Cats of Confederacy

As I read Cats of Confederacy, I couldn't help but feel completely alienated. When it comes to the subject of the South, I am of course not personally included in the culture. However, it did not occur to me until reading Cats of Confederacy just how alienated I am. If being from the North was not alienation enough, when speaking about the South, especially in regards to the Civil War, I am yet again not personally included in the culture. As an African American, while the war was essentially about my ancestors and my ancestors were involved in the war, they never truly had a voice. The war was about my ancestors freedom, but as the war went on my ancestors were still enslaved and the freedom to truly act was not there.

With that said, reading Cats of Confederacy as a complete outsider was completely shocking to me. The preoccupation with legitimizing your geneology through involved in the "rebel cause" I found to be completely absurd. I can understand how Southerns felt more of the pain of the war, due to the fact that for the most part the war took place in the South-causing for the complete ramifications of war and even after the war to hit even harder, and the ratio of soldiers lost in the South to soldiers lost in the North was far greater (1 in 4 for Southerners, 1 in 10 for Northerners). I suppose as the "winners" of the war, it is harder to feel the devastation. However, as expressed by the black preacher at the end Michael King, it is one thing to remember your ancestors; however, what those Southern confederate enthusiasts might forget in the process of remembering and feeling proud for the bravery of their ancestors was what in fact they were fighting for. They weren't fighting the North and the North was fighting in the war the war not because up north we are, as i've heard many times down here, a bunch of crazy, left winged liberals. As much as some of those enthusiasts (and I stress enthusiasts...I understand that not every Southerner holds this opinion) would like to refute that the "true" cause of the "war between the states" (to add insult to injury to the war as I may add) was not due to slavery, the reality of the situation is the South DID leave because of the election of Abraham Lincoln who did not except the wrongs of slavery. This "Northern Victory" (which is truly be called an antislavery victory) resulted in the sucession of the states that were to later call themselves the Confederacy. They knew they had a president that no longer supported slavery and would work to abolish it, so they removed themselves from the nation. So, they were in fact fighting over slavery. Slavery which is a disgusting part of our history, seeping in the Southern cultures veins. The North fought because slavery is wrong, along with leaving your country, and leaving your in order to continue your wrong doings. So, to honor the "rebel cause" is essentially slapping the faces of those who fought for the right cause and a slap in the face of those directly affected by the war. You advocating something that is inherently evil. That pride in the "rebel cause" that the written about in the Cats of Confederacy is something that really should be seen as shameful. Those men who fought for the South I'm sure were not devoid of good qualities such as honor, pride, bravery, etc. However, those qualities were placed in a cause that is disgusting.

What I took from the reading was that a distinction needs to be made. It is one thing to honor your ancestors and their bravery, but to support them fully by taking a blind eye to what they truly fought for and in essense advocate and support it is another. Those southern enthusiasts that were depicted are taking support and honoring their genealogy to a completely different level. Raising confederate flags, holding resentment toward Northerners, and holding secretive parties that honoring the birthdays of Lee and Jackson simply perpetuates wrong and evil attitudes of the old South. To then pass it onto your children, causing for them to memories completely absurd texts such as the Catechism just passes on that wrong, evil and skewed perspective. If a little girl, no older than 12 can see the wrong it...everybody else should