me there’s Yankees around here! They hate little children!”
I N THE AFTERNOON , the C. of C. convened again for a memorial service at Raleigh’s Confederate cemetery. The children read short profiles they’d composed about the dead, then recited sentimental poems about “sleeping Confederates” and laid wreaths at a mausoleum called House of Memory. Sue Curtis explained that the C. of C. spent many weekends this way: raking and fertilizing Confederate plots, decorating graves with flowers, visiting monuments and shrines.
One girl lingered long after the others, gazing back at the ranks of stones. “You know what I hate?” she said. “When people say that history repeats itself. That’s the scariest thing I can think of.”
Beth was a tall, intense girl of twelve with braces and a black barrette stuck crookedly in her hair. I told her I wasn’t sure I understood the appeal of all this devotion to crypts and alabaster, which was beginning to strike me as a bit morbid for a children’s group.
“To tell you the truth, I was kind of embarrassed to come today,” she said. “When I told a friend at school about it, she said, ‘What’s that, some kind of redneck thing?’” Beth frowned. “I’m not prejudiced and I don’t agree with all this ‘South is great’ stuff. I’m sure there were some good things about the North.” She looked around. “I hope nobody hears me say that.”
Even so, Beth served as president of her C. of C. chapter and reckoned she’d join the UDC when she aged out. But her passion for the Confederacy didn’t spring from the C. of C. Catechism. In school she’d just learned about the Holocaust and become obsessed with Anne Frank and other Jews killed by the Nazis.
“What gets me is the heart of the Jews. They were underdogs, they knew they were going to die but didn’t give up the faith,” she said. “Just like the Confederates.”
Beth saw another connection between the Civil War and the Holocaust. “I like the gruesome stuff, like about the prisons,” Beth said. “I like Auschwitz—I mean, I don’t like it, but I like to learn about it. That’s my favorite concentration camp. It makes me wonder how human beings can possibly do that sort of thing to each other, and how you keep your spirit in that situation. Then I got to thinking about Salisbury’s prison.” Her voice lowered, the way a twelve-year-old’s does when she’s about to say something awful. “You know how some prisoners killed themselves at Salisbury? They drank potty water.” She grimaced. “I guess if you were really sick already, that would do it. But you’d really have to want to die.”
We caught up with the others at a punch-and-cookies reception at an antebellum mansion, followed by a banquet of fried chicken, potatoes with cheese, green beans, biscuits and peach cobbler. Digging into my third sclerotic meal of the day, I recalled a conversation I’d once had with the Tennessee writer John Egerton over a heart-stopping lunch in Nashville. “This meal’s got all six of the major food groups in the South,” he observed. “Sugar, salt, butter, eggs, cream and bacon grease.”
The dinner was followed by speeches and awards: for the Catechism quiz winner, for the chapter “sending in the greatest number of accurate membership papers” (won by Sue Curtis’s group, of course) and for “the youngest child registered in the division,” a five-month-old who would become the C. of C.’s state “mascot” for the following year. This post was so coveted, Sue said, that some parents registered their children at birth, even asking the labor-room doctor to sign the application form.
It was ten-thirty when the meeting finally adjourned. I promised Beth I’d send her some material from the Holocaust Museum and told her about another museum, in Tel Aviv, where I’d dug up details on my forebears in Eastern Europe. Beth’s eyes lit up. She’d recently become interested in genealogy, too,
I N THE AFTERNOON , the C. of C. convened again for a memorial service at Raleigh’s Confederate cemetery. The children read short profiles they’d composed about the dead, then recited sentimental poems about “sleeping Confederates” and laid wreaths at a mausoleum called House of Memory. Sue Curtis explained that the C. of C. spent many weekends this way: raking and fertilizing Confederate plots, decorating graves with flowers, visiting monuments and shrines.
One girl lingered long after the others, gazing back at the ranks of stones. “You know what I hate?” she said. “When people say that history repeats itself. That’s the scariest thing I can think of.”
Beth was a tall, intense girl of twelve with braces and a black barrette stuck crookedly in her hair. I told her I wasn’t sure I understood the appeal of all this devotion to crypts and alabaster, which was beginning to strike me as a bit morbid for a children’s group.
“To tell you the truth, I was kind of embarrassed to come today,” she said. “When I told a friend at school about it, she said, ‘What’s that, some kind of redneck thing?’” Beth frowned. “I’m not prejudiced and I don’t agree with all this ‘South is great’ stuff. I’m sure there were some good things about the North.” She looked around. “I hope nobody hears me say that.”
Even so, Beth served as president of her C. of C. chapter and reckoned she’d join the UDC when she aged out. But her passion for the Confederacy didn’t spring from the C. of C. Catechism. In school she’d just learned about the Holocaust and become obsessed with Anne Frank and other Jews killed by the Nazis.
“What gets me is the heart of the Jews. They were underdogs, they knew they were going to die but didn’t give up the faith,” she said. “Just like the Confederates.”
Beth saw another connection between the Civil War and the Holocaust. “I like the gruesome stuff, like about the prisons,” Beth said. “I like Auschwitz—I mean, I don’t like it, but I like to learn about it. That’s my favorite concentration camp. It makes me wonder how human beings can possibly do that sort of thing to each other, and how you keep your spirit in that situation. Then I got to thinking about Salisbury’s prison.” Her voice lowered, the way a twelve-year-old’s does when she’s about to say something awful. “You know how some prisoners killed themselves at Salisbury? They drank potty water.” She grimaced. “I guess if you were really sick already, that would do it. But you’d really have to want to die.”
We caught up with the others at a punch-and-cookies reception at an antebellum mansion, followed by a banquet of fried chicken, potatoes with cheese, green beans, biscuits and peach cobbler. Digging into my third sclerotic meal of the day, I recalled a conversation I’d once had with the Tennessee writer John Egerton over a heart-stopping lunch in Nashville. “This meal’s got all six of the major food groups in the South,” he observed. “Sugar, salt, butter, eggs, cream and bacon grease.”
The dinner was followed by speeches and awards: for the Catechism quiz winner, for the chapter “sending in the greatest number of accurate membership papers” (won by Sue Curtis’s group, of course) and for “the youngest child registered in the division,” a five-month-old who would become the C. of C.’s state “mascot” for the following year. This post was so coveted, Sue said, that some parents registered their children at birth, even asking the labor-room doctor to sign the application form.
It was ten-thirty when the meeting finally adjourned. I promised Beth I’d send her some material from the Holocaust Museum and told her about another museum, in Tel Aviv, where I’d dug up details on my forebears in Eastern Europe. Beth’s eyes lit up. She’d recently become interested in genealogy, too,
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