Confederates In The Attic: Dispatches From The Unfinished Civil War

“Historians are fond of saying that the Civil War occurred in 10,000 places. Poke a pin in the map of the South and you’re likely to prod loose some battle of skirmish or other tuft of Civil War history.” 

One of the points that Horwitz book emphasizes is the ubiquity of the Civil War, specifically in the South, where most of it was fought. The War is so central to the Southern mindset and memory that it informs nearly every aspect of Southern life both literally and metaphorically. Here, Horwitz refers to the specific archaeology that occurs when one goes looking for physical remnants and artifacts associated with the war, but it also speaks to the way in which the war remains vivid in the consciousness of many Southerners, who, like the land, seem to be ready to allude to the war and its consequence at a moment’s notice. 

“‘Northerners say, “Forget the war, it’s over.” But they don’t have the family Bibles we do, filled with all these kinfolk who went off to war and died. We’ve lost so much.’” 

During a conversation with a woman in North Carolina, Horwitz is confronted with this quotation, which is telling and informs the mindset of many Southerners. For a large majority of white Southerners, the war is not history but intrudes upon the present because of its immediacy both in location and in regard to familial ties. They argue that while for many Northern people, for whom the war is only a historical event that has no traceable connection to them, for the Southerner, the war is personal. It is a wound that has yet to heal, and which therefore cannot be easily forgotten because they are reminded of it consistently and in a much more tangible way than their Northern counterparts are.

“The war is emotionally still on. I call it the thousand-year war. It will go on for a thousand years, or until we get back into the Union on equal terms.” 

The idea that the South has been relegated to second-class status within the Union since the end of the Civil War is a common feeling among many of the Southerners with whom Horwitz speaks. This communal psychology of believing that they are still fighting, in some way or another, for inclusion and equality in the United States underlies why so many Southerners feel that the war is still ongoing, and that they must continue their struggle to be viewed and treated as equal members of the country that has, in their minds, conquered them. 

“A civil war is an internal revolt. But this was a war between two independent nations, one of which was exercising its constitutional right to secede.” 

Offered to Horwitz by a proud, South Carolinian man, this speaks to the idea that many Southerners still hold to be true, namely that they are a nation set apart from the United States and had complete right in their actions when they felt that the central government of the United States had violated their local sovereignty. The way in which many Southerners name the war, “The War Between the States,” (26), for example, shows how a large number of Southerners do not contend that they ever truly were part of a solid Union, but rather an independent nation-state.

“It seemed a wistful logic; the Cause was lost but the Lost Cause shouldn’t be.” 

Here, Horwitz speaks to how the idea of the myth of the Civil War remains vivid in the minds of many Southerners in present-day America. Despite having lost the war, Southerners attempt to preserve the ideas and ideals that they fought for as a way of both honoring their forbearers and their previous way of life that was so dear to them. In creating this mythic South, it allows for them to continue believing in the ideals, institutions, and ways of life that are gone, but which still possess the ability to return someday. 

“For the past several weeks people had been talking to me about ‘heritage.’ But, like the flag, this obviously meant very different things to different people.” 

One of the major points of contention within the modern American South is the display of both the Confederate Battle Flag as well as monuments to Confederate generals and soldiers, especially when these displays are present on public or government property. The split often occurs down racial lines, where white Southerners view the flying of the flag and the erecting of statues as a way to honor the sacrifice, valor, and courage of their ancestors, while African-Americans living in the South see these as symbols of oppression and racism. The word “heritage” is often seen as a synonym for “family” or “personal history” among many white Southerners, whereas for many African-Americans, the idea of Southern “heritage” is inseparable from the institution of slavery and the terrors suffered by many under the Jim Crow segregation laws. 

“His words seemed genuine and so were mine. There was a feisty iconoclasm about Walt that I couldn’t help admiring, even if he was on the mailing list of every hate group in America.” 

Following a conversation with a rather opinionated man in South Carolina, Horwitz reflects on how, despite objecting to the man’s politics and opinions, he could not help but find the man charismatic, and, in a strange way, charming. This quotation speaks to a continuing idea that Horwitz often encounters: how people are flawed and misguided, and yet trying to get on the best that they can. For Horwitz, moments like these strike the divide between those raised in a certain time and place and his own upbringing, which is the complete antithesis to many of the locales he finds himself exploring.  

“The South—the white South—has always had this powerful sense of loss.” 

The idea of loss is one of the central motifs in Confederates in the Attic. Wherever Horwitz travels in the South, it is not long before the conversation veers in the direction of some manner of loss, whether through a relative, land, the war, or a way of life. Loss serves as the backdrop for the vast majority of Southern history, and this elegiac feeling informs the way in which Southerners speak about the past and about their present selves. They do not necessarily see themselves as victims, rather as noble people who are doing the best they can to continue on, though they are aware that what they have held most dearly—their autonomy and way of life—has been taken away from them.

“If I could trade places with my great-great-grandpappy, I’d do it in a second. Life was harder then but in a way it was simpler. He didn’t have to pay phone bills, put gas in the car, worry about crime. And he knew what he was living for.” 

Another theme that runs throughout Confederates in the Attic is the longing for many Southerners to live in a simpler time. Although many seem aware that they would not have the comfort of many modern amenities, they believe that this is a trade that would have many benefits for them because they would be able to finally live the way that they truly want to. Often, the idea of the past and its golden age serves as a way for many Southerners to escape the problems and confusions that haunt their everyday lives in the modern world. They believe that the modern world, and its pace and consumerism, are slowly eroding the world of their ancestors, and that it is becoming harder and harder to maintain their traditional way of life and moral values in a contemporary America that doesn’t seem to have a place for them in it.

“When I play Northern, I feel like the Russians in Afghanistan…I’m the invader, the bully.” 

Spoken by a Civil War re-enactor from New Jersey who plays a Southern solider, this quote symbolizes how the idea of the South as a heroic underdog has taken hold in the modern day popular consciousness. Here, the allusion to the Russians in Afghanistan means that this particular man sees the North as a bullying, foreign power that invaded the South to assert their dominance and way of life on another people who had their own history and culture, and who also could in no way match up to the might of their enemy, but who somehow managed to fight heroically with a modicum of success. 

“I’d be with my people, right or wrong. If I was against slavery, I’d still be with the South. I’m a man, my society needs me, here I am. The difference between North and South in the war is that there is no stigma attached to the Northern man who paid two hundred dollars to not go to war, or who hired a German replacement. In the South, you could have done that, but no one would. You’d have been scorned.” 

This quote is attributed to Shelby Foote, the famed Civil War historian with whom Horwitz visits during his trip to Tennessee. Foote speaks to the dichotomy that seems to be present in the minds of many non-slave owning Southerners and that, to Northerners, appears illogical. For Foote, and for many other Southerners, the ties to the people and to the land heavily outweighed loyalty to a central government far away in Washington, D.C., one which was seen as an aggressor and a danger to the local way of life. Because of this, it becomes easy to see how many, though opposed to the institution, were able to believe that they were fighting not to preserve slavery but rather to protect their family and land. 

“To Foote, [Nathan Bedford] Forrest also epitomized certain ‘antique virtues,’ such as cunning and initiative, which had been lost in our own century’s warfare. ‘A soldier is no longer a thinking bayonet. He’s a blip on a radar screen. You can abolish him by pushing a button.’ Forrest, by contrast, almost single-handedly changed the outcome of several battles.” 

Once again, Horwitz highlights another common theme in his book: the holding of two, seeming contradictory positions at the same time. Although Forrest is today maligned and mostly remembered for being the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Foote sees in him many redeemable qualities as a man and as a soldier who served bravely and admirably in the Confederate Army. Foote speaks to the messiness of both life and history, because while we often wish for both to be black and white, it is far too often a messy gray, where the positive and negative aspects of people blend together. For Foote, the Civil War and the people who fought it were not allegorical characters representing good and evil but complex people with good and bad qualities alike, and he believes this is something that gets lost in the retelling of the history of the Civil War, which has simplified it to a struggle between the freedom-loving North and the slave-owning South. 

“This [Victory Defeated by Death and Night] was a microcosm in the marble of the Lost Cause romance that took hold in the South after Appomattox. The Civil War became an epic might-have-been, a ‘defeated victory’ in which the valorous South succumbed to flukish misfortune—Johnston’s untimely death, for instance, or Stonewall Jackson’s mortal wounding by his own men at Chancellorsville—and to the North’s superior manpower and materiel.” 

For many Southerners, part of the myth of the Civil War revolves around the aspect of “what might have been,” had certain events turned out slightly differently. There is the continued, romantic notion that the South could have triumphed, “if only…” and this idea informs much of the myth-making and legacy of the Civil War in the minds of many Southerners who tend to think not that they were defeated but that they were unlucky and damned by cruel fate. 

“But Mays’s story forced me to recall a lonely trip of my own, ten years before, to a remote region of what was then still the Soviet Union. Armed with old maps and a family memoir, I’d trudged through ankle-high mud until I found the wagon road my father’s father traveled on the day his family fled Czarist Russia. The road ultimately led to a Baltic seaport, to Ellis Island, to me. As Mays had put it, I was who I was because of what happened on that muddy trace in 1906. Thinking back on the trip, I felt envious of Mays and the others I’d met at Shiloh. They had a blood tie to a patch of American soil that I never would.” 

Throughout Confederates in the Attic, Horwitz pauses to reflect on his own family history. In this moment, he acknowledges his own past of loss and displacement (his grandfather’s flight from prejudice in Russia) and the disconnect that this has caused him. In the minds of Southerners, this disconnect from place is true of many Northerners, and thus the reason that they can so easily forget the Civil War and relegate it to a mere historical event, rather than a dominant force that continues to inform everyday life. Here, Horwitz admits his own jealousy of these people who have a connection to America that is so vivid and tangible, because it is something that he can never possess, and he realizes the strength and power that it has over people.

“But viewed from Vicksburg’s synagogue and graveyard, there was a sad, end-of-the-line feel to Southern Jewry, at least that portion of it living outside Florida and a few big cities. In another decade or two, it seemed likely that all trace of rural and small-town Jewish life would be gone, except for graveyards like this, and the Semitic names—Cohen, Kaufman, Lowenstein—still dimly visible on the front of abandoned shoe shops and department stores across the backcountry South.”

During his journey, Horwitz attempts to unpack the lesser-known elements of the South and Southern history in order to complement the more mainstream and known narrative surrounding the Civil War. In this case, deep in Mississippi, he explores the role that Jewish Southerners played in the Civil War. This is telling in two ways: first, because it plays against the common stereotype for the cultures that inhabit the American South and who took part in the conflict; second, as a member of the Jewish faith, it is a way for Horwitz to find his own connection, however tangential, to Jewish heritage in the South. What is also telling about this moment is the way in which it is slowly fading into history, as the Jewish population of the modern South no longer finds itself integrated into small, rural communities and instead populating a few major metropolitan areas. 

“[…] Manassas was also the first battle where North and South adopted the annoying habit of calling the same engagement by different names. Southerners tended to name battles after nearby towns—hence, Manassas—while Northerners chose geographic features, usually a body of water: hence Bull Run, the stream on whose banks the fight began.” 

Here, Horwitz offers a quaint yet telling observation that highlights once again the differences between the mindset of the North and the South even during the Civil War. Not even in the naming of battles and skirmishes could the North and the South agree on the same nomenclature, a difference in thought and perspective that seems to continue into present day discourse between the two parts of the nation. 

“‘I think of myself as a liberal Confederate,’ he said. ‘I want the history preserved, and I think the Confederacy’s a great story about men who did incredible things. But I don’t subscribe to a lot of the politics that comes with it.’ […] Rob’s comment raised a question I’d been chewing on since the start of my trip. Was there such a thing as politically correct remembrance of the Confederacy? Or was any attempt to honor the Cause inevitably tainted by what Southerners once delicately referred to as their ‘peculiar institution’?”

This passage, taken from an exchange between Horwitz and Robert Lee Hodge, mirrors an earlier section when Hodge interviewed Shelby Foote, in that both Hodge and Foote express their desire to remember and honor the memory and sacrifice of individual people without necessarily glorifying the more negative aspects of the South’s “peculiar institution,” which is a euphemism for slavery. As a removed Northerner for whom the South and slavery are forever intertwined, the exchanges with Foote and Hodge force Horwitz to examine the nuances of their claims, and they make him wonder if his own reflection has been too myopic and one-sided. Still, it is a question that dominates much of the book, and many of Horwitz’s conversations: how does one honor the average Southern man independent of glorifying the institution of slavery, or is it even possible to separate the individual from the greater politics of the Confederate States of America, who went to war specifically with the intent of being able to preserve the institution of slavery?

“To me, having the principal Richmond monuments dedicated to the Lost Cause is like saying we’re dedicated to no hope, no future. It’s like having a monument to unrequited love.” 

Rounding out the opposing viewpoint on Confederate memorials and monuments, Horwitz speaks with a man who articulates the counterpoint to erecting statues of Confederate generals and soldiers. For this man, the honoring of the past is not a positive thing. Instead, he views it as symbolically saying that the South has no future, and that they are a backwards-looking region that can only find glory, solace, and meaning in a foregone era.

“‘A Southerner—a true Southerner, of which there aren’t many left—is more related to the land, to the home place. Northerners just don’t have that attachment. Maybe that means they don’t have much depth.’ He paused, then added, ‘I feel sorry for folks from the North, or anyone who hasn’t had that bond with the land. You can’t miss something you never had and if you never had it, you don’t know what it’s all about.’” 

One of the most important things to many Southerners is a connection and legacy to a specific place that can be traced back many generations. It offers a sense of permanence, ownership and belonging. This mentality informs the way in which Southerners categorize themselves and those around them. This understanding of being a person of and from a place is yet another psychological difference from how they view their Northern counterparts, a majority of whom immigrated to the United States following the Civil War and because of this have a different relationship to it. In this exchange, one Virginia man attempts to explain and draw the distinction between Southerners who have a long history of living in the South and those who merely reside there. Moreover, he assumes that this relationship is purely a Southern way of being, yet again highlighting the black and white nature in which many still view the Civil War and the discussion about it. 

“‘True patriotism sometimes requires of me to act contrary at one period to that which it does at another,’ he [Robert. E. Lee] wrote after the War to P.G.T. Beauregard. ‘The motive that impels them—the desire to do the right thing—is precisely the same.’” 

This passage, taken from a letter written by Robert E. Lee to one of his former commanders after the war, serves as a startling contrast to the way in which many modern-day Southerners view the way in which they should act regarding the Civil War and its legacy. This is one of the many examples listed by Horwitz where the reality and myth of the war’s history diverge. Many of the former Confederate leaders urged a temperance and conciliation with their former enemies in order to re-establish a functional and working nation. However, in more contemporary times, this notion of coexistence has too often been replaced by a staunch militancy of an uncompromising nature that has endeavored to continuing fighting the conflict in whatever manner possible.

“I lolled outside for a while, thumbing through the brochures Mary Ann had given me. I could of course follow the trail Mrs. Buzzet laid out, and search for obscure Confederate obelisks. But I’d been there, done that. I was also intrigued by Mary Ann’s comments, which confirmed something I’d sensed throughout my travels: Gone with the Wind had done more to keep the Civil War alive, and to mold its memory, than any history book or event since Appomattox. Anyway, Atlanta begged for a different approach. Why dig for the real and unremembered past when I could search […] for the fictional one instead?” 

One of the major aspects that informs Confederates in the Attic is the creation of a mythology around the Civil War in the South that is referred to as “The Lost Cause Romance” (172). In this ideology, the reasons for fighting the war, as well as the lifestyle inherent to the antebellum South, were re-written in order to romanticize the period. Nothing embodies this notion more than Gone with the Wind, which painted a profound picture of the South and its people nearly half a century after the war ended and is more fiction than actual fact. Horwitz devotes much of his journeying to the historical battlefields and monuments of the South, but in this case, he decides to indulge fully in the ideas of Civil War nostalgia that have not only been spread throughout the United States but also exported worldwide. He argues that it is quite possibly the films and the novels about the exploits of the war, written primarily as fiction, that keep the public interested in it, because it allows them to wallow in the nostalgia of a time gone by and lose themselves in the idea of the world as it once was. The fiction removes the ugliness of the reality of the Civil War.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” 

Serving as the epigram to Chapter 14, this quote by William Faulkner, a famed Southern writer, serves to elucidate the way in which the idea of the past seems to consistently envelop the present mindset of the South. A writer obsessed with the notions of loss and displacement, Faulkner created a fictional Southern community in much of his writing, where he explored what it meant to be a member of a conquered nation and part of a country that does not fully accept you.

“‘That was our Homeric period,’ Robert Penn Warren wrote of the Civil War, ‘and the figures loom up only a little less than gods.’” 

In keeping with the tragic and heroic theme of loss, Horwitz quotes the Southern writer Robert Penn Warren to highlight how for many Southerners the period of the Civil War has been elevated to a mythic status on par with the great Greek epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey, foundational myths about great wars and struggles that serve to define who a people are. For the Southerner, figures like Lee, Jackson, Beauregard, and Forrest have achieved nearly immortal status for their actions and sacrifices during the Civil War, and they are remembered less as human beings and more as mythic figures who led the South in its doomed struggle against an outside force intent on undoing the Southern way of life.