Medieval Confederacy

Ta-Neishi Coates, a blogger at The Atlantic magazine, has been reading various histories of the Confederacy. He's struck by how medieval some of the Confederacy's institutions and practices were. For example, they fielded a strong army, but never had a working post office system - a vital service in the pre-telephone days.

When I read Coates, I was immediately reminded of Mark Twain, who famously blamed Sir Walter Scott for the South's medieval fixation. It's worth a read, especially as Twain points out that Scott's portrayal of Medieval England had all the accuracy of a Disney animated movie, which is to say very little.

Another member of the "blame Scott" crowd is Scott Horton, who visited Sir Walter's castle and reflected on the gap between reality and fantasy. You see, Sir Walter's castle wasn't a real castle - he had one built at great expense and funded by an enormous loan that was always a burden.

In short, the Southern fans of Sir Walter Scott weren't the only people who confused fiction with reality. Nor are they the last.