# Is the Confederacy/South more interesting than the Union/North? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 11, 2019, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643 "2019-10-11T18:40:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/41 "2019-10-12T01:38:12Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > If I may junior-mod a bit before the thread goes off tracks: This thread is not asking about the morality of either side - obviously, the Confederacy was more evil. I am asking which side was/is more \*\*interesting \*\* to an audience to write about, or provides more fodder for the arts. ISTM there was a good argument that _Gone With the Wind_ was successful because it was about the South, not the North. “Little Women” is about the North. What’s your point? ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/42 "2019-10-12T01:43:59Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Putting aside the morality issue, I think defeat is generally a better source for drama than victory is. So you’re going to see more interesting stories about characters who were on the losing side of a conflict. Defeat gives the writer something to write about. What about all those WWII movies where the “good guy” (whomever the viewer is meant to identify and sympathize with) wins? Nobody roots for Tom Hank because they know the Nazis are going to win in the end. Count me among those who think the south had better post-war propaganda, and effectively co-opted the post-war history with the Lost Cause narrative (Vox has a great video on this) and northerners (scratch that, _white_ northerners) were either too sure of themselves to notice or too racist to care. After all, the Lost Cause didn’t so much vilify the north as it minimalized the influence of and harm done by slavery in the south. The Lost Cause narrative is, in my view, a prime example of what happens when the conspiracy theorists are allowed to get their message across, year after year, generation after generation, largely unopposed by skeptics. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/43 "2019-10-12T02:16:03Z")
Yeah, the lost cause narrative was a strategy. It included films and a wave of confederate statues in the south in the 1920s and it was constantly reinforced. I grew up in Virginia, my family is old Virginia and my great, great grandfather was in the confederate army; his daughter, my great grandmother was still alive when I was a little kid. It was constantly reinforced to me that the south was honorable and the war was not about slavery. Scrappy fighters facing off against the industrialized north is a compelling narrative, but you have to diminish the impact of slavery for it to work. It is also why there is an emphasis in history and national parks on the tactics and strategies of the war rather than its cause. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/44 "2019-10-12T02:16:17Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Again, not a political thread - this is Cafe, not Great Debates. LOL, you knew what you were doing with this thread… ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/45 "2019-10-12T02:51:15Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Again, not a political thread - this is Cafe, not Great Debates. The characterization of the South is not a political issue; it is a cultural one. The romanticizing and the glorification of the Lost Cause is the reason that so much time and care has been given to polishing the image of the Civil War. The actual reasons for the war are carefully buried under mounds of rosy maunderings about noble causes and freedom from governmental oppression and the icky euphemism of “state’s rights.” The fact that Southern interests have been extremely successful in getting textbooks to flatly deny that the war was the result of slavery and nothing else is just the latest, continuing aspect of this cultural battle. You asked a question and you are being given the correct answers. I’m sorry you don’t like the answers. None of us do. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/46 "2019-10-12T03:31:38Z")
You have movies like Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind, and Song of the South that constantly portray blacks as children who need to be overseen by whites and ultimately happy with their enslavement (in Song of the South, they’re cage about when in history this is happening). It’s comforting for white America to keep being told that a) slavery wasn’t that bad and b) it’s all over now anyway. The happy mammie is actually a trope in American cinema; again and again, America is being told through film that it’s all ok, there is no need to think too deeply about it. It’s so common that Firefly was able to portray confederates in space without any criticism or analysis. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/47 "2019-10-12T04:21:49Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The characterization of the South is not a political issue; it is a cultural one. The romanticizing and the glorification of the Lost Cause is the reason that so much time and care has been given to polishing the image of the Civil War. The actual reasons for the war are carefully buried under mounds of rosy maunderings about noble causes and freedom from governmental oppression and the icky euphemism of “state’s rights.” The fact that Southern interests have been extremely successful in getting textbooks to flatly deny that the war was the result of slavery and nothing else is just the latest, continuing aspect of this cultural battle. > > You asked a question and you are being given the correct answers. I’m sorry you don’t like the answers. None of us do. The word for giving answers to a question that wasn’t asked is: Strawman. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/48 "2019-10-12T06:53:35Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada](#): > > Mark Twain, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ > Margaret Mitchell, _Gone With The Wind_ (the movie is probably more significant) > Harper Lee, _To Kill a Mockingbird_ Those were all post-Civil war, and the OP (to the best of my understanding) was asking about the Antebellum period. What great writers, poets or thinkers did the slavery-era South have, other than Jefferson? The OP claimed that the pre-War South was more “interesting”. Post-war, yes, there’s a good argument there, but pre-war? Interesting regions produce interesting people, and I can’t think of many of those from the Old South. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/49 "2019-10-12T07:55:45Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Those were all post-Civil war, and the OP (to the best of my understanding) was asking about the Antebellum period. What great writers, poets or thinkers did the slavery-era South have, other than Jefferson? Edgar Allen Poe. Musically, the south has always been more interesting than the north, if only because of the greater Black influence (see: the Minstrelsy debate that was shut down a couple months ago.) Since recording devices weren’t invented until after the war, it’s hard to compare northern and southern music; Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded two albums of Civil War-era music a century after the fact, one from the northern traditions and one from the southern, and the south unsurprisingly sounded better. Maybe I just like “Goober Peas” better than “Battle Hymn of the Republic” although it’s been 50 years since I heard either of these albums. Postwar, the south still made better music. It’s a matter of taste, I suppose, but northern music can be represented by Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building, while southern music is Sun Records and Alligator Records; I know which I prefer. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/50 "2019-10-12T08:22:34Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > Edgar Allen Poe. > . A borderline case at best - Poe was a transplanted Southerner who did most of his work up North. I think it says something about where the cultural center of the U.S. was at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/51 "2019-10-12T10:11:51Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > A borderline case at best - Poe was a transplanted Southerner who did most of his work up North. I think it says something about where the cultural center of the U.S. was at the time. This reminds me of the Chris Rock routine about Tiger Woods, and how the better he got at golf, the less Black he was considered. If Poe had killed a New York showgirl during a laudanum binge, I’m sure he’d be remembered as unambiguously Southern. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/52 "2019-10-12T10:18:56Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Those were all post-Civil war, and the OP (to the best of my understanding) was asking about the Antebellum period. What great writers, poets or thinkers did the slavery-era South have, other than Jefferson? Let me broaden the question here: How many AMERICAN writers, poets or thinkers had critical or popular acclaim in England or Europe before 1861? The answer is, maybe four total, and one of them–who had spent the bulk of his adult life and the whole of his childhood in Richmond and Baltimore–was Edgar Allan Poe. You want to paint the antebellum South as a cultural empty glass? The rest of the country was in about the same shape. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/53 "2019-10-12T12:38:27Z")
[Moderating] I’m sure that the OP intended this solely as a discussion of the arts, without politics creeping in. However, I don’t think that’s actually possible, since all of the relevant differences between the North and the South are ultimately political in nature. Therefore, rather than attempting to steer this thread back on topic (an infinitesimally small target), I’m just going to move it. ---
**Author:** ![survinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/54 "2019-10-12T13:33:02Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > That said, fuck the antebellum South, the ending-Reconstruction South, the Jim Crow South, and **the modern hate-all-the-Others South**. The gap between not perfect and outright evil is enormous, and everybody who does not at every opportunity point out which side the South has been on since the 1600s is culpable. You might be surprised if you spent time down here how it’s actually not “hate all the others”. The South has changed greatly over the last 50 years. There are inter-racial couples in the south’s urban areas and rural areas. There are politicians of all races. There are integrated churches and neighborhoods. There are corporate boardrooms that are diverse in the south. There are companies centered in the South that do business all over the world. There are many immigrants who have chosen the South to live. African-Americans have been moving back to the South in the hundreds of thousands if not millions to cities like Atlanta and Charlotte. If it were a uniformly bad place, this phenomenon would not be occurring. I’m not saying it’s perfect. I know Trump won the South during 2016, which is a testament to political problems - and some racial animus- that infest alot of the country, IMO. But I think it’s a much better place than the old days, and your description of the South - if you meant it as a blanket statement - is not accurate at all. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/55 "2019-10-12T14:21:59Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > It’s like, in WWII, Germany is far more interesting tan France or Poland, or even the UK. > The were genocidal monsters, of course, but they are more interesting in a creepy way. > The serial murderer is more interesting than the teacher that helps underprivileged kids. The parallel I see there, as someone particularly interested in military history (though not uninterested in history generally) is that both the CSA and Nazi Germany tended to outperform their adversaries militarily per unit of resources at the front line forces’ disposal. At least at the tactical level. Not necessarily at the operational level of running campaigns, definitely not at the strategic level. And it’s not that the Union or WWII Allies lacked any aspect of military excellence at any time or that their opponents were free of military incompetence all the time. But in general I think what I said is true, and I find military excellence to be interesting. I gather from other responses that most are looking at it in broader political or cultural terms. In that sense I don’t find the CSA of 1861-65 (or that region of the US immediately pre/post war) more interesting than USA in the same period. As to directly comparing the CSA to the Nazi’s in broader terms I wouldn’t. I realize that might be debated, but I don’t find that debate very interesting either. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/56 "2019-10-12T15:01:00Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > The parallel I see there, as someone particularly interested in military history (though not uninterested in history generally) is that both the CSA and Nazi Germany tended to outperform their adversaries militarily per unit of resources at the front line forces’ disposal. At least at the tactical level. Not necessarily at the operational level of running campaigns, definitely not at the strategic level. And it’s not that the Union or WWII Allies lacked any aspect of military excellence at any time or that their opponents were free of military incompetence all the time. But in general I think what I said is true, and I find military excellence to be interesting. The Nazis, like the Japanese, were good at conducting devastating offensives against countries that desperately wanted peace and were not fully prepared for war. Surprise attacks. Even then, the overreached and couldn’t maintain momentum. The Confederates were good at keeping the Union at bay for a couple years as many thousands of lives were wasted putting back together what never should have been torn asunder. But at least (and I mean this sincerely) we got the end of slavery out of it. The common theme is both the Nazis and the Confederates were good at starting incredibly stupid, wasteful wars, but not too good at ending them. I don’t think they were especially good (either braver or better, more capable fighters—though the Nazis certainly did spend more time brainwashing their youth to fight pre-war) on an individual or tactical level, it’s just that to the extent an author or filmmaker may want to explore the shades of gray present in even the darkest human endeavors, they may be forced to represent certain individuals on the wrong side of a conflict as possessing certain positive attributes, mixed in with their negative, in order to make them more appealing or relatable to the audience And that’s something Lost Causers push (I think it’s actually one of the de facto tenets of the Lost Cause: focus on the individual, not the broader socioeconomic movements and the motivations of those in power). That’s why when g-you claim “the war was about slavery” Lost Causers fall back on “But my Great-great-Grandfather’s second cousin twice removed didn’t own any slaves. He wrote this letter that we have passed on for generations insisting he was going off to fight ‘them yanks’ to defend his home from invasion. He was just some dirt poor farmer working his own land who wanted to protect his ma and pa, what’s so bad about that? And look, here, here’s this letter from some guy in Ohio saying he hates black people. So how can it possibly have been about slavery?” The focus on the individual makes for stunning drama and rounded characters, but in the end it’s only anecdote. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/57 "2019-10-12T15:20:28Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Had this discussion with someone a while back: > > The discussion was, in fiction/cinema/the arts/historiography, which side of the Civil War was more interesting. The consensus seemed to be that, while the Union was the morally right side, it was the drier, less colorful, less entertaining side, and much more businesslike, and that for the arts, the Confederates were the ones with the more interesting story to tell and more fodder for entertainment or more intriguing stuff to read about. > [@Alessan](#): > > Those were all post-Civil war, and the OP (to the best of my understanding) was asking about the Antebellum period. I don’t understand how you can interpret the OP as anything other than the \*\*post \*\*Civil War era. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/58 "2019-10-12T15:41:36Z")
You don’t have to love the Confederacy to see that it has a lot of low-hanging fruit to create dramatic interest. The South had a lot more suffering, division, internal moral conflict, and occasional lawlessness. There were also moral conflicts in the Union side as well, but nobody seems to find them worth portraying. For example, the Union occupation of Northern Alabama was an utter shitshow - a bitter guerilla war rife with bad actors and moral miscalculation all around. This experience is how the Union generals came to perceive the necessity of “total war” as they marched through Georgia. That would make a hell of a movie or TV series, but nobody’s touched it so far. I suspect it’s because it’s hard to really make either side look good, and the Civil-War watching public demands portrayals that make them feel good about their team. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/59 "2019-10-12T15:58:06Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > And here is a perfect example–can you think of any other group (“the modern hate-all-the-Others South”) that would be said about them “fuck them” with impunity and without fear of moderation? Exapno Mapcase, by saying “fuck the modern South”, do you not realize that you are saying “fuck you” to SMDB members, including me and Beck? Big deal. :rolleyes: Posters on this board have gotten away with much, _much_ worse comments directed toward “all police officers” and “all military”, despite having posters _and_ moderators included in those categories. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643/60 "2019-10-12T16:03:35Z")
Right, ISTM the question is about how literature/film etc. \*created \*after the war tend to focus a lot on the South \*before and during \*it. Even stuff by authors and for audiences where the majority of the buying public would be non-southerners. One element I suppose could also be thrown into the equation in that case is that the Antebellum/War South brought an element of the Exotic Other to it: grand plantation houses, gallant (i.e. ready to inflict violence over stupid slights) gentlemen, “Belles”, “ah dew declayeh”, sultry weather/environment and the Big River and, critically, a cultural identity that remained recognizable afterward. (That persistence of that cultural identity among their dominant classes was then useful to effectively unleash the Lost Cause myth, with little pushback from a rest-of-the-country that pretty much stopped caring what happened in the South after Reconstruction and where by the early 1900s a huge proportion were people who arrived in the USA AFTER the war.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-confederacy-south-more-interesting-than-the-union-north/841643.md?page=4)