"The past is not dead. In fact not even past, "wrote William Faulkner, the great Southern novelist. United States yesterday commemorated the 150 anniversary of the start of the civil war, but the debate about its meaning and its impact on the country in the XXI century is still open. Yes, the wounds are closed.
Confederate states, economically prostrate for decades, now almost equal in wealth to the northern states, who live their own industrial decline. Since Hispanic immigrants to the internal migration of African Americans who have returned to the states of its ancestors, the southern face has changed.
The identity has been diluted, the grievances as well. For many civil war is more folklore than anything else. In 2008, the election of Barack Obama closed a circle. At home in the sixties of the nineteenth century was about to disintegrate into a bloody war for slavery and suffered for a century of segregation and racism, a black man came the White House.
"And so it happened that on 4 November 2008, shortly after 11 pm, Eastern time: the Civil War ended, when a black man, Barack Hussein Obama, won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States" , wrote in The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The historian David Blight, who has studied the evolution of the historical memory of the civil war, he read those words and thought, "Oh, no, Friedman, going a little too fast ...".
"People do not like to say so directly, but in this country there is a deep and abiding racism. And there is a deep battle, eternal on the relationship between the federal and state governments, "says Blight. "The reaction to the election of Obama, he adds, referring to the strong opposition Conservatives, has been instructive, and has sometimes been afraid." The memory of the civil war has been transformed over the years.
In Race and assembly. The Civil War in American Memory, Professor Blight shows how in the half century after the defeat of the slave South was the predominant discourse of reconciliation, regardless of the injustice they had suffered the four million freed blacks. A central element in the reconciliation was the romanticization of the conflict: there were no good or bad, but patriots on both sides who fought for an ideal.
The movie Gone with the Wind, 1939, is the ultimate expression of this time. In 1961, the centenary of the war coincided with the civil rights movement. A part of the country was still an apartheid regime. The civil rights legislation, led by Kennedy and Johnson during that celebration, ended legal segregation.
Fifty years later, racism is taboo in the public arena. But the exclusion survives. And the southern pride has not disappeared. How to defend the south without being accused of racism? Relativizing the historical origins of the war. In 2010 the governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, and Mississippi, the potential presidential candidate Haley Barbour, both Republicans, officially declared Confederate History Month in their states without mentioning slavery.
After corrected. According to a survey by Harris, two-thirds of whites living in the old Confederate states argue that the reason for the war was not slavery but states rights against federal state interventionism, a debate that recurs now at the policies of President Obama. The historian Harold Holzer said that the secession of Southern states to protect their powers triggered the war, but what triggered the secession was the fear of the abolition of slavery, fundamental to the economy of the south.
The interpretation of war is a question of identity. "It's very hard for a defeated people say that their cause was bad," says Holzer. Blight U.S. attributes the problems. UU. historical memory with the need to believe in a bright and unique history, no dark areas. And the contrast with Germany, which assumed the worst in its history.
"Most Americans do not want to see that our history is deeply contradictory, deeply tragic as anyone. We do not want to believe it's true, "says Blight. 
Confederate states, economically prostrate for decades, now almost equal in wealth to the northern states, who live their own industrial decline. Since Hispanic immigrants to the internal migration of African Americans who have returned to the states of its ancestors, the southern face has changed.
The identity has been diluted, the grievances as well. For many civil war is more folklore than anything else. In 2008, the election of Barack Obama closed a circle. At home in the sixties of the nineteenth century was about to disintegrate into a bloody war for slavery and suffered for a century of segregation and racism, a black man came the White House.
"And so it happened that on 4 November 2008, shortly after 11 pm, Eastern time: the Civil War ended, when a black man, Barack Hussein Obama, won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States" , wrote in The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The historian David Blight, who has studied the evolution of the historical memory of the civil war, he read those words and thought, "Oh, no, Friedman, going a little too fast ...".
"People do not like to say so directly, but in this country there is a deep and abiding racism. And there is a deep battle, eternal on the relationship between the federal and state governments, "says Blight. "The reaction to the election of Obama, he adds, referring to the strong opposition Conservatives, has been instructive, and has sometimes been afraid." The memory of the civil war has been transformed over the years.
In Race and assembly. The Civil War in American Memory, Professor Blight shows how in the half century after the defeat of the slave South was the predominant discourse of reconciliation, regardless of the injustice they had suffered the four million freed blacks. A central element in the reconciliation was the romanticization of the conflict: there were no good or bad, but patriots on both sides who fought for an ideal.
The movie Gone with the Wind, 1939, is the ultimate expression of this time. In 1961, the centenary of the war coincided with the civil rights movement. A part of the country was still an apartheid regime. The civil rights legislation, led by Kennedy and Johnson during that celebration, ended legal segregation.
Fifty years later, racism is taboo in the public arena. But the exclusion survives. And the southern pride has not disappeared. How to defend the south without being accused of racism? Relativizing the historical origins of the war. In 2010 the governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, and Mississippi, the potential presidential candidate Haley Barbour, both Republicans, officially declared Confederate History Month in their states without mentioning slavery.
After corrected. According to a survey by Harris, two-thirds of whites living in the old Confederate states argue that the reason for the war was not slavery but states rights against federal state interventionism, a debate that recurs now at the policies of President Obama. The historian Harold Holzer said that the secession of Southern states to protect their powers triggered the war, but what triggered the secession was the fear of the abolition of slavery, fundamental to the economy of the south.
The interpretation of war is a question of identity. "It's very hard for a defeated people say that their cause was bad," says Holzer. Blight U.S. attributes the problems. UU. historical memory with the need to believe in a bright and unique history, no dark areas. And the contrast with Germany, which assumed the worst in its history.
"Most Americans do not want to see that our history is deeply contradictory, deeply tragic as anyone. We do not want to believe it's true, "says Blight.
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