Southerners were devoted to The Cause during the War years, for the most part. The aftermath was a different story, albeit the South was faithful to that Cause long after it was dead. The Union tried in futile effort to manage a country diametrically opposed to its political orientation, a country as stubborn and proud as its hanging moss that clings and blows in the winds of time. Gray in the gloom, caught up in pink shafts of the sun on a day not so gloomy. The South, ripped to shreds by the War, faced an ideology that challenged its principles and wherewithal, mocked its gentility, and found great pleasure in attempting to clean the carcass of the southern dog.             In the era of Isaac’s House , the South was still outside the Union, still trying to pick up the pieces to recover from four long years of death and destruction. Hope in 1866 and 1867 was that the North would soon tire of stirring in the ashes of the Old South, abandon the travesty of Reconstruction, and