It’s Appomattox Day. The South Lost. Deal With It.

One hundred fifty years ago today, the American Civil War ended with Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, which wasn’t a courthouse but a town named after a court house, and the actual house belonged to Wilmer McLean. This is generally considered a fortunate thing, since “The Surrender At Wilmer’s Place” would not look nearly as good on a commemorative print. The relentless romanticizing of the Southern cause — state’s rights, the Old Noble Ways, the Southern Aristocracy, and the Fight for Freedom for people of a certain pale hue — started well before the war, and the mere fact of Southern defeat did little to slow it. After all, what’s more romantic than a Lost Cause? It was a good enough reason for a delusional actor to shoot Abraham Lincoln just a week later, and it was a good enough pile of romantic mush to keep the Lost Cause ideology alive long after the Confederacy and all its leaders and followers were dead and in the ground.

Read more on It’s Appomattox Day. The South Lost. Deal With It….

from Wonkette http://ift.tt/1DpdJoO

via IFTTT