Romanticization of the Civil War

POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 4, 2026 09:53
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NIKI2

Thursday, April 8, 2010 9:22 PM

What the McDonnell broo-ha-ha brought up for me was, why this adoration of the Confederacy? You can find Confederate flags in states which had no participation in it, on the back of big pickup trucks, etc. What is so romantic about it? It was hard to find much on the internet, this is about all I found:

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The Antebellum Period can be looked back on with sentimental nostalgia in the US South, as an idealized agrarian and chivalric society, with the moral issues of slavery generally being glossed over. This is due in part to widespread destruction caused during the war by both armies and a lingering resentment of the occupation of the region by Union forces after the Confederacy was defeated. As a result the architecture and fashion of the period were better documented in this region of the United States than in other parts of the country and can be heavily romanticized.

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There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...

From the opening of the film Gone With the Wind

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“Old South” is a way of describing the former lifestyle in the Southern United States. The term originally came into use after the American Civil War to describe the antebellum period. Many southern whites used it with nostalgia to represent the memories ofa time of prosperity, social order, and "gracious living". Most blacks saw it as being a reference to the past times of slavery and the plantation economy in which they were chattel property. A desire to return to the order of the "Old South" was a justification for ongoing racial segregation and the continuance of the Jim Crow system.

In this romanticized view, the process of the Industrial Revolution is mythically substituted for by the widespread destruction of Sherman's March to the Sea and by the military occupation of the defeated Confederacy by Union forces during the period termed Reconstruction ( 1865 - 1877). While the South was largely ruined after the Civil War, this had as much or more to do with the failed domestic polices of the Confederacy, notably its impressment of food supplies, and thousands of uprooted civilians, than it did with the scorched earth policy of Sherman. Sherman's March was exclusively limited to Georgia and South Carolina and scorched earth policies were not implemented in Florida, Tennessee, or the Trans-Mississippi states.

More than any other single American artifact, the novel and movie Gone With the Wind have permanently fixed a slanted popularized image of pre-Civil War American history and are good examples of the romanticized view. In the romanticized view, the Antebellum Period is often looked back on with sentimental nostalgia by some whites in the U.S. South, as an idealized pre-industrial highly-structured genteel and stable agrarian society, in contrast to the anxiety and struggle of modern life. The issue of slavery is largely ignored. For example, a romanticized view of the Antebellum South would claim that the Civil War was fought over states' rights rather than slavery, when in actuality the war was fought predominantly over a state's right to allow slavery. Because of slavery and many other human rights abuses, most African Americans find the romanticization of this era to be offensive, and often see a coded approving reference to the racism of the period in the term "Old South".

Once those with personal memories of the antebellum South were largely deceased, the term continued to be used. It was used even as a marketing term, where products were advertised as having "genuine Old South goodness" and the like. However, fraternal and political organizations often used the term to show that they were supporters of white supremacy and segregation, but in a less blantant way.

Certain groups now wish t

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