Confederates in the Attic

Title: Confederates in the Attic
Author: Tony Horwitz
Pub Date: 1998
Genre: Narrative History, Travelogue
Nutshell: A writer explores the still-present attitudes about the Civil War in the southern states

I have a weird relationship with the south, overall. I think lots of Kentuckians do, especially those of us raised to be upwardly mobile and more citified than our more rural cousins. I come from a long, long line of Kentucky stock--as near as I can tell, we were some of the first into the area back when it was still part of Virginia. But Kentucky is a strange place, and Louisville even stranger--we are perhaps the northernmost city of the south or the southernmost city of the north. We have southern customs and habits with Yankee politics, godless heathen liberals in a republican state (we used to be blue, before the Christian Coalition turned all the unionized democratic coal miners into people who voted their religion).

My family also, up until my parents' generation, were farmers. The oldest relative that I can absolutely prove served in any kind of war at all was my mother's grandfather, who trained to be a school teacher and became instead a career Marine who saw service with the Army in World War I. His two sons fought in Korea. And that is the beginning and end of my family's experience with the military, on either side. 

So my views on the Civil War and my overall identification with the south as a region is conflicted. My family was certainly in Kentucky by the time of the war, but was never rich enough to own anybody--I doubt they completely owned themselves most of the time. And we are of the more traditional WASP-ish makeup, being thoroughly English and quite probably colonial on at least one side. And in history class, I always (and still) identify with the Yanks, because I could never wrap my head around slavery and from an early age I was always more of a Federalist in terms of governmental preference. 

So this book was interesting for me, coming as it did from an author who has much of the same ambivalence as I do about the whole thing. Well, being a true Yankee he was slightly more interested in the Rebel cause than I ever was, living in the middle of it as I did. My middle school mascot was a rebel, and there was a large Confederate flag painted on the football bleachers from when it was a high school (with the same mascot). One year while I was still there they painted over it--a decision I was completely fine with but which incensed a lot of locals for many of the reasons that are documented in this book. I thought it was sheer lunacy to be that enamored with a history that was on the losing side of the moral and historical arguments. I'm still not a fan of the Confederacy and I still have a deep (probably deeper) suspicion of states' rights agitators, but I can at least now understand the underlying romance and mythos that draws people to the idea of supporting "The Cause."

Basically, the plot is this: Tony Horwitz stumbles into a circle of hardcore Civil War reenactors who are obsessed with getting the historical detail absolutely correct and are highly contemptuous of the kind of dilettantes who don't get their costumes right or insist on sleeping in hotels during reenactments. "The only thing left for these people is real ammunition and Civil War diseases," one person says during his travels. "I hope it doesn't come to that." Between reenactments, Tony travels around southern battlefields and other areas that seem to be obsessed with "The Cause," having a singularly depressing experience in Kentucky. He learns that some people still have very strong feelings about the war, and others barely remember what it was about. It's an interesting journey, filled with the sort of unique types you really only get down here. There is ugliness, but there's also acceptance and reconciliation. There's forgetfulness and remembrance, and you wonder which, if either, is the better option.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I wish he'd go back and do a re-tour--I imagine in the last nearly 20 years, attitudes are quite a bit different now than they were then. Of course, it might just be depressing. A lot of people my age don't care so much about history anymore, even our own, and what we are teaching our children is probably highly suspect at this point. But taken in the context of the next civil rights struggle, it's certainly an interesting look at what people still feel about a cause that was lost nearly 150 years ago, and wonder what the next 150 years will bring.