Why is Southern History so Romanticized?

[piedmont]

25. For some reason there's always going to be a yearning for the "good old days" in any population...

For white southerners in the period between 1865 and WWII, let's face it: antebellum times really were the "good old days." I have somewhere around 60-80 ancestors who were living across the south before and just after the war. Only 2 ever owned slaves, but most suffered economic hardship that lasted until their descendants could enjoy better lives in the 1950s. It was like the Great Depression lasted 80 years here.

We do the same now with the 1950s. It was a time when America was on top of the world economically and every region of the country prospered. But we gloss over the low value that society placed on women and minorities, the Eugenics programs running amok, and the ramping up of environmental destruction on a scale never before seen. Especially for conservatives, it was the Golden Age of America.