That is what my fellow Texans of younger generations should learn about the Lost Cause. Under British protection, the CSA might have evolved into a squalid banana republic run by landlords for the benefit of investors and industrialists in Britain. Without British protection, the CSA might have survived as a proto-fascist regime, with an economy of permanent war socialism and a government run by colonels. In either case, the victory of the Confederacy would have been far worse for most white and black Southerners than its well-deserved defeat. For ensuring that I would be born in the United States of America instead of a broken-down failed state that combined the least attractive features of apartheid-era South Africa and death squad-era Honduras, I say: Thank you, President Lincoln, and thank you, Gen.Grant. (Source)
Yes, maybe so. But we'd still admire Southern ruling-class manners, wouldn't we?
I wonder if anyone has done a comparative study of manners in which the "gentility" of in-group members toward one another correlates with the brutality of manners toward those who are outsiders. Not just in the South, but in Europe and Asia too. I suspect there's some weird compensatory nexus there: "Yes, I am capable of committing or sanctioning unspeakable cruelty, but admire my delicacy and subtlety in the drawing room or tea ceremony." It's as if the latter feeds off the former.
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