Lost Cause of the Confederacy
The "Lost Cause of the Confederacy" is a historical narrative that emerged following the American Civil War (1861–65), portraying the conflict as a noble struggle by the Southern states to defend their way of life against Northern aggression. Proponents of this concept romanticize the antebellum South, suggesting that the war was primarily about states' rights rather than the preservation of slavery. The narrative gained traction through various cultural and literary efforts, notably Edward A. Pollard's 1866 book, which aimed to present a Southern perspective on the Confederacy’s defeat.
Historically, however, most scholars assert that the preservation of slavery was central to the South’s secession and the war itself. Many of the key arguments of the Lost Cause narrative have been challenged by contemporary historians, who emphasize that enslaved people often suffered immensely and desired freedom, contradicting the notion that they were content. The discussion around the Lost Cause continues to influence modern societal debates, particularly regarding the presence and removal of Confederate monuments, as activists advocate for a reevaluation of the legacy of the Confederacy and its implications on racial justice. The ongoing dialogue reflects a broader struggle over how history is remembered and interpreted in America.
Lost Cause of the Confederacy
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy is a concept that depicts the American Civil War (1861–65) as having been an honorable and ultimately tragic struggle by the South to preserve its way of life in the face of destruction by the Union, or the North. Conceived in the immediate aftermath of the war, the Lost Cause romanticizes the antebellum South as a kind of idyllic paradise in which Southerners were their own masters. The concept asserts that the Civil War was fought primarily over the right of the Southern states to determine their own futures and that Confederate soldiers valiantly defended their culture from the tyrannical North.
Most modern historians consider the Lost Cause to be only a false history invented by former Confederates as a way to downplay the role of African American slavery in causing the war. The disagreement over the future of slavery in the United States was in fact a major component of the South's decision to secede from the Union in 1861. While some modern Southerners maintain that the Civil War was the Confederacy's righteous struggle against oppression, reputable historians assert that the preservation of slavery was central to the South's war effort.
Background
The Civil War broke out in 1861 after years of conflict between the Northern and Southern regions of the United States. The areas had become divided by laws, economics, and racial makeup. The Northern states' economies were based on manufacturing. The Southern states were mostly agrarian societies that depended on enslaved African Americans to work the farms.
Into the late 1850s, relations between the North and South became increasingly tense over the issue of whether slavery would expand to new states being added to the United States at the time. Many Northerners had come to believe slavery was morally wrong. Southerners feared their political influence in the US Congress would wane if slavery were not allowed in the new states.
Abraham Lincoln, of the recently formed Republican Party, was elected president in 1860. The Southern states saw this as the end of their way of life, since Republicans sought to stop slavery's expansion. Southerners thought Lincoln would try to end slavery altogether. This pushed the Southern states to secede from the Union. By the spring of 1861, eleven Southern states had pulled away from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy.
Contrary to the claims of the Lost Cause narrative that took hold in the South after the Civil War, slavery was a major reason many of the Southern states left the Union. The states said as much in their declarations regarding their secessions. Georgia, for instance, stated the US Congress had treated the South unfairly by trying to prevent slavery from expanding into new Western territories. Texas believed the US government was attempting to upend the Southern way of life by spreading discord with the abolitionist movement. Abolitionism was the campaign to end slavery. Mississippi declared it had been left with a choice either to accept Northern abolition efforts or secede from the Union.
Overview
The idea of the Civil War being the Confederacy's virtuous "Lost Cause" defense against Northern persecution likely originated in the 1866 book The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, by Virginia newspaper editor Edward A. Pollard. In this work, Pollard uses a Southern perspective to tell the story of the Confederacy's loss in the war. The phrase lost cause quickly became popular among Southerners as a reference to the Confederacy's loss and to the Southern culture that the war had destroyed.
The Lost Cause painted the Civil War as the Confederacy's battle to protect Southern life from the North. Some historians have outlined six chief arguments made by the Lost Cause model of Confederate history:
It was the secession of the eleven Southern states, not slavery, that led to the outbreak of war.
African Americans enjoyed being enslaved, and they would not have known how to manage freedom.
The Union defeated the Confederacy only because it possessed military advantages.
Confederate soldiers fought bravely.
Confederate commander Robert E. Lee is the most heroic Confederate figure.
Confederate women were considered sacred because they actively supported the war effort.
Southerners spread this version of Civil War history throughout the South by means of historical societies, memorial associations, and newspaper articles. The memorial societies created cemeteries for deceased Confederate soldiers and started Confederate memorial day celebrations. This memorial day would be observed every April 26, the date in 1865 when Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman near Durham, North Carolina.
Contemporary history considers the Lost Cause concept to be nothing more than a myth, a Southern attempt to rewrite history to depict the Confederacy as fighting for nobler causes than the preservation of slavery. Historians critical of the Lost Cause claim that slavery was a predominant cause of the Civil War and that the secession of the Southern states would not have happened were it not for the North-South disagreement on slavery. Regarding Southern claims that enslaved people were happy to be subservient to their White enslavers, twenty-first-century scholarship asserts that many enslaved people were miserable in their conditions and longed to escape to freedom.
Additionally, while the Union was in fact better supplied than the Confederacy, Northern generals are still believed to have accomplished great battlefield feats in overcoming the highly capable Confederate armies. Historians also note that though many Confederate soldiers indeed fought and died bravely, desertion and criminality still existed within their ranks. Lost Cause dogma on Lee turned the man into a kind of legend after his death in 1870. While Lee was respected both by Northerners and Southerners, objective historians point out that he still fought for the life of the Confederacy and the perpetuation of slavery. Relating to Confederate women's support for the war, modern scholarship indicates this support was stronger among wealthy women but weak or nonexistent among women in poverty, who resented that the expensive war was keeping them in poverty. Some poor Confederate women even rioted over food shortages.
Advocacy of Lost Cause principles still existed in the American South in the twenty-first century, primarily in the form of heritage groups. Some of these organizations still actively championed the Confederate cause and thought the South could secede from the United States again. Such advocacy became especially prominent in 2020, following nationwide protests against systemic racial injustice sparked by incidents that included racially motivated attacks against and the police-involved killings of people of color. Activists for racial equality and justice renewed calls for memorials to the Confederacy and Confederate leaders to be removed from public places, especially public squares and governmental buildings. This ongoing movement for removal has argued that such monuments are offensively symbolic and harmfully substantiative of racial injustice and White supremacy. Beginning in the summer of 2020, states such as North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, and Virginia had Confederate monuments removed from areas such as their capital cities and sites serving as the seat of state or local government; in 2021, Virginia removed a large statue of Lee from Richmond in addition to removing the statue of his likeness from within the US Capitol building. One long-standing, high-profile group that continued to protest Confederate monument removal was the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which had initially been formed in 1894 by women with hereditary lines to people who fought for or were otherwise involved in supporting the Confederacy. As well as further disseminating their view of the history of the Confederacy and the Civil War based on Lost Cause principles, the group remained highly involved in commemorative efforts such as monuments, even filing lawsuits to protect them; they argue that the monuments are important relics of a shared history while other supporters also contend that they have relevance to Southern pride in terms of the Lost Cause. Meanwhile, established historians continue to label the Lost Cause's romanticizing of the antebellum South as a mythical false history.
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