“The chances for great deeds are not limited to the dead. As often with a wisecrack as a bugle, they call us from the present life as well.”

In some circles, the Confederate dead get short shrift these days, when they get remembered at all. It was not always thus. Once upon a time, the South’s fallen were the subjects of reverent annual parades, lachrymose addresses and moving poetry, towering obelisks in every town square. Ten southern states recognize four different springtime dates as Confederate Memorial Day, though the states’ rights tradition seems to have prevented them from uniting on the same one.