The story, as it was told to me, is that they threw the money off of boxcars on their way out of Nashville. I’m not sure who did the throwing or why they would do that rather than burn it, but the tale is told that an ancestor walked along the L&N tracks picking up the worthless paper. In all likelihood, it was worthless before it was printed. Like so much else in the Old South, this money was an attempt to bring into being by force of will something that never had and never would exist. The agrarian planter economy relied on those filthy mechanics somewhere to build the machines which would process the fruits of another’s labor produced at unsustainable volumes necessary to support a leisure class. The illusion that this class was heir, by divine right, to the cultural, historical, and aristocratic legacy of western civilization lay among the cinders on the way to Bowling Green.
To know this story, to be related to it, is to know the shame that comes as light dawns on the previous night’s debauch. Selfishness and self delusion melt before that moment when the truth is before us. We mourn for all we lost, all we wasted, and everything we did to others who did nothing to deserve it. We also tremble at what more could have been destroyed, and vow never to let what is so dear be threatened so closely again. For many of the South, this includes the land, our relationships, and our very humanity.
What had not been destroyed in the Civil War was ground to dust through Reconstruction. If the motto of the Confederate States Deo Vindice (God will vindicate) is true, he did. From that point through the end of the Depression (which is to say the end of the Second World War), the New South has grown. That we would survive, and thrive, in the aftermath of utter desolation is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. That, despite the trampling out of the vintage throughout our country, we would continue to persist in the sins that fed the grapes of wrath is a testament to the doctrine of innate depravity.
Why, why, why do we still persist in behaviors that threaten to destroy those very things that we almost lost: land, love, and dignity? We continue to print rebel money in defiance of the truth that is right before our eyes. We use it to lift up some and deny others. We judge our own and others worth on its abundance or scarcity. But in the end, it will wind up among the old ties and used spikes. Maybe then we will know again the things of true value.