Word: bellum
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Sumner, Miss, belongs to the Deeper South-the one without its own memories of ante-bellum order or graciousness...
...somewhere in pre-revolutionary Russia; in Wescott's The Pilgrim Hawk, the liberation and recovery of a hunting falcon in the garden of an expatriate lady somewhere in France; and in Faulkner's The Bear, the pursuit of an unusually large bear in the boondocks of post-bellum Mississippi...
...such as Britain's famed Body-snatchers Burke and Hare committed murder to supply the anatomists' demand, and added the word "burking" to the language. Even today, in some Southern states, mothers threaten naughty children with "the night doctor will get you"-a reference to the ante-bellum breed of burkers...
There have been Maybanks in South Carolina since 1670. Both Burnet and Rhett are maternal family names famous in ante-bellum days. One ancestor, William Rhett, served as Vice Admiral of the colony, cleared the Carolina coast of pirates and hanged Gentleman Freebooter Stede Bonnet at Charleston in 1719. Another ancestor was the Landgrave Thomas Smith, who took his title from the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which Philosopher John Locke wrote when he was secretary to the lords proprietors. Still another ancestor was fiery U.S. Senator R. Barnwell Rhett, "the father of secession," who refused, out of respect...
Before the characters stop singing and living the Reconstruction Blues, upright Trav Currain 's family is caught up in a veritable carnival of killing. The Un conquered is standard Williams, with the familiar faults, the familiar virtues, and a not too novel moral: that the post-bellum South poisoned its wells too deeply to drink anything but violence for generations...