The amount of cultural energy Americans have put into the old west cowboy era is amazing when you realize it only lasted 25 or 30 years, between the Civil War and the 1890s. All the classic westerns are set in that brief window of time. I think many people have the impression that whole generations lived and died during that era.
Good point. To be fair they’re also celebrating a culture that was in place for quite a while before the actual war, which the war was trying to preserve.
There had been a cultural mentality among the elite that ‘slavery was the backbone of their way of life and a moral gift to those enslaved’, but that didn’t extend to the non-elites till after wartime propaganda convinced the poor white men to adopt the same mentality. Up till that poing there was a staggering lack of racism between poor people of any race, and part of what motivated ‘the south’ was breaking that ‘poor vs rich’ mentality
So while the culture of the elites had always been racist, it wasn’t the case for the common man till the war was well underway.
The amount of cultural energy Americans have put into the old west cowboy era is amazing when you realize it only lasted 25 or 30 years, between the Civil War and the 1890s. All the classic westerns are set in that brief window of time. I think many people have the impression that whole generations lived and died during that era.
the traitor south lasted shorter than the reign of the Playstation 2 and they build statues and run social clubs about it still
Good point. To be fair they’re also celebrating a culture that was in place for quite a while before the actual war, which the war was trying to preserve.
Yes and no
There had been a cultural mentality among the elite that ‘slavery was the backbone of their way of life and a moral gift to those enslaved’, but that didn’t extend to the non-elites till after wartime propaganda convinced the poor white men to adopt the same mentality. Up till that poing there was a staggering lack of racism between poor people of any race, and part of what motivated ‘the south’ was breaking that ‘poor vs rich’ mentality
So while the culture of the elites had always been racist, it wasn’t the case for the common man till the war was well underway.