antebellum: pre-war, used to refer to houses built before the civil war to which Southern ladies organized tours, dressed up in hooped skirts like those worn by Scarlet (Vivian Leigh) and Melanie (Olivia de Havilland) in the 1939 film Gone With The Wind and served tea to tourists who paid to be entertained by those who played 'impoverished aristocrats.' and convinced each other that they were, though each knew they were not. A white lie to preserve their pride and dignity that depended on preserving the Big Lie of White Supremacy. Without the "help" of a Black woman servant at least once every two weeks, it was impossible to "keep up appearances." There should have been more puns on antebellum and anti-bellum. It never occurred to me til now how blinded my grandmother, mother and I were by identification with Scarlet's imperative to escape the embarrassment and shame of not being able to "keep up appearances" (pulling down the velvet curtains to make a ball gown. The purpose, to charm the comandante of the occupation army, which the Atlanta Ladies Memorial Association did in fact, to get permission to buy lumber to build coffins . . . and new buildings on the side; their husbands, being still barred as traitors from conducting business legally. Preoccupation with one's own shame and duplicity to escape it, blinds whites to the degradation they impose on Blacks forced to do the dirty work, essential to their appearance as predestined [by birth] to prosper.
Lost Cause: Slavery was the cause. I still don't understand the psychology driving the cultural phenomenon of United Daughters of the Confederacy's preoccupation with honoring 'The Lost Cause.' They put it on invitations. I imagine the Sons and the Ku Klux Klan drank toasts to it. The latter also identified with Scottish Clans and Scottish Jacobites, who are not to be confused with Parisian Jacobins; though a leftist raised as a Southerner is never sure what either is or which is which.
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