Myrta Lockett Avary

Myrta Lockett Avary was a young girl living on a Virginia plantation as the Civil War ended and Reconstruction commenced. She grew up listening to her parents and their friends talk about the insufferable straits the South had been brought to by the times, particularly the policies of the Andrew Johnson administration in Washington. As an adult, Avary toured the South, gathering oral histories from other members of the Southern aristocratic class about their experiences during the decades following the war. Dixie After the War is Avary's report, originally published in 1906 and then republished (my edition) in 1937 without its original first chapter. (A publisher's note at the beginning of this edition speaks of "the omission of the original Chapter I, which time as made an inappropriate beginning for the book . . . " That first chapter, called "The Falling Cross," can be found at the start of the Gutenberg version of the book online: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/41730/pg41730.txt)

At any rate, this book stands as a very interesting testimony of the times and of Southern attitudes about the Reconstruction era at the turn of the 20th century. It is a wholly subjective account, and attitudes about race are far from appealing to a modern sensibility. Blacks are frequently and unblushingly referred to as "darkies," and the superiority of the "Anglo Saxon race" (and the responsibilities of its members to that race's preservation) are taken as givens. Slavery was more or less a beneficent society dedicated to the education and uplift of Africans, who would have done better to remain slaves for another century or two in order to complete their improvement rather than being thrust into a freedom full of decisions and responsibilities for which they were unprepared. The Ku Klux Klan arose out of the desperate, lawless, times, and while there were abuses, mostly served as a benign instrument of law and order. (To be fair, the author describes lynching as evil.) And so forth.

Interestingly, the qualities of the Northern generals who were in command of the various Southern cities and territories immediately after the war are often praised. It was not the military men, according to Avary, who sought vengeance, but their politician overlords in Washington. This part has a ring of truth to it, and, along with the whole proceedings, makes me interested in reading more scholarly accounts of the times. For example, the author describes the disastrous policies around voting, whereby whites were mostly disenfranchised (you had to be willing/able to take an oath that you had never aided and abetted anyone having anything to do with the Confederacy) and blacks were suddenly given the vote but controlled by unscrupulous whites. In addition, failure to take said oath also disqualified a white Southerner from holding public position, opening the way for the Northern carpetbaggers to swoop in, often to their own enrichment and precious little else. Again, these are the picture painted by Avary. I suspect there is more than a grain of truth within. To the extent Avary's description of the voting situation is true, it certainly offers some illuminating background to the struggles around voting rights for Southern blacks in the 20th century.

So this book is in turn gossipy, exaggerated in the telling, ugly in its racial attitudes, usually, one assumes, essentially unreliable in the details, but overall fascinating to read.… (meer)