Bill, What a well reasoned response! I am guilty of being from the Mid-Atlantic area, specifically an area with a unique identity in culture and language but not so much in politics - the Pennsylvania Dutch. Anne At 10:21 AM 2/8/02 -0500, you wrote: >In a message dated 2/8/2002 9:44:03 AM Eastern Standard Time, >[log in to unmask] writes: > > > > I'm not sure that the bloody conflict still scars the nation's psyche so > > much as it scars the southern psyche. Northerners tend to consider the > > civil war as one of many wars fought during the nation's history, not as > > THE war. Slavery certainly scarred the psyche of African Americans, as did > > the legal discrimination fostered by the Jim Crow laws in the south and the > > ghettoization in the North. > > > > > >Anne - This ranges deeply into area of opinion on my part, but I think that >the psychic scars are just different for all involved. Certainly, many white >Southerners muse on what might have been and elaborate exercises in >justification such as "it wasn't really about slavery." Nobody wants to feel >as if they (or the ancestors) were on the wrong moral side. Many Southerners >wear their scars as battle ribbons for all to see, almost a histrionic need >for justification and redemption. Notice that I said many -- not a few and >not all. > >For black Americans the impact is much more a continuing part of life. It >started with slavery and went through an emancipation movement to a civil war >to reconstruction to political betrayal by their allies to a long-term civil >rights movement to the still sneaking suspicion that full acceptance is a >relative thing. > >As for "northerners," I have trouble conjuring up just what they are. I think >that southerners and westerners have some broader and more distinct sense of >identity, both to themselves and to others. Northerner is a somewhat limited >description, because the culture and heritage is both more diffuse and >obscure. Certainly the New England heritage is something that we can see and >feel as having a continuity, but the mid-Atlantic and Midwest seemed to have >melted into a bland sameness of identity and thought, almost as if they were >hiding from the rest of us. And just maybe part of that obfuscation is a way >of dealing with the guilt of the betrayal side of the outcome of >reconstruction. If the Civil War was really about slavery and civil rights >(which has always been my opinion), then why did the North make the >reconstruction about economic retribution and the subsequent betrayal of the >Southern black American about political advantage? History took from the >North the advantage of moral argument in the Civil War. Much of the South >wasted seven generations searching for that moral argument when there was >none on their side. Far better for the country -- and the South - had the >time and energy been spent on unification and moral reconciliation. > >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 To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html