🚀 go-pugleaf

To: SOS-DATA

From the Southern Focus Poll, spring 1992

       MANY YOUNG SOUTHERNERS DON'T KNOW WHETHER ANCESTORS FOUGHT OR NOT
               Those who do are likely to have kin on both sides

"Do you know if any of your family fought in the War between the States?"

Yes, did fight                      33%
No, did not                         30%
Don't know                          37%

The percent who do not know is higher among the young (42% of those under
25;
only 28% of those over 65).  About the age difference:  John Shelton Reed,
director of the Institute for Research in Social Science, which conducted
the
poll for the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC-CH:  "It's
impossible to say from these numbers whether there's a historical
forgetting
going on.  Do young people not know this because they're another generation
or
two removed from the war, or is it just that people get more interested in
their ancestors when they get older?  We'll ask the question again in
twenty
years and see whether they've learned it by then."

The percentage who did not know was also higher among those with less
education (46% of those who did not graduate from high school), and among
low-
income respondents (44% of those from households with incomes under
$20,000).
There were few other significant differences.

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Among those who reported that they did have family in the war:
"On which side did they fight -- for the Confederacy, for the Union, or did
members of your family fight on both sides?"  ("Don't know" excluded)

Confederate         59%
Union               16%
Both sides          25%

Young people were less likely to have ancestors who fought only for the
Confederacy (48% of those under 25) or only for the Union (14%);  they were
much more likely to have ancestors on both sides of the conflict (39%).
About this difference, Reed says:  "Presumably that's due to intermarriage
between the descendents of Rebels and Yankees.  You'd expect more children
of
mixed parentage in every generation, and that's what we're seeing."

Not surprisingly, those who lived outside the South at age 16 were less
likely
to have only Confederate ancestors (21%) and were more likely to have
relatives who fought only for the Union (52%).

Respondents from the Deep South were more likely to have only Confederate
ancestors (73%);  they were less likely to have relatives who fought only
for
the Union (20%) or for both sides (17%).

Too few black respondents reported family in the war for stable
percentages,
but there were examples of each type:  Confederate, Union, and mixed.

Other differences between categories were largely due to the
characteristics
of migrants.
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Based on telephone interviews with 819 adults in 13 Southern states, in
March
and April of 1992.  Margin of error is +3.5%, larger for subsamples (like
those with Civil War ancestors) or for comparisons between groups.  The
Southern Focus Poll is conducted twice a year by the Institute for Research
in
Social Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in cooperation
with the Center for the Study of the American South.  For information about
the poll, call Dr. Beverly Wiggins at (919) 966-2350.