Peace and Lies

With today’s anniversary of Appomattox, I wanted to link back to this post from almost two years ago. I discussed a simple fact about the aftermath of the Civil War: The North, which is to say, the United States bought the South’s acquiescence into reabsorption into the federal union by ceding the battle for historical memory, nostalgia and valor to the South. The Union bought a seemingly permanent regional peace by abandoning the freedmen of the South and going along with a concocted story about superior Southern valor.