Confederates In The Attic: Dispatches From The Unfinished Civil War

Robert Penn Warren writes of the Civil War, “That was our Homeric period” (385). The ideas of nostalgia and loss are central themes throughout Confederates in the Attic. What are some examples of things lost? What are many white Southerners nostalgic for? How does this manifest itself at specific moments in the text?

In many ways, Confederates in the Attic is an ethnography, or a study of a specific people, and Horwitz is trying to discover “the South.” What are characteristics that seem to unite Southern people? How do they view themselves and how do they feel about the perception that non-Southerners have of them?

While visiting Fort Sumter, Horwitz, quoting Henry James, refers to it as the “consecrated object” (46).How does this quote reflect the way in which many white Southerners view Civil War battle sites and memorials? How does this tend to be different from the African-American citizens of the South?