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Lost Cause of the Confederacy

The Lost Cause of the Confederacy (or simply the Lost Cause) is an American pseudohistorical[1][2] and historical negationist myth[3][4][5] that claims the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery.[6][7] First enunciated in 1866, it has continued to influence racism, gender roles, and religious attitudes in the Southern United States into the 21st century.[8][9] Historians have dismantled many parts of the Lost Cause mythos.

"Lost Cause" redirects here. For other uses, see Lost Cause (disambiguation).

Beyond forced unpaid labor and denial of freedom to leave the slaveholder, the treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments such as whippings. Slaves' families were often split up by the sale of one or more family members; when such events occurred, the family members in question usually never saw or heard from one another again.[10] Lost Cause proponents ignore these realities, presenting slavery as a positive good and denying that alleviation of the conditions of slavery was the central cause of the American Civil War.[11] Instead, Lost Cause proponents frame the war as a defense of states' rights and of the Southern agrarian economy against supposed Northern aggression.[12][13][14] Lost Cause proponents attribute the Union victory to greater numbers and greater industrial wealth, while they portray the Confederate side of the conflict as being more righteous and having greater military skill.[11] Modern historians overwhelmingly disagree with these characterizations, noting that the central cause of the war was slavery.[15][16][17]


The Lost Cause reached a high level of popularity at the turn of the 20th century, when proponents memorialized Confederate veterans who were dying off. It reached a high level of popularity again during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s in reaction to growing public support for racial equality. Through actions such as building prominent Confederate monuments and writing history textbooks, Lost Cause organizations (including the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans) sought to ensure that Southern whites would know what they called the "true" narrative of the Civil War, and would therefore continue to support white supremacist policies such as Jim Crow laws.[8][18] White supremacy is a central feature of the Lost Cause narrative.[18]

Cultural references

Statues by Moses Jacob Ezekiel

The Virginian Moses Jacob Ezekiel, the most prominent Confederate expatriate, was the only well-known sculptor to have seen action during the Civil War.[203] From his studio in Rome, where a Confederate flag hung, he created a series of statues of Confederate "heroes" which both celebrated the Lost Cause in which he was a "true believer",[204] and set a highly visible model for Confederate monument-erecting in the early 20th century.


According to journalist Lara Moehlman, "Ezekiel's work is integral to this sympathetic view of the Civil War".[204] His Confederate statues included statues erected in Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky.


Kali Holloway, director of the Make It Right Project, devoted to the removal of Confederate monuments, has said that:

Bailey, Fred Arthur (1991). "The Textbooks of the 'Lost Cause': Censorship and the Creation of Southern State Histories". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 75 (3): 507–533.  40582363.

JSTOR

Bailey, Fred Arthur (1995). "Free Speech and the Lost Cause in the Old Dominion". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 103 (2): 237–266.  4249508.

JSTOR

Barnhart, Terry A. (2011) Albert Taylor Bledsoe: Defender of the Old South and Architect of the Lost Cause. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press.  9780807137246

ISBN

Blight, David W. (2001). . Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0-674-00332-3.

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

Boccardi, Megan B. (December 2011). Remembering in black and white : Missouri women's memorial work 1860-1910 (Thesis). :10.32469/10355/14392. hdl:10355/14392.

doi

Coski, John M. (2005) The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press.  0-674-01722-6

ISBN

Cox, Karen L. (2003) Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.  9780813028125

ISBN

(1996). The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (1st ed.). Lawrence, Kansas, U.S.A.: Univ Pr of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-0809-6.

Davis, William C.

Davis, William C. (2002) Look Away: A History of the Confederate States of America. New York: Free Press  0-684-86585-8

ISBN

Domby, Adam H. (2020). . Charlottesville, VA, USA: University of Virginia Press. ISBN 9780813948553.

The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory

Dorgan, Howard (1972). "The doctrine of victorious defeat in the rhetoric of confederate veterans". Southern Speech Communication Journal. 38 (2): 119–130. :10.1080/10417947209372178.

doi

Foster, Gaines M. (1988). . US: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-505420-0.

Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause and the Emergence of the New South, 1865–1913

(1939) The South to Posterity: An Introduction to the Writing of Confederate History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Freeman, Douglas Southall

Gallagher, Gary W. and , editors (2000) The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press ISBN 0-253-33822-0.

Alan T. Nolan

Gallagher, Gary W. (1995) Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History: A Persistent Legacy (Frank L. Klement Lectures, No. 4). Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press.  0-87462-328-6.

ISBN

Goldfield, David (2002) Still Fighting the Civil War. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press.  0-8071-2758-2

ISBN

Gulley, H.E. (April 1993). "Women and the Lost Cause: preserving a Confederate identity in the American Deep South". Journal of Historical Geography. 19 (2): 125–141. :10.1006/jhge.1993.1009.

doi

Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd (1998). "'You Must Remember This': Autobiography as Social Critique". The Journal of American History. 85 (2): 439–465. :10.2307/2567747. JSTOR 2567747.

doi

Hattaway, Herman (Summer 1971). "Clio's Southern Soldiers: The United Confederate Veterans and History". Louisiana History. XII (3). Louisiana State University: 213–42.

Janney, Caroline E. (2008). . U of North Carolina P. ISBN 978-0-8078-3176-2. Retrieved January 24, 2012.

Burying the dead but not the past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the lost cause

Janney, Caroline E. (2009) "The Lost Cause". Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

Encyclopedia Virginia

and Sebesta, Edward H., eds. (2010). The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truth" about the "Lost Cause". Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-60473-218-4.

Loewen, James W.

(1973) The Myth of the Lost Cause, 1865–1900 Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books ISBN 9780208013187

Osterweis, Rollin G.

Reardon, Carol, Pickett's Charge in History and Memory, University of North Carolina Press, 1997,  0-8078-2379-1.

ISBN

Piston, William Garrett (1987). Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant: James Longstreet and His Place in Southern History. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.  0-8203-1229-0.

ISBN

Simpson, John A. (2003). Edith D. Pope and Her Nashville Friends: Guardians of the Lost Cause in the Confederate Veteran. Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press.  978-1-57233-211-9. OCLC 750779185.

ISBN

Stampp, Kenneth (1991). The Causes of the Civil War (3rd rev. ed.). New York: Touchstone Books.  9780671751555.

ISBN

Ulbrich, David, "Lost Cause" (2000) in Heidler, David S. and Heidler, Jeanne T., eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company  0-393-04758-X.

ISBN

Wilson, Charles Reagan, (1980) Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press  0-8203-0681-9.

ISBN

Wilson, Charles Reagan (1997) "The Lost Cause Myth in the New South Era" in Gerster, Patrick and Cords, Nicholas, editors Myth America: A Historical Anthology, Volume II. St. James, New York: Brandywine Press.  1-881089-97-5

ISBN

Schivelbusch, Wolfgang (2001). . New York: Picador. ISBN 0312423195.

The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery

(1866). A memoir of the last year of the War of Independence, in the Confederate States of America. Toronto, Printed by Lovell & Gibson.

Early, Jubal Anderson

Early, Jubal Anderson (1872). . Baltimore : J. Murphy.

The campaigns of Gen. Robert E. Lee

Early, Jubal Anderson (1915). . Lynchburg, Va., Press of Brown-Morrison co.

The heritage of the South

Grady, Benjamin Franklin (1899). . Raleigh, N. C., Edwards & Broughton.

The case of the South against the North; or Historical evidence justifying the southern states of the American Union in their long controversy with northern states

from the Encyclopedia of Alabama

Lost Cause Ideology

From the Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Lost Cause Myth of the Confederacy

from the University of Florida

Grayven Images: Confederate Monuments and Power of the Lost Cause in Florida

from the Encyclopedia of Georgia

Lost Cause Religion

from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History

Mississippi and the Lost Cause

from the University of Missouri

Historical Events in the Confederate Veteran: Introduction

from The Wall Street Journal

'Oracle of Lost Causes' Review: The Making of a Myth

from JSTOR Daily

Origins of the Confederate Lost Cause The mythos of The Lost Cause of the Confederacy

from Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial

Memorialization of Robert E. Lee and the Lost Cause

from The National Park Service

Confronting Slavery and Revealing the "Lost Cause"

on Half Hour of Heterodoxy

Interview with historian Adam Domby about The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory

an academic panel at Reconstruction and the Legacy of the War the 2016 conference hosted by the Civil War Institute. C-SPAN.

Origins of the Lost Cause