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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 4 page paper is a review of and reaction to David Blight’s book on the Civil War, “Race and Reunion.” Bibliography lists 3 sources.
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4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVBlight.rtf
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whether or not they are convincing. Discussion In Race and Reunion, Blight argues that the South, though it was defeated decisively militarily, still managed "to wrest a victory on the
intellectual, social and economic fronts" (Ballard, 2002). It did so by manipulating history, the press and the literature of the day to reflect their argument that the war had not
really been about slavery at all, but instead was about "states rights, the right to property, and the right to live an agrarian life free of the class strife that
supposedly plagued the industrialized North" (Ballard, 2002). A moments reflection will reveal the poverty of this argument, for what about the "agrarian life" of the South-a life based entirely upon
the inhuman institution of slavery-was free of "class strife"? The entire system was based on class: plantation owners were a small minority but those who had the large holdings lived
well, while their slaves, fearing for their very lives, scratched out a meager existence. Still, the hideous reality of slavery was buried under the myth of the "Lost Cause," a
concept popularized by movies like Birth of a Nation and particularly Gone with the Wind (Ballard, 2002). In the latter, audiences were given a portrait of a gracious and elegant
way of life populated by generous masters and happy "darkies" one of whom, Big Sam, even risked his life to save his white mistress Scarlett. The heroic and dashing Southern
army and its colorful generals like Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart came to stand for the actual reality of the South, with the result that historians, working and writing
at some of the countrys leading universities, "wrote book after book extolling the virtues of the civilization that had been lost when the South was defeated" (Ballard, 2002). Blight argues
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