Measuring the success of the Yankee culture war

After Sherman and Grant finished grinding the flower of Southern youth into the mud in 1865, the political disenfranchisement of the heretofore free Southerners began, lasting at least until 1877. However, I would argue a cultural war of North against South, Yankee against normative American, has not ceased in the past 150 years.  


The vilification of Southern culture in the North began before the War Between the States of course, and you can debate when it began in earnest.  Since the end of the war, the hostility between Northerner and Southerner continued, waxing and waning in public, always simmering beneath the surface in private.


Antebellum Southern political culture was closer to Jeffersonian ideals of decentralized government and free market principles than in other areas of the country.  


The memory of the people as sovereign, the state as servant was and is an existential threat to Statism, whether it is the National state of Lincoln, the Progressive State of FDR, LBJ, and BHO, new world order collectivism, or the large totalitarian states.  


The proactive self-reliant individual citizen of a Constitutional republic is the antithesis of the obedient fear controlled citizen of a militarized Empire.


So Statists, particularly of the Progressive stripe, have targeted Southern culture and Southern ideals for vilification and marginalization.  


They have been particularly successful in this Kulturkampf in the last 50 years.  


Take the example of how "official" North Carolina has decided to observe the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States, and how the state observed the 100th anniversary, in 1961.

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, May 19, 5:32 PM

RALEIGH, N.C. — Fifty years ago, North Carolina celebrated the Civil War centennial with a two-day Confederate Festival managed by a state-supported commission. On Friday, the state will mark the 150th anniversary of secession not with a party but with a symposium on how Americans remember the war.

“It will be thoughtful and reflective,” said Mike Hill of the N.C. Office of Archives and History. “We reject celebration. And we believe the 1960s event was more celebratory than commemorative. (emphasis added)

The weekend events include a re-enactment of the secession vote, period music and a drill and dress parade. But the 1961 Confederate Festival included a reception at the Governor’s Mansion; theatrical productions at Memorial Auditorium re-creating war-era plays; a parade with floats; and a ball at Reynolds Coliseum that mimicked debutante balls with 40 Confederate belles.

Fifty years later, the state has provided no extra funds for the sesquicentennial celebration. Instead, the Office of Archives and History is paying for events with existing money.

And Friday’s symposium, titled “Contested Past: Memories and Legacies of Civil War,” is the first of three parts of North Carolina’s anniversary observance.

The state has divided its commemoration into three parts: Memory, which begins Friday at N.C. Museum of History; Freedom, beginning in 2013 to coincide with the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation; and Sacrifice, in 2015, to mark the fall of Fort Fisher, Wilmington and Raleigh and the negotiated surrender signed at Bennett Place in Durham.


Link here.

Southern patriots should celebrate the good in Confederate history, and learn from the bad, but yes, celebrate, not just commemorate the achievements and goals of the volunteer private soldiers in the Confederate  States Army:  They fought for self-determination and freedom from domination of a remote oligarchy, just as their great grandparents did in the Revolution.

I'll place my knapsack on my back, My rifle on my shoulder, I'll march away to the firing line, And kill that Yankee soldier, And kill that Yankee soldier, I'll march away to the firing line, And kill that Yankee soldier. I'll bid farewell to my wife and child Farewell to my aged mother, And go and join in the bloody strife, Till this cruel war is over, Till this cruel war is over, I'll go and join in the bloody strife, Till this cruel war is over. If I am shot on the battlefield, And I should not recover, Oh, who will protect my wife and child, And care for my aged mother? And care for my aged mother, Oh, who will protect my wife and child, And care for my aged mother? And if our Southern cause is lost, And Southern rights denied us, We'll be ground beneath the tyrant's heel, For our demands of justice, For our demands of justice, We'll be ground beneath the tyrant's heel, For our demands of justice. Before the South shall bow her head, Before the tyrants harm us, I'll give my all to the Southern cause, And die in the Southern army, And die in the Southern army, I'll give my all to the Southern cause, And die in the Southern army. If I must die for my home and land, My spirit will not falter, Oh, here's my heart and here's my hand, Upon my country's altar, Upon my country's altar, Oh, here's my heart and here's my hand, Upon my country's altar. Then Heaven be with us in the strife, Be with the Southern soldier, We'll drive the mercenary horde, Beyond our Southern border, Beyond our Southern border, We'll drive the mercenary horde, Beyond our Southern border.