In my area, there were few such legendary landowners; indeed, the Appalachian area here was populated primarily by descendants of Scotch and Irish immigrants who more often than not became reclusive, clannish folk -- and later, poor but proud itinerate sharecroppers.
To be sure, I'd grown up in the shadow of Southern Womanhood -- cultured ladies walking in elegance and formality, the 'steel magnolias' who ran the plantations while their domineering husbands often traveled afar, had mistresses and even dabbled in one or two such liaisons perhaps among the female slave population. Ladies, you see, would politely turn a blind eye upon such infidelity; and their grand manners were known far and wide. This fostered the polite, genteel graciousness expected of women in the South, even today.
And those magnificent houses, the grandeur of looming ante-bellum mansions that rose ghostlike on the flat horizon, massive and imposing, casting an unending shadow down through time, still to this day imbued with legendary tales of colorful people who lived, laughed, or met with tragic circumstances. Oh yes, I was eager for this tour, expectant and enthusiastic.
Fortunately, my guide was a knowledgeable individual who had lived there many years; thus, I had a private, exclusive and exhaustive tour of a land that had long been mysterious and intriguing to me. What person hasn't read 'Gone With The Wind' and thought, "Oh, to live in Tara, to set foot in those wondrous houses and look upon the historic landmarks!"
I was lucky enough to actually stay in my host's own historic home, with its ghostly haunting past and sleep in a room where I could almost hear voices of long-dead residents whispering of joy, misfortune, Civil War struggles, and ultimate survival. The high ceilings, the cool hardwood floors, narrow staircase leading to upstairs...antiques, historic collections, this house was like stepping back into time, for it had been preserved by an inhabitant who cherished, almost worshipped the glory of a past long dead, and one which many southerners would perhaps like to forget, or simply erase from their consciousness.
When we began our tour, I was constantly astounded by the vast, ceaseless flatness of a landscape that seemed to reach into infinity, as if we were on the edge of the world, and that distant horizon, if we reached it, would drop off into oblivion.
As my host graciously told tales of grand living, of ladies and gentlemen strolling on moonlit nights beneath pillared mansions, their predilections, their tragedies, their loves and lives, I would stare in wonder and astonishment at the few reminders of what was once almost a totalitarian governing system on these plantations. Occasionally my thoughts would flash back to my region, how impoverished young men had marched off to fight in a war which, so far as they were concerned, meant little to them. Yet they went, aiding in a battle to maintain a way of life that contributed to keeping them also enslaved by poverty.
In the historic larger city, I found the restored, tourist-trap, ante-bellum homes to be quite gracious but somewhat mercenary in their offerings for public consumption. Rampant commercialism, of course. True, the sense of authenticity was accurate, and in the best of these places, I could respect the historic significance. However, too often it was as if there was too much dignity bestowed upon a landmark, that for all intents and purposes, was a place whose basic foundation was built upon the enslavement of other human beings. That always tainted my view of each and every one of the restored homes I visited -- but I could appreciate their historic contribution, in that surely these would always serve to remind us of how wretched excess can lead to living lives of gaudy splendor built upon the backs of those less fortunate. (Unfortunately, this is still true today, human nature being what it is.)
Across this city was a place I had long known -- but which was excluded from my tour. It was the infamous bridge where almost one hundred years after the Civil War, Martin Luther King had led a freedom march, trying to establish the very right that was supposedly granted by the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
We traveled far into the countryside, the rich land spreading out before us; and it was the same land that had created such opulent lifestyles, but somehow it also seemed to be haunted with the suffering of those who labored from daylight to dark without compensation. I will never forget one small rural area we visited; it had once been the very center of the aristocratic southern dynasties, with many ante-bellum landowners wielding political clout by the sheer volume of landholders there.
Now, it was little more than a dead town area -- in the middle of nowhere, with only a few people subsisting on meager incomes, as there was no industry and little opportunity. What had once been the very epi-center of wealth and power had become an abandoned region for the land in and of itself...was not even very valuable as real estate.
As I looked at the somber faces of those people we passed, it seemed to me they reflected a horrific truth about the past, as well as the present: oppression and poverty are never pleasant, and in granting the Old Ante-bellum South a mythical romanticism, we are doing an injustice to history -- for in fact, it was grim and inhumane to those who suffered so that only a few might enjoy lavish lifestyles.
That is the truth I brought back with me,
and I hope that those reading this essay
might reflect upon this...and realize that
glorifying the Ante-bellum Era in the South
is a mistake, one which we as a nation
are still trying to rectify by honoring the
words of the Declaration of Independence:
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT,
THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, THAT THEY
ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN
UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, THAT AMONG THESE ARE
LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
