The Lost Cause of Confederacy , or just Lost Cause , is an ideological movement that describes the cause of the Confederacy as heroic against great opportunities despite its defeat. Ideology supports the alleged virtues of the pre-war South, seeing the American Civil War as an honorable struggle for the Southern way of life while minimizing or denying the central role of slavery.
The Ideology of the Missing Cause synthesizes many ideas. Lost Cause supporters argue that slavery is not the main cause of the Civil War, and claims that some scholars see it as before the 1950s. To reach this conclusion, they ignored the declaration of secession by the breakaway states, the declaration of congressmen who left Congress to join the Confederacy, and the treatment of slavery in the Confederate constitution. They also rejected or minimized the writings and speeches of the Confederate leaders who supported the postwar outlook. (See the Cornerstone Speech.) Supporters often emphasize the idea of ​​secession as a defense against Northern threats to their way of life and say that the threat violates the rights of the state guaranteed by the Constitution. They believe every country has the right to escape, something that North Korea strongly rejects. The Lost Cause describes the South as more obedient to Christian values ​​than the allegedly greedy North. It describes slavery as better than cruel, alleging that it teaches Christianity and "civilization." The story of "happy slaves" is often used as propaganda in an attempt to defend slavery. These stories will be used to explain slavery to the people of the North. Often they also describe slave owners being nice to their slaves. In explaining the defeat of the Confederacy, the Lost Cause says that the main factor is not qualitative inferiority in leadership or fighting ability but the massive quantitative advantage of the Yankee industrial machine. At the height of troop strength in 1863, Union troops lost the Confederate troop by more than two to one, and financially the Union had three bank deposits as Confederate.
Critics of ideology have argued that white supremacy is a central characteristic of the Lost Missing narrative. Proponents usually illustrate the cause of Confederation as noble and its leadership as an example of ancient courtesy and honor, defeated by Union forces through numerical and industrial powers that defeat the superior military and courage skills of the South. Proponents of the Lost Cause Movement also condemned the Reconstruction following the Civil War, claiming that it was a deliberate attempt by North politicians and speculators to destroy the traditional Southern way of life. In the last few decades, the Lost Cause theme has been widely promoted by the Neo-Confederation movement in books and op-eds, and especially in one of the motion magazines, Southern Partisan. The Lost Cause theme has been a major element in defining the role of gender in the white South, in terms of honor, tradition, and family roles. The Lost Cause has inspired many prominent Southern memories and even religious attitudes.
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Many white Southern people were destroyed economically, emotionally, and psychologically by the defeat of the Confederacy. Before the war, many Southerners proudly felt that their rich military tradition and high dedication to the concept of honor would enable them to win in conflict. While this is not the case, Southern White people are looking for amusement in connecting their losses with factors beyond their control, such as immense physical size and immense power.
Profesor University of Virginia Gary W. Gallagher menulis:
The architects of the Lost Cause act from various motives. They collectively seek to justify their own actions and allow themselves and other Confederates to find something positive in their all-encompassing failure. They also want to give their children and the next generation of whites with the 'right' narratives of war.
The Lost Cause became an important part of the reconciliation process between North and South around 1900, and formed the basis of many South South postbellum war memorials. The United Daughters of the Confederacy is a large organization that has been associated with Lost Cause for over a century.
Yale University history professor Rollin G. Osterweis summarizes content that includes the words "Losing the Cause":
The Legend of the Lost Cause begins as a largely literary expression of the despair of the bitter and defeated people over the lost identity. It is a landscape adorned with figures drawn mainly from the past: a knight-planter; southern magnolia-sized sling; a good gray Confederate veteran, once a knight in the field and saddle; and require old Uncle Remus. All of this, while quickly shrouded in golden fog, became very real to the South people, who found useful symbols in rebuilding their destroyed civilization. They capture the ideals of the Old South and bring comfort to the New.
Louisiana State University history professor Gaines Foster writes in 2013:
Academics have reached a fair deal about the role that Lost Cause played in those years, although scholarship on Lost Cause, like the memory itself, is debatable. The Southern White, who most agree, dedicates great efforts to celebrate the Confederate leaders and general soldiers, stressing that they have defended their honor and the South.
The term Lost Cause first appeared in the title of a book of 1866 by author and journalist Robert A. Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates . Pollard promotes many themes from Lost Cause. In particular, he denied the role of slavery in the beginning of the war and reduced the cruelty of American slavery, even promoting it as a way to improve the lives of Africans:
We will not enter into the discussion of the moral problems of slavery. But we can cast doubt on here whether the abominable term "slavery" has been so long imposed, by exaggerating the North writers, for the world's appraisal and sympathy, applied correctly to the slavery system in the South, which is really the most light in the world; which does not rely on degrading and depriving actions, but raises the Africans, and for the sake of human refinement; and who, under the law of the state, protect the negro in life and limbs, and in many private rights, and, with the practice of the system, give him individual indulgences, which make him absolutely the most striking type in the world of cheerfulness and satisfaction.
However, it is an article written by General Jubal A. The early 1870s for the Southern Historical Society that firmly established The Lost Cause as a lasting cultural and literary phenomenon. The 1881 publication of the Revival and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis, the two-volume defense of the Southern cause, provides another important text in the history of the Lost Missing. Davis blames the enemy for "no matter what bloodshed, destruction, or shock to the republican government resulting from war." He alleged that the Yankees were fighting "with a ferocity that ignores all civilized laws of war." This book remains in print and is often used to justify the South's position and keep it away from slavery.
The original original inspiration for his view may have come from General Robert E. Lee. When Lee issued his farewell order to the Northern Virginia Army, he comforted his soldiers by talking about the "resources and extraordinary amounts" championed by the Confederate army. In a letter to Early, Lee requested information about enemy forces from May 1864 to April 1865, a period in which his troops fought against Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant (Campaign for the Army and the Siege of Petersburg). Lee wrote, "My only object is to transmit, if possible, the truth to posterity, and do justice to our brave Soldiers." In another letter, Lee wants all "statistics in terms of quantities, personal property damage by Federal forces, & amp; c." because he intended to show a mismatch in the forces between the two soldiers and believes it would be "difficult to make the world understand the opportunities we are striving for." Referring to a newspaper account accusing him of loss, he writes, "I do not think it is appropriate to pay attention, or even to correct the misinterpretation of my words & actions. We must be patient, & suffer for a while at least. The public mind is not ready to accept the truth. "These are the themes made by the writers of the nineteenth-century Early and the Lost Cause and which continued to be important throughout the 20th century.
In a November 1868 report, US Army General George Henry Thomas, a Virginian who fought for the Union in the war, notes an attempt by the former Confederate to paint the Confederacy in a positive light, stating:
The biggest effort made by the losing rebels since the close of the war was to disseminate the notion that the cause of freedom, justice, humanity, equality, and all virtues of freedom of liberty, suffered violent and wrong when the attempt for southern independence failed. This, of course, is meant as a political species, where the treachery of evil may be covered with false varnish of patriotism, so that the insistence of rebellion may fall in history in hand with government defenders, thus removing by their own hands their own stains; an amazing species of self-forgiveness in its absence, when it is considered that life and property - which were seized by state law, war and nation, through the generosity of the government and the people - were not demanded from them.
Memorial Associations such as United Nations Confederation Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and Ladies Memorial Associations integrate the Lost Cause theme to help whites, Southern Confederates overcome many changes during this era, the most significant of the Reconstruction. These institutions have been going on until now and the descendants of the Southern army continue to attend their meetings.
In 1879 John McElroy published "Andersonville: The Prison of Rebel Military Prison" which was very critical of the Confederate treatment of the prisoners; it is implied in the foreword that Confederate mythology has been established and that the criticism of a perceived Confederacy is otherwise met with contempt:
I know that what's contained here will be rejected. I'm ready for this. In my childhood, I watched the bastion of aggression of Slavery - in my youth, I felt the enmity of hatred directed towards all who stood beside the Nation. I know hell does not have the anger like revenge of those who are injured by the truths told to them.
20th century to present
The basic assumption of Lost Cause has proven durable for many people in the modern South. The principles of Lost Cause are often voiced during the controversy surrounding the public display of Confederate flags and various state flags. Historian John Coski notes that Confederate Veterans' sons, the most visible, active, and effective "flag defenders", "were brought into the 21st century, almost unchanged, the historical interpretations of the Lost and the Vision of ideology formulated at the turn of the century twenty. "Coski writes about" flag wars at the end of the 20th century ":
From the early 1950s, SCV officials defended the integrity of the battle flag against trivialization and against those who insisted that its displays were unpatriotic or racist. The SCV spokesman repeated the consistent argument that the South was fighting legitimately for independence, not a war to defend slavery, and that the "Yankee" view that influenced history falsely slandered the South and made people misinterpret the battle flag.
The Confederate States of America used several flags during its existence from 1861 to 1865. Since the end of the American Civil War, the private and official use of Confederate flags, and flags of this origin, continue to be under controversy. The current state flag of Mississippi, created in 1894 after the country's "Redemption", including the Confederate battle flag.
On March 23, 2015, a case related to the Confederate flag reached the United States Supreme Court. Walker v. The Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans focuses on whether or not the state of Texas can refuse requests by SCV for license plates incorporating Confederate battle flags. The case was heard by the Court on March 23, 2015. On June 18, 2015, the Supreme Court, in 5-4 votes, stated that Texas was entitled to reject SCV's proposal.
In October 2015 anger erupted online on the discovery of Texan's school geography books depicting slaves as "immigrants" and "workers". The publisher, McGraw-Hill, announced that it would change his words. Many interpret this as an inheritance of the minimization and enslavement of slavery associated with the Lost Cause movement.
Maps Lost Cause of the Confederacy
North and South Reunification
Nolan stated that the Lost Cause "facilitates North and South reunification." He quoted Foster, who said, "the marks of honor from former enemies and northern publishers made the reunion reception easier." By the mid-eighties, most of the south had decided to build a future in a reunited nation. "The second aspect of Nolan is that," The reunion is just a white phenomenon and the price of a reunion is an African-American sacrifice. "
Historian Caroline Janney states:
Giving a sense of relief to the South white people who fear rejection by defeat, The Lost Cause was largely accepted in the years after the war by white Americans who found it to be a useful tool in North and South reconciliation.
Sejarawan Yale David W. Blight menulis:
The Lost Cause becomes an integral part of national reconciliation by mere sentimentalism, by political arguments, and by recurring celebrations and rituals. For most white South people, the Lost Cause develops into a language of justification and renewal, as well as public practices and monuments through which they can establish both South and American pride. In the 1890s, Confederate memories no longer dwell as mourning or explaining defeat; they offer a set of conservative traditions that can be used by the whole country to combat racial, political and industrial disturbances. And with the sheer virtue of losing the heroes of the Confederate army provides a model of masculine devotion and courage in an age full of gender anxiety and cruel material struggles.
In exploring the literature of reconciliation, the historian William Tynes Cowa wrote, "The Cults of the Lost Cause are part of a larger cultural project: North and South reconciliation after the Civil War." He said that the distinctive image in postwar fiction was a materialistic, wealthy Yankee who married a poor spiritual Southern bride as a symbol of a happy national reunion. Researching film and visual arts, Gallagher identifies the theme of "white North and Southern Whites who praise the virtues of America that embodied both sides during the war, to elevate the restored nation arising from conflict, and to disable the role of African Americans. "
Bruce Catton argues that myths or legends help achieve national reconciliation between North and South. He concludes, "the legend of the lost cause has served the whole country very well", and he goes on to say:
The things that were done during the Civil War have not been forgotten, of course, but we now see them through the veil. We've upgraded all conflicts to areas where they no longer explode. This is part of American legend, part of American history, in part, if you will, about American romance. It drives men desperately, to this day, but it does not move them toward taking their weapons and going again. We have had a national peace since the war ended, and we will always have it, and I think the way Lee and his soldiers doing themselves in the hours of surrender has many things to do with it.
New South
Historians say that the theme "Lost Cause" helps the white South people adjust to their new status and move forward to what is called "New New." Hillyer states that the Confederation Memorial Literary Society (CMLS), founded by elite white women in Richmond, Virginia, in the 1890s, exemplified this solution. The CMLS founded the Confederate Museum to document and defend the cause of the Confederation and to recall the prewar customs that a new South Korean business ethos is supposed to be replacing. By focusing on military sacrifices, rather than complaints about the North, the Confederation Museum assists the reconciliation process, according to Hillyer. By portraying slavery as something benevolent, the museum exhibit reinforces the notion that Jim Crow's law is the right solution to rising racial tension during the Reconstruction. Lastly, by glorifying the common army and portraying the South as "solid," the museum promotes the acceptance of industrial capitalism. Thus, the Confederation Museum criticized and defused New South's economic transformation, and allowed Richmond to reconcile his memories of the past in his hope for the future, leaving the past as he developed a new industrial and financial role.
Historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall states that the Lost Cause theme was fully developed around 1900 in an atmosphere not out of desperation but about victory for New South. Many are left behind from Lost Cause:
[N] both the trauma of slavery to African Americans and their heroic and sad struggle of independence find their place in the story. But the story of Lost Cause also suppresses the memories of many southern white people. Memories of how, under slavery, the cruelty of power reared. The memories of an unbearable bloody war. It was also composed of competing memories and identities that made the southerners mingle with one another, pitting the planters against the up-country, the Unionists against the Confederates, the Populists and the factory workers against corporations, the front-line women against war-ravaged people, broken people.
Religious dimension
Charles Wilson argues that many white South Africans, most of whom are conservative and pious evangelical Protestants, seek answers to the defeat of the Confederacy in religion. They felt that the defeat in war was God's punishment for their sins, and turned into religion as their solace. The postwar era saw the birth of a severe regional "civil religion" with symbolism and ritual; the priest is the main celebrity. Wilson said that ministers were built:
Lost Cause a ritualistic form that celebrates their regional theological mythology and beliefs. They use the Lost Cause to warn the South about their decline from past virtues, to promote moral reform, to encourage conversion to Christianity, and to educate youth in the Southern tradition; in the fullness of time, they are related to American values.
The Southern White people are trying to defend on the cultural and religious level what defeat in 1865 is impossible at the political level. The Lost Cause - defeat in holy war - leaving the southerners to face the guilt, the doubts, and the triumph of evil: that is, they form what C. Vann Woodward has referred to as the unique Southern nuance of the historical tragedy. "
Poole has said that in the struggle to defeat the Republic's reconstruction government in South Carolina in 1876, the white Democrats described the Lost Cause scenario through the "Hampton Days" festival shouting "Hampton or Hell!". They held a contest between reconstruction opponents and Democratic Wade Hampton candidate and governor of the ruling, Daniel H. Chamberlain as a religious struggle between good and evil, and called for "redemption." Indeed, throughout the South the conservatives who overthrew the Reconstruction are often called "Redeemers," echoing Christian theology.
Gender roles
Among the authors of the Causes of Lost, the role of gender contested domains. Men are usually in a hurry by the roles that women play during the war, noting their total loyalty for the purpose. However, women developed a much different approach that emphasized women's activism, initiative and leadership. They explained that when all the men leave, the women take command, find replacement food, rediscover their old traditional skills with spinning wheels when factory fabrics become unavailable, and run all farming or plantation operations. They face real danger without men in their traditional protective role.
The task of memorializing Confederate victims is a major activity for the South person devoted to Causes of Lost; chapters of United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) play a central role. UDC was very influential in the early 20th century in the South, where its main role was to defend and uphold the memory of Confederate veterans, especially husbands, sons, fathers and siblings who died in the war. Its long-term impact is to promote the image of Lost Cause from plantations before the Southern war as an ideal society destroyed by the power of modernization of Yankees that undermined traditional gender roles. In Missouri, a border state, the princesses of the Confederate Union were active in establishing their own warning system. Hall said that UDC is a strong promoter of women's history:
UDC leaders are determined to affirm women's cultural authority over almost every representation of the region's past. This they do by lobbying for state archives and museums, national historic sites, and historic highways; compile the pedigree; interviewing former soldiers; writing history textbooks; and set up a monument, which now moves triumphantly from the cemetery to the city center. More than half a century before women's history and public history emerged as a field of investigation and action, the UDC, with other female associations, sought to incise women's achievements into historical records and to take history for the people, from the nursery and campfire. to the school building and the public square.
Indeed, there is even some evidence to suggest that there is a link between the publication of the Lost Cause book and the creation of a confederate warning: "Confederate Confederation" Lizzie Cary Daniel made it clear in the foreword and on the title page that it was specifically published to fund the establishment of two monuments warning (implied confederate). Therefore this book plays a double role of glorifying the Confederacy in song, poetry and other war memorabilia, while also paying for their more enduring and public warnings.
The Southern States established their own pension system for veterans and their dependents, especially widows. They are not eligible for the Federal pension system. The pensions are designed to honor the Loss of Causes, and help alleviate the severe poverty that occurs in the region. The male applicant for retirement should show their loyalty to the "lost cause". Women applicants are denied if their moral reputation is questioned.
In Natchez, Mississippi, local newspapers and veterans played a role in the maintenance of The Lost Cause. However, elite white women became central in establishing such memorials as the Civil War Monument dedicated to the Day of Commemoration of 1890. The Lost Causes enabled noncompetent women to file claims for major events in their Southern history redefinition.
UDC is quite prominent, but not at all unique in its appeal to upper white women. "The number of women's clubs devoted to philosophy and history is staggering," says historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage. He noted two typical club women in Texas and Mississippi, who belonged to United Daughters of Confederacy, Daughters of the Revolution, the Virginia Antiquities Conservation Association, Daughters of the Pilgrims, Daughters of the War of 1812, Colonial Daughters of Governors and Daughters American Founder and Patriot, First Family Family of Virginia, and American Colonial Dames, and several other historically oriented societies. In contrast, comparable males, less interested in historical organizations, and devote their energies to secret societies of fraternity, while they emphasize sports, politics and finance to prove their masculinity. Brundage notes that after women's suffrage came in 1920, the historical role of women's organizations was eroded.
In their heyday in the first two decades of the 20th century, Brundage concluded that:
These women are architects of white history's memories, explaining and astonishing the historical roots of white supremacy and the power of the elite in the South, performing striking citizenship functions at a time of heightened concern about the continuity of social and political hierarchies. Although rejected by franchises, organized white women continue to play a dominant role in the craft of historical memory that will inform and support southern politics and public life.
Tenets
(WHF Lee) objected to the overused sentences - South and North - that the Confederates fought for what they considered to be true. They are fighting for what they know to be true. They, like the Greeks, struggled to go home, their male tombs, and their homeland.
[The] slave instincts [slaves] make them satisfied with their fate, and the hard work of their patients bless their homeland with unmeasurable wealth. Their strong local and personal attachments ensure a loyal service... never more happier dependencies than labor and capital on one another. The tempter came, like the serpent of Eden, and enticed them with the magic word of 'freedom'... He laid the weapon in their hands, and practiced their humble but emotional nature to commit violence and bloodshed, and sent them out to destroy the their generosity.
Some of the key principles of the Lost Cause movement are that:
- The Confederate Generals like Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson represent the virtues of the South's nobles and fight bravely and justly. On the other hand, most of the Northern generals are characterized as having low moral standards, because they make Southern civilians as an insult like Sherman March to the Sea and Philip Sheridan burning the Shenandoah Valley in the Campaign Valley in 1864. While the General Union Ulysses S. Grant is often described as an addict alcohol.
- Losses on the battlefield are inevitable due to the North's superiority in resources and labor.
- The loss of the battlefield is also sometimes the result of betrayal and incompetence on the part of certain subordinates of General Lee, such as General James Longstreet, who is reviled for doubting Lee in Gettysburg (The Lost Cause mainly focused on Lee and East Theater operations, and often cited Gettysburg as a major turning point of the war).
- The defense of state rights, rather than the preservation of slavery, is the main cause that causes eleven Southern states to escape from the Union, thus provoking war.
- Separation is a justifiable constitutional response to Northern cultural and economic aggression against the institution of Southern slavery.
- Slavery is a hospitable institution, and its slaves are faithful and loyal to their benevolent masters, in contrast to the reality of racism, brutality, and dehumanization.
- Algood identifies the ideals of the Southern aristocracy, usually called the "South Cavalier ideal" in the Lost Cause. This mainly appears in Confederate partisan studies that are fighting behind Union lines, such as Nathan Bedford Forrest, Turner Ashby, John Singleton Mosby, and John Hunt Morgan. The author emphasizes how they embody courage in the face of great obstacles, as well as riding, maturity and morale.
Symbol
General Confederation
The most powerful images and symbols of Lost Cause are Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Pickett's Charge. David Ulbrich writes, "Having been worshiped during the war, Robert E. Lee acquired a divine mystique in Southern culture afterwards.Remembered as a leader whose soldiers will faithfully follow him into every battle, no matter how desperate, Lee emerges from conflict to become a icon of Lost Cause and ideal of the southern man before the war, a respectable and pious man who selflessly serves Virginia and the Confederacy. Lee's tactical tyranny at Second Bull Run and Chancellorsville takes on a legendary status, and although he accepts full responsibility for Defeat at Gettysburg, Lee is largely perfect for the South people and spared criticism even from historians to date. "Victor Davis Hansen points out that Albert Sidney Johnston was the first officer to be appointed full general by Jefferson Davis and lead the Confederate forces at the Western Theater. His death during the first day of battle in Shiloh practically led to the defeat of the Confederacy in the conflict.
In the case of Lee's subordinate, the main villain in Jubal Early's view was General Longstreet. Despite the fact that General Lee took all responsibility for the defeat (especially that in Gettysburg), his early writings put the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg right on Longstreet's shoulders, accusing him of failing to attack early on July 2, 1863, as instructed by Lee. In fact, however, Lee never expressed his dissatisfaction with the second day's action "Old War Horse." Longstreet was greatly underestimated by Southern veterans for his postwar cooperation with President Ulysses S. Grant (with whom he shared close friendship before the war) and to join the Republican Party. Grant, in rejecting the Cause of Lost Causes, said in an 1878 interview that he rejected the notion that the South was simply overwhelmed by numbers. Grant writes that "This is the way public opinion was made during the war and this is the way history is made now, we have never mastered the South... What we won from the South we won with a hard struggle." He further noted that when comparing resources, "4,000,000 negro" that "guarding the farm, protecting the family, supporting the army, and actually power reserves" is not treated as a southern asset.
Northern Aggression and Abraham Lincoln
One important element of the Lost Cause movement is that the act of secession is legal; if not, all beloved Confederates will be traitors. To legitimize the Confederate uprising, the Lost Cause intellectuals emphasized the invalidity of the federal government and the crime of Abraham Lincoln as President. This is exemplified in "Coercion or Approval as the Foundation of American Government" by Mary Scrugham, in which he presents reckless arguments against the legality of the Lincoln presidency. This includes accepting minorities (and unspecified plurality) from popular vote in the 1860 election and the false assertion that he made his position on slavery ambiguous. These allegations, though disputed in their entirety, led to the belief that North Korea started civil war, making names like "The War of Northern Aggression" possible.
Movies
Birth of a Nation
Another prominent use from the Lost Cause perspective is in the novel Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. 1905 The Clansman , later adapted to the screen by DW Griffith in his highly successful but controversial book The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Given that Dixon and Griffith collaborated on > Birth of a Nation , Blight writes:
The Dixon demonic version of the idea that blacks have caused the Civil War in their presence, and that Northern radicalism during Reconstruction failed to understand that freedom has led blacks as a race to barbarism, neatly framing the story of the rise of heroic vigilantism in the South. Reluctantly, the white Clans - must take the law into their own hands to save the white feminine of the South from the black male sexual brutality. Dixon's vision captures the attitudes of thousands of people and is forged in the form of a collective memory of how the war might have been lost but the Reconstruction was won - by the South and the reconciled country. Riding as a masked cavalry, the Clans halted corrupt governments, prevented the anarchy of 'Negro rule,' and most importantly, saving white supremacy.
In both his book and his film, the Ku Klux Klan is described as continuing the traditions of the aristocratic South before the war and the heroic Confederate warriors by defending the Southern culture in general and South feminism in particular against rape and depredation in the hands of Freedmen and Yankee carpetbaggers during Reconstruction. Dixon's narratives are so easily adopted that the film is credited with the Klan's revival in the 1910s and 1920s. This second clan reaches the top membership of 2-5 million members. The legacy of this film is vast in the history of American racism; even the crossfire of the now iconic KKK is based on the book (the first KKK did not burn the cross - this was originally a Scottish tradition called "Crann Tara", designed to collect war clans).
Go with the Wind
The Lost Cause view reached tens of millions of Americans in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 best-selling novel Gone with the Wind and an Oscar-winning 1939 movie. Helen Taylor has written that:
Gone with the Wind almost certainly does his ideological work. It has closed in the popular imagination an enthralled nostalgia for a glamorous southern plantation house and ordered a hierarchical society where slaves are 'family,' and there is a mystical bond between the landowner and the fertile land of the slaves working for him. He has spoken eloquently - albeit from an elitist perspective - of the great themes (war, love, death, race, class, gender, and generation) that have crossed continents and cultures.
Blight menulis:
From this combination of Lost Cause voices, an united America rises again with pure, innocent, and assured that deep conflicts in the past have been forced upon it by other world powers. The losers are convinced that the cause is right and good. One of the ideas formulated by Reconciliationist Lost Cause in national culture is that even when Americans lose, they win. That is the message, the persistent spirit, that Margaret Mitchell put in her character Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind ...
The southerners are portrayed as heroic aristocratic figures, living in a cursed romantic society, rejecting the realistic advice offered by the character of Rhett Butler and never understanding the risks they take in war.
God and General
The 2003 Civil War Movie God and Generals , based on the 1998 Jeff Shaara novel of the same name, is widely seen as championing the ideology of Lost Cause by making a favorable presentation of the Confederacy.
Writing in the Journal of American History, historian Steven E. Woodworth mocks the film as a modern day that tells the myth of Lost Cause. Woodworth called the film "the most pro-Confederate film ever since Birth of a Nation , a real celestial celebration of slavery and betrayal." He concluded his reason for not liking the movie by saying:
Gods and Generals bring to the big screen the main theme of Lost Cause mythology that professional historians have worked for half a century to fight. In the world of Gods and Generals, slavery has nothing to do with the Confederacy. Instead, the noble Confederacy is fighting for, not against, freedom, because viewers are reminded again and again by one white south character after another.
Woodworth criticized the depiction of slaves as "generally happy" with their condition. He also criticized the lack of attention given to the motivation of the Union soldiers who fought in the war. He alienated the film for allegedly implying, according to Lost Cause myth, that the South is more "sincere Christian." Woodworth concluded that the film, through "judicial neglect", presents "a distorted view of the Civil War."
Historian William B. Feis also criticized the director's decision "to fight for a simpler, cleaner interpretation found in the postwar myth" Lost Cause ". Film critic Roger Ebert described the film as "a Civil War movie that Trent Lott might enjoy" and says the theme of Missing Loss, "If World War II is dealt with in this way, there will be hell to pay."
The film critic's consensus for the film is that the film has a striking "pro-confederation emergence".
Literature
William Faulkner
In his novels about the Sartoris family, William Faulkner refers to those who support the ideals of Lost Cause, stating that the ideals themselves are misguided and outdated.
Further adoption
Professor Gallagher argues that the clear four-volume biography of Jason Graham Freeman, published in 1934, "cemented in American letters, Lee's interpretation is very close to the truly heroic Early figure." In this work, Lee's subordinates are mainly to blame for the losing fault in battle. While Longstreet is the most common target of such attacks, others are also under attack. Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, J. E. B. Stuart, A. P. Hill, George Pickett, and many others are often attacked and blamed by the South in an attempt to fend off criticism from Lee.
Hudson Strode wrote a widely read three-volume biography from Confederate President Jefferson Davis. A leading scientific journal addresses it by emphasizing Strode's political bias:
His enemy [Jefferson Davis] is a demon, and his friends, like Davis himself, have been canonized. Shifting not only tries to sanctify Davis but also the Confederation point of view, and this research should be enjoyed by those sympathetic sympathetic to the Lost Cause.
The Texas Civil War Museum has been called in 2018 "a beautiful bit of propaganda 'Lost Cause'".
Contemporary historian
Contemporary historians strongly agree that secession is motivated by slavery. There are many causes of secession, but the preservation and expansion of slavery is easily the most important of them. Confusion may come from mixing the causes of secession with the causes of war - separate but problem-related. (Lincoln did not enter military conflicts to liberate slaves but to rebel.) Historian Kenneth M. Stampp claims that each side supports state or federal rights only if it is convenient to do so. Stampp also quotes the Vice-President of the Confederation Alexander Stephens Constitutional View on the Last Inter-State War as an example of a Southern leader who said that slavery was "the foundation of Confederation" when the war began and then said that war is not about slavery but rights country after the South defeat. According to Stampp, Stephens became one of the most persistent defenders of the theory of 'Lost Cause'.
Similarly, historian William C. Davis explains the protection of Confederate Confederate Slavery at the national level as follows:
To the old Union they say that the Federal power does not have the authority to disrupt the problem of slavery in a state. For their new country, they will state that the state has no power to interfere with the protection of federal slavery. Of all the many testimonies about the fact that slavery, and not state rights, really lies at the heart of their movement, this is the most impressive.
Davis further notes that, "The causes and effects of war have been manipulated and mititized to fit the political and social agendas, past and present." Historian David Blight says that "the use of white supremacy as a means and purpose" has been a central feature of Lost Cause. Historian Allan Nolan writes:
... Ã, Lost The cause of inheritance into history is a caricature of truth. Caricature completely misrepresents and distorts the facts of the matter. Surely it is time to begin again in our understanding of the decisive elements of our past and to do so from historical places not faked by the distortion, falsehood, and romantic sentimentality of the Missing Cause Myth.
There are modern chroniclers of Lost Cause, such as James Ronald Kennedy and his twin brother Walter Donald Kennedy (founder of The League of the South and The South Was Right writer!) And Jefferson Davis True! ), which ruled out slavery as a reason to support Southern nationalism. The Kennedys describes the "terrorist methods" and "heinous crimes" committed by the Union during the war and later in the chapter titled "The Yankee Campaign of Cultural Genocide" stated that they would show "from the official records of the United States government itself that the main motivating factor is the desire from those in power to punish and annihilate the South and in many cases to get the extermination of the South. "
In debating why the theme of this book is important to contemporary South people, Kennedy writes at the end of their work:
The South people have all the power we need to end the bushing, affirmative, wasted welfare spending, the punitive Justice Rights Act, the rejection of the Northern Liberals to allow the conservatives of the South to sit in the United States Supreme Courts , and the exploitation of the Southern economy into secondary economic status. What is needed is not more power but a desire to use the power that exists! The choice now is yours - ignore this challenge and remain a second-class citizen, or unite with your Southern colleagues and help start the Southern political revolution.
Historian David Goldfield characterizes books such as
... Explains that "The War of North Aggression is not striven to maintain the unity of historical creation, formation, and understanding, but to achieve a new unity with conquest and looting." As for the abolitionists, they are a collection of socialists, atheists, and "disgraceful agitators."
Historian William C. Davis calls many of the myths surrounding the war as "reckless" and includes attempts to rename the war by "Confederate partisans" that continue to this day. He claimed names like the War of Northern Aggression and the expression created by Alexander Stephens, the Inter-War War, was merely an attempt to deny that the Civil War was a real civil war.
Historian A. Cash Koiniger has theorized that Gary Gallagher has slandered films depicting The Lost Cause. He wrote, Gallagher:
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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