Antebellum

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"Antebellum" is an expression derived from Latin that means "before war" (ante, "before," and bellum, "war").

In United States history and historiography, "antebellum" is commonly used, in lieu of "pre-Civil War," in reference to the period of increasing sectionalism that led up to the American Civil War. In that sense, the Antebellum Period is often considered to have begun with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, though it is sometimes stipulated to extend back as early as 1812. The period after the Civil War is called the "Postbellum," or Reconstruction, era.

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[edit] Romanticism

There a was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...

— From the opening of the film Gone with the Wind (1939)

The Industrial Revolution is mythically substituted for by the widespread destruction of Sherman's March to the Sea from Atlanta to the Atlantic Ocean and by the military occupation of the defeated Confederacy by Union forces during the period termed Reconstruction implemented in Florida, Tennessee, or the Trans-Mississippi states.

More than any other single American author, Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind and the subsequent 1939 film, have permanently altered historical perspective and fixed a slanted popularized image of pre-Civil War American history and are good examples of the romanticized view. In the romanticized view, the Antebellum Period is often looked back on with sentimental nostalgia by some whites in the U.S. South, as an idealized pre-industrial highly-structured genteel and stable agrarian society, in contrast to the anxiety and struggle of modern life. The issue of slavery is largely ignored in Gone with the Wind — although Mitchell does make a point of examining the relationship between the slaves and their masters on the southern plantations. D. W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, romanticized the pre-war South in a very similar way.

Because of slavery, and the many human rights abuses it spawned, many African Americans find the romanticizing of this era to be offensive, and often see a coded reference of approval of the racism of the period in the term "Old South", though the defenders of this line of thought claim that the only celebration is that of the chivalry and honor of the Old South and that racism has nothing to do with their admiration.

[edit] Architecture

The term antebellum is also used to describe the architecture of the pre-war South. Many Southern plantation houses use this style, including:

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Welcome To Monmouth Plantation
  2. ^ Old Governor’s Mansion

[edit] External links