The notion that the Civil War and Reconstruction were foisted upon a defenseless South by a tyrannical central government retains considerable influence in a Southern ideology of persecution.
When white Southerners proclaim that the Confederate flag represents their history, they are misrepresenting their own history. Some of their ancestors opposed the war effort, and some of them fought for the United States flag.
As independence was declared, and the new country sought to frame its new political and social identity, there was even more of a need to construct an American religious identity.
An intensely secretive nature, and old-fashioned sense of ‘good behavior’ and British laws criminalizing homosexuality, kept the writer and gardener firmly in the closet.
