Laudator Temporis Acti

Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South 1865-1913 (1985; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 18 (notes omitted):

Other southerners retreated into their work and families rather than into the church. George Mercer, for example, claimed, "My profession and my books are my only pride and pleasure: my house my castle: my family my country."

Ignoring politics, where southerners had to face both the Yankees and the harsh realities of defeat, constituted a less total but more common means of withdrawal. Many white southerners insisted that political matters no longer interested them. One Georgian argued that politics had become as useless to him "as diamond shoe-buckles would have been for Robinson Crusoe. . . ." An Alabaman maintained that he "lived in a very retired way" and had "turned away" from political discourse "with curses and disgust, as I would have done from the breath of a cur that had gorged himself on carrion."