[American Adventures by Julian Street]@TWC D-Link book
American Adventures

CHAPTER XVIII
2/10

After going to Oxford and the Thames I lost count.
In the South my companion and I had a similar experience with the story about that daughter of the Confederacy who declared she had always thought "damn Yankee" one word.

In Maryland that story amused us, in Virginia it seemed to lose a little of its edge, and we are proud to this day because, in the far southern States, we managed to grin and bear it.
Doubtless the young lady likewise thought that "you-all" was one word.
However I refrained from suggesting that, lest it be taken for an attempt at retaliation.

And really there was no occasion to retaliate, for the story was always told with good-humored appreciation not only of the dig at "Yankees"-- collectively all Northerners are "Yankees" in the South--but also of the sweet absurdity of the "unreconstructed" point of view.
Speaking broadly of the South, I believe that there survives little real bitterness over the Civil War and the destructive and grotesquely named period of "reconstruction." When a southern belle of to-day damns Yankees, she means by it, I judge, about as much, and about as little, as she does by the kisses she gives young men who bear to her the felicitous southern relationship of "kissing cousins." Even from old Confederate soldiers I heard no expressions of violent feeling.

They spoke gently, handsomely and often humorously of the war, but never harshly.

Real hate, I think, remains chiefly in one quarter: in the hearts of some old ladies, the wives and widows of Confederate soldiers--for there are but few mothers of the soldiers left.


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