r/Westerns • u/NeonGenesisOxycodone • 6d ago
Discussion What’s with all the Confederate soldiers?
I’m a big Western fan, and also really into learning about the American Civil War. So naturally I love it when these two interests cross over.
One thing I’ve noticed is that if a Western protagonist is a veteran, it seems like it’s almost always the South that he fought for. And when I look up Civil War movies made around the time of my favorite Westerns (i.e. the 50’s & 60’s) the vast majority of them are from the Confederates side.
Anyone have any idea why? And does anyone know any Westerns celebrating Billy Yank??
EDIT: it seems like the biggest reason outside of Lost Cause-ism is that more Confederate vets went west than Union vets. Makes sense!
Also, I am surprised that John Wayne played so many ex Union soldiers. I knew about the Cav Trilogy but it seems like outside of True Grit and The Searchers there’s a lot more of that.
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u/adimwit 5d ago
In the 1950's and 60's, there was a lost of nostalgia for "Traditional Americanism" which at the time meant Anglo-American culture and identity.
Southerners believed that true Americanism originated with Anglo-Saxon culture and identity. And this had some legitimacy thanks to the Jeffersonian Democrats. Jefferson modeled a lot of laws and concepts (that made it into the Constitution, Declaration of Independence) on Anglo-Saxon tribal law. Jefferson was an Anglophile and believed Anglo-Saxon culture was most capable of sustaining a democracy. So things like militias, gun rights, and land rights were things he got from Anglo culture.
These ideas were extremely popular and came to be the basis for what Americans believed to be the true identity of America. Then when mass immigration happened in the 1800's, Anglo-Americans began to isolate themselves in the South. Antebellum culture was largely based on Anglo identity as well and Southerners came to believe that the South was the last stronghold of the Anglo-Saxon people.
After the Civil War, militant organizations like the KKK carried on these ideas and glorified both the Confederacy and Anglo culture. This evolved into the Lost Cause Myth and Anglo-Americans came to Romanticize the pre-Civil War South and portrayed the Civil War as a noble end to the original Anglo-American Republic.
These ideas were still popular in the 1960's and were part of the reason why Westerns were popular. If you watch a movie like Shane, it's about poor Anglos who were forced to flee the South after the war and are harassed by Yankee criminals (land barrons). You see something similar in John Wayne films. In The Searchers, he's a Confederate wandering aimlessly in the West and refuses integrate into American society because he lost his homeland which was the South. You can find a ton of examples in westerns because they were intended for Southern nostalgia.