O'Heir: "Poisonous addiction to the suicidal myth" of the Confederacy

[Warpy]

4. The rich men who had swooped in once the native Americans were killed off

and grabbed all the best agricultural land (often by claiming territory in the name of indentured and other servants) set about recreating an imitation of English country gentry. I often found it hilarious down there when people whose ancestry had been dirt poor and on marginal land fancied themselves a part of that. Poor whites were utterly despised by the rich, who called them trash to their faces.

And he's right about Reconstruction. It was hardest on the former gentry, at least until they discovered they could get comfortable again via sectioning off their land for sharecropping, wielding almost as much power over black tenants as they had over them when they were slaves. The former "trash" finally got a chance to come up a class or two once the rich were temporarily incapable of controlling everything, especially the banks.

I imagine a lot of people just couldn't bear to admit so much of their family had been slaughtered to preserve the lifestyles of so few rich men.