Lost causes and gallantry: Johnny Reb and the Shadow of Sir Walter.

No air conditioning or television in those days, just a little tobacco town in southern Carolina and hot summer afternoons that punished exertion. likewise all through junior high train and high school we read and reread about those other heated summer days ninety or a hundr years before, and the momentous things that happened in and around other dusty little sunbaked towns and crossroads, or along inlets barely big enough to float your hat in. History apparently chose those places for their names, which were oracular or ironic or simply beautiful. Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania Courthouse: red-brick Anglo-Virginia and secular civility--squires

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