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| Maj Gen Jubal A. Early, CSA |
The guy to the right is Jubal Early, the subject of my work this time. He was a Virginian, opponent of secession, atheist, and father of four illegitimate children by a woman he lived with for 20 years without benefit of clergy. He eventually rose to the rank of corps commander in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Led a famous campaign down the Shenandoah Valley in the summer of 1864 that brought about 14,000 Confederate troops to the outskirts of Washington, DC. On top of everything else, he was one mean son of bitch. Apparently he was most renowned cusser in the army, which when you think about it is quite a distinction.
But the paper is not about all that. It's about Early after the war. He was not a bad general, a pretty good one, in fact, but his real claim to fame came after the war. He is probably the main driving force in the inauguration and perpetuation of the so-called Lost Cause myth. Which, in very short, was a bevy of justifications for the Confederacy and explanations as to why the South lost the war. Early devoted himself tirelessly to this virtually until his death in 1894.
So there's your history lesson for the day.
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5 comments:
I read "Enough of that Old SOuth Nostalgia" and it fits right in with my reading on John Brown... and the roots of evil of the terrible twins: Terrorism and Oppression.
I am trying to understand Mr. Brown's zeal to commit terror for the good cause...
like Edward Norton in "Fight Club".
It is difficult to understand if you believe as I do, that violence only begets more violence. I don't even think it's arguable that good can come out of it. Like Christopher Hedges has observed in =War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning=, we are too enamored with violence to ever seriously consider giving it up, despite all the evidence of centuries that it accomplishes nothing.
At this point I think we have to understand. No more dancing around it.
We are not enamored; lovers are free and beautiful. We are enslaved, enslaved by the economy of war, the glamour of war, the fact that we have grown up with war and drank in in with mother's milk and were never weaned.
The only thing that stops the mightiest country in the history of the world is if it comes apart and destroys itself.
Edward Norton is the sign of the future, just like John Brown... no meaning, no redemption, no salvation, no righteousness... just war and destruction...
and the vision of those buildings falling, one after the other. Were they credit card holding companies, or were they the World Trade Center? At a certain point, it no longer matters.
Whoa--you're doing Southern history pieces now on your blogs sometimes?? Man, I've gotta start checking this account again a lot more often than I have in the past several months. I love, love, love all things having to do with Southern history/social/cultural content. My "if I could go back & do it all over again" dream's always been to earn some type of degree under the Center for the Study of Southern Culture's program at OM....alas..too much for one to squeeze into one lifetime I guess.
Happy you guys made it back from Europe fine & in time enough to see your fav team make it to their very first World Series game!
So you saw Ireland and Spain. Which did you enjoy the most?
Still "green" with envy over here....
hahaha
Hey, that's what I be . . . a card carrying professional historian of the American South, Civil War and Reconstruction period. I wrote a book a long time ago about the vice president of the Confederacy, one Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia.
On the trip, we took two different approaches: small-town, rural Ireland and urban Spain. Both were charming. I preferred the former, even with the white-knuckle driving experiences. Wish I would have had more Spanish vocabulary.
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