girls in the class, to a girl her classmates
were shocked and flabberghasted at what my daughter taught that day. The
girls rose up in horror and demanded that their teacher deny to them that
what they were hearing was true. To his good credit  (and he was a fabulous
teacher) he backed up everything that my child had to say.
What I am touching on here is a two-fold problem in the field of education
in America today.
1. A successful attempt to re-write or totally exclude aspects of history
that are not politically expedient in today's arena of popular thinking.
2. And, a  la David Horowitz,  the blackballing of and defaming of anyone
who ventures from the  track of what is deemed to be acceptable thought.
What is so perplexing and full of irony when the Liberals start censuring,
is that it is just SO
illiberal of them to do that!
The Civil War happened and it happened for a myriad of reasons.
But no one wants to take the risk of thoroughly examining all those reasons
and filtering through them  to see what was worthwhile and worth salvaging
from BOTH sides of the conflict.

Deane Ferguson Mills
York County, Virginia


----- Original Message -----
From: Anne Pemberton <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2002 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: eventual phasing out of slavery AND RE-UNIFICATION


> Bill,
>
>          As I said, I'm very ignorant of the problems during
reconstruction
> beyond the mention of carpetbaggers coming down and taking political jobs
> from locals. Can you give me a "quick and dirty" summary of what else was
> done? I'd love to read the books you mentioned but really don't have the
> time around other responsibilities. But you have aroused my curiosity.
>
>                                                          Anne
>
> At 01:27 PM 2/9/02 -0500, you wrote:
> >In a message dated 2/9/2002 11:38:01 AM Eastern Standard Time, Richard
Dixon
> >writes:
> >
> > > it is my
> > > opinion the "damnyankee" came not from the war, but from the period of
> > > Reconstruction, a somewhat unknown era of American history.
> > >
> >For many the period of reconstruction was probably a more difficult
> >"humility" than military defeat. However, there have been some excellent
> >works written on reconstruction. Two that I found useful in looking at
the
> >psychological impact as well as the more commonly addressed economic and
> >political issues and that are pretty accessible are _Rehearsal for
> >Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment_, Willie Lee Nichols Rose and
_The
> >Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877_, Kenneth M. Stampp.
> >
> >Bill Russell
> >
> >To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> >at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
>
> Anne Pemberton
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.erols.com/stevepem
> http://www.geocities.com/apembert45
>
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>

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