The 21st annual Phi Beta Kappa fall lecture took place Thursday, where Walter Scott’s novel’s effects on the South were discussed.

Mike Goode, an associate professor and the chair of the English department at Syracuse University, said Scott, a British writer during the late 18th-century influenced the American South during the period before and after the Civil War.

Scott was the writer of the Waverley Novels, a two dozen set of books published between 1814 and 1832 about historical events in the 17th- and 18th- centuries.

Goode said Mark Twain said the ideas of Scott was one of the causes of the Civil War.

He said Twain termed it the “Sir Walter’s Disease.”

The South took many ideas about history from Scott’s works.

Goode said the way the South saw their narrative, or the story of the nation, and their way of reenacting after the war was changed by Scott’s works.

The reason for this connection is that the south believed in their Scottish heritage.

He said historians estimate that many of the survivors of Culloden, the 1746 battle that ended a rebellion in England, were sent to Georgia and South Carolina.

Goode said many of these members had joined the Confederate Army by the start of the Civil War.

He said many of the incidents that happened after the war was over were influenced by Scott.

An example of this is the Ku Klux Klan and their choice to call themselves a clan.

“The cause of white supremacy in general with the disgruntled Anglo-Saxon knights, loyalty oath-resisting Scottish Covenanters, and rebellious Jacobite clans whose histories they knew mainly through Scott,” Goode said.

He said that while this is true, Scott’s novels affected more of the way the way people remembered history.

“Regardless of whether or not Scott ‘was in large measure responsible’ for the war, he was certain in large part responsible for the terms and modes of its remembrance,” Goode said.

He said Scott changed the story of the nation for the South.

Goode said one of the ways of remembering history is by looking at the facts and stories.

“When you think of a nation, you think of a story,” Goode said.

He said people tell the stories of events that happen, but also try to reenact certain events that have taken place.

Goode said people try to revive history by trying to live the experience.

What Goode meant is taking on roles such as a Confederate soldier and playing out the scene to feel close to the history.

Goode said the problem with this is that the actor knows what happens, but does not feel the same as the ones who were originally there.

“While Scott may celebrate feeling as a means of experimenting the past’s difference from the present, he does not, however, offer any promises… that feeling can help readers access whatever critical stances and feelings that people in the past had towards their own lived experiences,” Goode said.

Suzie Parks, the president of the Phi Beta Kappa Alumni Association of East Central Illinois, said she thought the presentation was great.

“He’s forging new connections between American history and 19th century imaginings of Britain’s own history,” Parks said.

Goode said that Scott influenced how the South remembered its history, but also showed people’s hold on history.

“We find a theoretical sophistication in the novels about the nature of history and its hold over people’s sense of what a nation is and what their place in national history might be,” Goode said.

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812

or [email protected].