Southern Pride In Tony Horwitz's Confederates In The Attic

1690 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: At the end of the civil war, african american troops

Catlyn Cox Confederates in the Attic Essay Throughout Tony Horwitz’s novel Confederates in the Attic an overarching theme of Southern Pride occurs. Tony gets first-hand experiences of what southern heritage means through a cross-country road trip visiting historic sights and meeting locals. Tony meets people from every walk of life and is open to their stories and historical information. He meets people who have been oppressed and the oppressors themselves. Many people show their pride through commemorating the past, in the south this often means commemorating the Civil War. Pride is coupled with the ways men and women choose to honor the Civil War, and the rift it has caused within racial tensions. Men and women honor the confederacy in …show more content…

Most of the southern people mentioned in Tom’s journey were genuinely interested in sharing the history of the Civil War and honoring soldiers who passed fighting for the country they loved. Many African Americans Tom spoke with felt they were treated as average people. The first African American Tom met on his journey said when he arrived in Salisbury, North Carolina he was the only black man in sight. James Connor also said generally white people treat him like any other human being. One man said African Americans are chosen people who have proven they are capable of surviving many atrocities. Many other African Americans Tom met had an attitude of acceptance but apprehension from white people in their area. My favorite quote from the book came from Emily Hayes, and African American woman working weaving baskets outside of a convenience store which sold rebel memorabilia, “They can remember that war all they want, so long’s they remember they lost.”(52) Emily’s words would not be an acceptable opinion for many people Tony met on his journey, I do not recall any southern people admitting defeat in the story. This quote came from Charleston, North Carolina where it seemed the Civil War was only a small segment of the state’s rich history, almost like they wanted to sweep it under the rug. Similarly, Laura Jones spoke about Mississippi saying segregation was …show more content…

Tony scribbled in his notebook about conversations of lynching and swastikas while the brooding men threatened to beat him up. The bar patrons openly supported the KKK or Ku Klux Klan, a racist organization who uses violent tactics to suppress other races. The KKK calls themselves an American post-Civil War society, in their own twisted way they commemorate the Civil War. While reading I learned the state of Kentucky houses many active KKK members and rallies. The KKK is fighting their own war of sorts, against other races, specifically African Americans, and religions such as Judaism. Their pitch to draw recruits includes words like “justice” and “religion” while burning crosses and hating people of other religions. Many people support KKK beliefs without actually being members. One such person was Bud Sharpe from South Carolina, who openly favored segregation from African Americans then claimed it was not hatred, but preference. When Tony visited an Alabama public school he got a taste of racism from black students to white people. Although, he finds out the students are simply uninformed. When he asks them what the Civil War meant, they said nothing to do with race or slavery. Tony spoke to a twelve year old girl who compared Salisbury’s Prison Camp to Auschwitz. This was an insightful view for a young person to make, and not an incorrect one because in each situation people were

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Confederates In The Attic

    530 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kynedi Gray 10AP-B January 1, 2014 Confederates in the Attic Book summary: Confederates in the Attic addresses the life of Tony Horwitz: a man from the North, who decided to take an expedition down South to figure out how the Civil War affected America. As Horwitz illustrates in Confederates in the Attic, the Civil War is far from over. Horwitz, determined to find the answers to this conflict, treks through the South, seeking to explain man's longtime obsession with a war that divided the nation. Speaking to historians and Civil War reenactors of all kinds, he finds that people are still contemporarily split when it comes to the war and current complications in society.

    Read More

  • Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism Summary

    568 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A New Look at an Old Question” James McPherson argues that the North and the South are two very different parts of the country in which have different ideologies, interests, and values. Mcpherson writes this to show the differences between the north and the south. He gives perspectives from other historians to show how the differently the differences were viewed. These differences included the north being more industrialized while the south was more agricultural. He gives evidence to how the differences between the north and south came together as the south produced tobacoo, rice, sugar and cotton, which was then sent to the north to be made into clothing or other fabrics. Mcpherson analyzes the differences

    Read More

  • Reconstruction: The Impact of South Resistance

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    Reconstruction was a nasty period in History. Reconstruction took place after the civil war. In the civil war there was lots of devastation. Buildings and houses were being destroyed so people needed something called Reconstruction. Reconstruction was something people really needed after the civil war because they needed to rebuild a community. Some people didn't want reconstruction because they liked destruction. Then also after the civil war slavery was abolished, as well some people don't like that either. South killed Reconstruction because South resistance had KKK, and South was murdering people.

    Read More

  • For Cause And Comrades Summary

    538 Words  | 2 Pages

    More than 25,000 letters and 250 private diaries from men on both side of North and South. Talking about the soldier's ideals for which they fought over conflicts and beliefs of each side. McPherson took all of the soldier’s ideas and beliefs and made this powerful and important book on an often-overlooked aspect of the Civil War. Also, it brought great honor and powerfully moving account for the men that fought in the civil war.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Tony Horwitz's Book, Confederates in the Attic

    1878 Words  | 4 Pages

    The American Civil war is considered to be one of the most defining moments in American history. It is the war that shaped the social, political and economic structure with a broader prospect of unifying the states and hence leading to this ideal nation of unified states as it is today. In the book “Confederates in the Attic”, the author Tony Horwitz gives an account of his year long exploration through the places where the U.S. Civil War was fought. He took his childhood interest in the Civil War to a new level by traveling around the South in search of Civil War relics, battle fields, and most importantly stories. The title “Confederates in the Attic”: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War carries two meanings in Tony Horwitz’s thoughtful and entertaining exploration of the role of the American Civil War in the modern world of the South. The first meaning alludes to Horwitz’s personal interest in the war. As the grandson of a Russian Jew, Horwitz was raised in the North but early in his childhood developed a fascination with the South’s myth and history. He tells readers that as a child he wrote about the war and even constructed a mural of significant battles in the attic of his own home. The second meaning refers to regional memory, the importance or lack thereof yet attached to this momentous national event. As Horwitz visits the sites throughout the South, he encounters unreconstructed rebels who still hold to outdated beliefs. He also meets groups of “re-enactors,” devotees who attempt to relive the experience of the soldier’s life and death. One of his most disheartening and yet unsurprising realizations is that attitudes towards the war divide along racial lines. Too many whites wrap the memory in nostalgia, refusing...

    Read More

  • Kevin Young’s For the Confederate Dead

    719 Words  | 2 Pages

    As I gazed across the book isles and leaned over carefully to pick one up out of the old dusty vaults of the library, a familiar object caught my eye in the poetry section. A picture in time stood still on this book, of two African American men both holding guitars. I immediately was attracted to this book of poems. For the Confederate Dead, by Kevin Young, is what it read on the front in cursive lettering. I turned to the back of the book and “Jazz“, and “blues” popped out of the paper back book and into my brain. Sometimes you can judge a book by it’s cover, I thought. Kevin Young’s For the Confederate Dead is a book of poems influenced by blues and jazz in the deep rural parts of the south.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of John Reekie's The Burial Party

    1929 Words  | 4 Pages

    There are many different ways in which the war was represented to the public, including drawings, newspaper articles, and detailed stereographs. Stereographs such as John Reekie’s “The Burial Party” invoked mixed feelings from all of those who viewed it. It confronts the deaths caused by the Civil War as well as touches upon the controversial issue over what would happen to the slaves once they had been emancipated. This picture represents the Civil War as a trade-off of lives- fallen soldiers gave their lives so that enslaved black men and women could be given back their own, even if that life wasn’t that different from slavery. In his carefully constructed stereograph “The Burial Party,” John Reekie confronts the uncertainty behind the newly

    Read More

  • What They Fought For by James McPherson's

    558 Words  | 2 Pages

    In James McPherson’s novel, What They Fought For, a variety of Civil War soldier documents are examined to show the diverse personal beliefs and motives for being involved in the war. McPherson’s sample, “is biased toward genuine fighting soldiers” (McPherson, 17) meaning he discusses what the ordinary soldier fought for. The Confederacy was often viewed as the favorable side because their life style relied on the war; Confederates surrounded their lives with practices like slavery and agriculture, and these practices were at stake during the war. On the other hand, Northerners fought to keep the country together. Although the Civil War was brutal, McPherson presents his research to show the dedication and patriotism of the soldiers that fought and died for a cause.

    Read More

  • The Central Theme of Southern History by Ulrich B. Phillips

    1616 Words  | 4 Pages

    Imagine a historian, author of an award-winning dissertation and several books. He is an experienced lecturer and respected scholar; he is at the forefront of his field. His research methodology sets the bar for other academicians. He is so highly esteemed, in fact, that an article he has prepared is to be presented to and discussed by the United States’ oldest and largest society of professional historians. These are precisely the circumstances in which Ulrich B. Phillips wrote his 1928 essay, “The Central Theme of Southern History.” In this treatise he set forth a thesis which on its face is not revolutionary: that the cause behind which the South stood unified was not slavery, as such, but white supremacy. Over the course of fourteen elegantly written pages, Phillips advances his thesis with evidence from a variety of primary sources gleaned from his years of research. All of his reasoning and experience add weight to his distillation of Southern history into this one fairly simple idea, an idea so deceptively simple that it invites further study.

    Read More

  • Reconstruction Era Sparknotes

    1425 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Civil War era divided the United States of America to a point that many Americans did not foresee as plausible throughout the antebellum period. Generating clear divisions in even the closest of homes, the era successfully turned businessmen, farmers, fathers, sons, and even brothers into enemies. Many historians would concur that the Reconstruction Era ushered in a monumental turning point in the nation’s history. The common rhetoric of what the Reconstruction Era was like according to historians is that it was a euphoric era. Those same historians often write about the Reconstruction Era as a time of optimism and prosperity for African Americans. Attempting to illustrate the era in a favorable light, they often emphasize the fact that African Americans had gotten the emancipation that they were fighting for and they were free to create a future for themselves. Jim Downs, author of Sick From Freedom African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, is not like those historians at all. Downs takes a completely different approach in his book. He asserts that both the Civil War Era and

    Read More

  • Themes Of Redemption The Last Battle Of The Civil War

    982 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the historical narrative Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, Nicholas Leman gives readers an insight into the gruesome and savage acts that took place in the mid-1870s and eventually led to the end of the Reconstruction era in the southern states. Before the engaging narrative officially begins, Lemann gives a 29-page introduction to the setting and provides background information about the time period. With Republican Ulysses S. Grant as President of the United States of America and Republican Adelbert Ames, as the Governor of Mississippi, the narrative is set in a town owned by William Calhoun in the city of Colfax, Louisiana. As a formal military commander, Ames ensured a

    Read More

  • Mississippi: A Closed Society

    932 Words  | 2 Pages

    “It was like a Nazi rally. Yes, it was just that way Nuremberg must have felt.” (Lambert, 114) The Nazi rally was referred to the public address Governer Ross Barnett gave at half time during the football game between Ole Miss and the University of Kentucky. Nazi’s as well had rallies lead by Hitler. They had a notion that Jews were an inferior race, based on the idea of Eugenics. The Nazi’s and the South were alike in that aspect. The South saw African Americans as an inferior race and the only race that could be superior was the white race. In, The battle of Ole Miss: Civil Rights v. State Rights, the author Frank Lambert presents historian James Silver’s idea that Mississippi was a “closed society,” therefore diminishing any other views besides their own. Before one could consider Mississippi as a “closed society,” one must look at the history of what created Mississippi to become a “closed society,” to have strong beliefs of white supremacy and why they tried to sustain those beliefs at all cost. In this novel, Lambert address the issue that made a significant impact on Mississippi and its people. The issue of James Meridith, an African American who sought for high education from a prestigious school, Ole Miss. White Mississippians beliefs of white supremacy towards African Americans extreme. What caused Mississippi to become this society dates back to the civil war, the fear on African Americans surpassing them, and the politics.

    Read More

  • Essay On Confederate Soldiers

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    During winter months, basic huts were constructed from wood when it was available. During the civil war, most of the soldiers fought only 75 percent of the time. When they were not fighting, their day usually started at 5:00 in the morning during the summer and spring, and 6:00 in the morning during the fall and winter. Soldiers would be awakened by fifes and drums, then the first sergeant would take a roll call, and all the men sat down to eat breakfast. During the day, soldiers would be engaged in sometimes as many as five 2-hour long drill sessions on weaponry or maneuvers.

    Read More

  • The Negro's Civil War Analysis

    861 Words  | 2 Pages

    The article, “The Negro’s Civil War in Tennessee, 1861-1865” by Bobby L. Lovett, can be found in "The Journal of Negro History. Lovett's article relates the importance of the contributions the black soldiers of Tennessee made during the Civil War. He portraits to the reader the determination of these black Tennesseans fight to gain their freedom under some extremely violent and racial conditions.

    Read More

  • Percival Everett's The Appropriation Of Cultures

    524 Words  | 2 Pages

    Percival Everett’s “The Appropriation of Cultures” (2004), demonstrates the power of a symbol and the meanings that it can carry. In the story, Daniel Barkley is a highly accomplished African American man who graduated from Brown and frequently plays guitar near the campus of The University of South Carolina. From the beginning of the story, Barkley exposes a distinct independent personality that isn’t afraid to break stereotypes or labels. The first scene describes an instance in a bar where white fraternity boys were challenging Barkley to play ‘Dixie’ for them. Instead of refusing, like most would have done, he instead begins to play and take ownership of the song. Later in the story, Barkley decides to purchase a truck with a giant confederate flag decal in the back. Despite the strange stares and confusion

    Read More

More about Southern Pride In Tony Horwitz's Confederates In The Attic

Open Document