572
legends, two histories. Like all
other Americans, he must sub–
scribe, and is
to
some extent con–
trolled by the beliefs and the prin–
ciples expressed in the Constitu–
tion; at the same time, these be–
liefs and principles seem deter–
mined to destroy the South. He is,
on the one hand, the proud citi–
zen of a free society and, on the
other, is committed to a society
which has not yet dared to free
itself of the necessity of naked and
brutal oppression. He is part of a
country which boasts that it has
never lost a war; but he is also
the representative of a conquered
nation. I have not seen a single
statement of Faulkner's concerning
desegregation which does not in–
form us that his family has lived
in the same part of Mississippi for
generations, that his great-grand–
father owned slaves, and that his
ancestors fought and died in the
Civil War. And so compelling is
the image of ruin, gallantry and
death thus evoked that it demands
a positive effort of the imagination
to remember that slaveholding
Southerners were not the only
people who perished in that war.
Negroes and Northerners were also
blown to bits. American history,
as opposed to Southern history,
proves that Southerners were not
the only slaveholders, Negroes were
not even the only slaves. And the
segregation which Faulkner sanc–
tifies by references to Shiloh,
Chickamauga, and Gettysburg
does not extend back that far, is,
in fact, scarcely as old as the cen–
tury. The "racial condition" which
Faulkner will not have changed
by "mere force of law or economic
threat" was imposed by precisely
these means. The Southern tradi–
tion, which is, after all, all that
Faulkner is talking about, is not a
tradition at all: when Faulkner
evokes it, he is simply evoking a
legcnd which contains an accusa–
tion. And that accusation, stated
far more simply than it should be,
is that the North, in winning the
war, left the South only one means
of asserting its identity and that
means
\\'as
the Negro.
"My people owned slaves," says
Faulkner, "and the very obligation
we have to take care of these
people is morally bad." "This prob–
lem is ... far beyond the moral one
it is and still was a hundred years
ago, in 1860, when many Southern–
ers, including Robert Lee, recog–
nized it as a moral one at the very
instant they in turn elected to
champion the underdog because
that underdog was blood and kin
and home." But the North escaped
scot-free. For one thing, in freeing
the slave, it established a moral su–
periority over the South which the
South has not learned to live with
until today; and this despite-or
possibly because of-the fact that
this moral superiority was bought,
after all, rather cheaply. The North
was no better prepared than the
South, as it turned out, to make
citizens of former slaves, but it was
able, as the South was not, to
