Confederates in the attic

Civil War

Confederates in the Attic

Tony Horwitz's book "Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War," tells a tale that still plagues the South today, and many other writers concur with his view. As one writer states, "Even at 13 I understood there was something very different about the way that people in the North and in the South view the war" (Rider). Horowitz's book centers on this Southern propensity to fight, re-fight, and recreate the Civil War with not end in sight. The re-enactors, the general public, and most white southerners simply cannot let go of the War Between the States, and this book shows how deeply ingrained the Confederate "cause" still is in the South. Re-enactors say they participate for a number of reasons. One man said, "We do this sort of thing most weekends anyway,' said a lean rebel with gunpowder smudges on his face and the felicitous name of Troy Cool" (Horwitz 7). It almost seems as if they believe if the keep playing war enough, they may change the outcome, somehow.

Horwitz also notes that the South in absolutely obsessed with the war and the "cause" that began the war. Again he writes, "Since my arrival in the Carolinas, hardly a day had passed without some snippet of the Civil War appearing in the newspaper: a school debated on whether to play 'Dixie' at ballgames; an upcoming Civil War reenactment; a readers' forum on the rebel flag" (Horwitz 71). He encounters this fascination with the war throughout the South, and as his book shows, it colors how the South views the North, blacks, and perhaps worst of all, it colors how the rest of the country views the South.