On Being a Southerner, was written by Barton Swaim, and was published to New

Criterion in November 2011. It tells what it is like to be a Southerner after the American Civil
War.
Barton Swaim starts the article off with a Bible reference from Genesis chapter 32 and
verses 24-26 and 29. The reference talks about how Jacob was wrestling with a man from
heaven, until the man touches his thigh and dislocates his hip. Jacob refuses to stop fighting with
the man until he gives Jacob his blessing. Swaim then begins a short review on the American
Civil War, and in his thesis statement a few simple questions about Southern people. Who are
these Southerners? Are they are racists and political reactionaries weve always suspected them
to be? Are they Americans in deepest, most genuine sense, or is the South some aberration about
which we ought to be embarrassed?
Swaim compares the South to On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. He says that
people feel free to talk about it without ever having read, which Americans talk poorly and look
down on the South without ever having visited it. He then gives a few ideas of this, such as, the
South is known for incest and stupidity, and the Civil War was only fought because of slavery.
Mr. Swaim then discusses Southern society. He states that the first thing to know about a
Southern person is that he has never forgotten the war. He makes it clear that the Southern
person knows the Civil War was not about slavery, but simply about states rights. He then talks
about how the American Civil War destroyed everything about the South, both morally and
materially. He then gives a powerful quote from William Faulkner, which states, the past is
never dead, it isnt even the past.
Barton Swaim then gets into the economic society of the South. He talks of how the
South began as an agricultural society founded on morals and mans trust for each other. He
states that the South is more open private businesses and economic freedoms, over 150 years ago
and still to this day. Swaim then talks about how the people were taught capitalism, they
embraced capitalism, yet they were skeptical of it. According to the article they did not fear the
desire of imagination or to make new and better things, but they feared prosperity. Once a
people begins to ignore all goals but the attainment of prosperity: it ensures its own decline. To
the extent that prosperity encourages one to understand other human beings as mere instruments,
interesting only insofar as they can gratify ones material longings, it encourages a moral outlook
not much different from that of a slave trader.
In 1910 William Archer stated, The South is by a long way the most simply and
sincerely religious country that I was ever in. Swaim know moves onto the Souths belief in
God. He talks of how to the Southerner God is a part of their everyday life. They about God as
if he is not watching down on them from above, but He is with them all the time. He talks about
how racial tensions and hatred are still going to this day, but he believes that without Christianity
things would be have been, and still would be, a lot worse
The last thing Barton Swaim discusses is how the South is doing better than any other
part of the country: Indeed, I sometimes think the South won the War- not by defeating its
enemy on the battlefield but, as Jacob did, by refusing to yield until a blessing had been
extracted. It was a high price to pay. Jacob was crippled by the experience, and the South will
walk with a limp forever. Swaim discusses about how the South has had the best economy over
the last decade and how it has some of the top universities in the country, but it will always have
the memories of slavery and the loss of the American Civil War.