The South Shall Fall and Rise Again

Alright, class, who knows why April 12 is special?
That’s correct – It marks the 150th anniversary of the start of our nation’s beloved and never-to-be-forgotten Civil War.

Yes, it was just a mere 150 years ago — I think it was a Thursday – that South Carolina troops fired upon Fort Sumter just off shore from Charleston.

That artillery barrage resulted in the fairly-quick surrender of Union troops manning the fort but so much more carnage over the next four years, when hundreds of thousands of Americans from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line would die or be permanently maimed.

And we descendants and others living seven or eight generations later are in for a treat. Over the next four years, history buffs, local chambers of commerce, souvenir sellers and bored retirees will get a chance to relive all the fun and glory that was the Civil War.

Reenactments of most of the major battles of the war (1861-1865) are planned to give us modern-day Americans a taste of the conflict that was fought for – uh, what again, exactly?

It depended on your point of view, of course. For the North, it was first about preserving the Union, then ending slavery as an acceptable form of unpaid employment. For the South, it was about preserving states’ rights to keep slaves picking cotton while their owners sipped mint julips on the plantation veranda and poor whites fought what the South called the “War of Northern Aggression.” I guess those were the Southerners who forgot they threw the first punch.

Certainly, the Civil War is not something that should be trivialized. But I’m wondering if endlessly reenacting the war isn’t also trivializing it just a bit.
    
Over the next four years, the South will be a tourist mecca for those who still care about the war. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will show up in their RVs to drink beer and eat cotton candy while watching overweight, aging battle re-enactors pretend to kill each other on historic battlefields.

Just think how much fun that will be on a blazing hot and humid Southern summer day!

We all know how the war turned out and that eventually the North beat the South fair and square and everybody decided to be friends again. OK, not exactly. The South lost but continued to carry a torch for its “Lost Cause,” denying some of its citizens the right to vote for another 100 years while bitterly crying, “The South shall rise again!”

Well, 150 years later the South IS about to rise again – mostly through the revenue it will reap through tourist food sales, overpriced lodging and Chinese-made, souvenir Civil War hats that will flow into places like Vicksburg, Mississippi, Antietam, Maryland, Atlanta, Georgia and Richmond, Virginia.
  
The South was virtually ruined by the Civil War 150 years ago. Over the next four years, it will have a chance to get back at those “Northern invaders,” fleecing the Yankee tourists who come to watch it surrender again.

Only this time, the South WILL win.

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