Historical context

Question 1

The Civil War

Answer 1

• 1861-1865
• Southern states wanted independence from the north.
• South claimed their way of life was being threatened- war more commonly seen as conflict over slavery.
• Northern president Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves during the war.
• following Civil War, South thrived on regional rather than national patriotism and romantic appeal of the past (the lost way of life)
• romanticising continued through ‘Gone with the Wind’, and a new Southern literature ‘The Mississippi school’- focused on the past.
• greed and treachery described as part of Southern character in novels of William Faulkner