Antebellum

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Antebellum is a Latin word meaning "before the war" (ante means before and bellum war). In United States history and historiography, the term "Antebellum" is often used (especially in U.S. South) to refer to the period of increasing sectionalism leading to the American Civil War, instead of the term "pre–Civil War." In that context, the Antebellum can begin with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, or be set as early as 1812.

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Popular images of the period

The Antebellum Period in the Southern United States is viewed by some with a kind of sentimental nostalgia as an idealized agrarian and chivalric society.

This nostalgic view is in part due to the cultural memory of the great prosperity of that time, and in part due to the widespread destruction of Southern infrastructure and society by the Union Army and by former Confederate Army soldiers who harbored resentment toward Union forces.

Another reason for the nostalgic view is that the architecture and fashion of the period were better documented in this region of the United States than in other parts of the country, and in spite of the slave trade on which great Southern mansions were built, they and their mystique of opulence and prosperity are sometimes romanticized by some. Nevertheless, the nostalgia for antebellum Southern culture is heavily tempered by the reality that what made that life possible was the enslavement, suffering and inhumane treatment of African slaves.

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The Antebellum Period romanticized

There 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)

In this romanticized view, the process of the Industrial Revolution is mythically substituted for by the widespread destruction of Sherman's March from Atlanta to the Sea and by the military occupation of the defeated Confederacy by Union forces during the period termed Reconstruction (1865 - 1877). While the South was largely ruined after the Civil War, this had as much or more to do with the failed domestic polices of the Confederacy, notably its impressment of food supplies, and thousands of uprooted civilians, than it did with the scorched earth policy of Sherman. Sherman's March was exclusively limited to Georgia and South Carolina and scorched earth policies were not implemented in Florida, Tennessee, or the Trans-Mississippi states.

More than any other single American artifact, Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind and the subsequent 1939 film, have permanently 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, however, in Mitchell's, Gone with the Wind -- although she does make a point of examining the relationship between the slaves and their masters on the southern plantations.

Because of slavery, and the many human rights abuses it spawned, most African Americans find the romanticization of this era to be offensive, and often see a coded approving reference to the racism of the period in the term "Old South."

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Antebellum architecture

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

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See also

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External links

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