The Old South: Wrong but Wromantic

by Rebecca Bynum

Victor Davis Hanson writes about Hollywood’s and the hippy movement’s romantization of the “lost cause” which remains a strong element in the American psyche. The Civil War was seen by many as the heroic resistance of the idyllic agrarian South to the souless industrial juggernaught of the North. And indeed it would be hard to imagine Robert E. Lee, who famously apologized to a Pennsylvania woman for his cavalry having trampled her flower beds, burning and deliberately starving the North as Sherman did to the South. Lee’s mistake is that he fought a 19th century war by 18th century rules encompassing chivalry. Grant and Sherman used wanton destruction and starvation to break the will of the South and they succeeded. 

VDH uses “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” as an example in song. Here is another tribute to the southern soldier by the late, great Merle Kilgore as sung by Johnny Horton.