How the Lost Cause changed American History and Created its Pseudo-History

23. The Lost Cause movement created America’s memorials honoring the Confederacy

From the end of Reconstruction through the beginning of the 21^st century, proponents of the Lost Cause continued to revise the history of the antebellum South and the American Civil War. They argued that state’s rights, the Constitutionality of secession, and individual freedom were the causes of the Civil War, not slavery. The argument ignores the fact that secession and promotion of state’s rights were legalistic points intended to allow states to continue to hold men, women, and children in bondage, as chattel property, and to expand the practice into new territories. The fact of Confederate leaders believed in and supported white supremacy, easily discerned from their own writings, is clear. Yet monuments were built to honor them throughout the country.

One historian, Allan Nolan, has called the tenets of the Lost Cause a “caricature of history”. Nolan suggested a new study of the critical period “…from the premises of history unadulterated by the distortions, falsehoods, and romantic sentimentality of the Myth of the Lost Cause“. For generations that myth was taught in classrooms, described in books both scholarly and entertaining, depicted in films and television, and reinforced in monuments and memorials. From it, the divisiveness of the Civil War still troubles the national psyche, and informs American politics. It continues to be reinforced by bloggers, politicians, neo-Confederates, and even some museums and conventions. It was not only the memorials which continued divisiveness in America, as Lee predicted, but the motives behind them.

Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

“The Half has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism”. Edward E. Baptist. 2014

“Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant”. Ulysses S. Grant. 1886

“7 Things the United Daughters of the Confederacy might not want you to know about them”. Kali Holloway, Salon. October 6, 2018

“Confederate Memorial”. Article, Arlington National Cemetery. Online

“Moses Jacob Ezekiel”. Keith E. Gibson, Encyclopedia of Virginia. Online

“Thomas Dixon Jr.: Conflicts in History and Literature”. Andrew Leiter. 2004

“Monument Avenue Historic District”. Sarah S. Driggs. August 1997. Pdf, online

“The Southern Cross of Honor: Historical Notes and Trial List of Varieties”. Peter Bertram. 2003

“The Worst Thing About ‘Birth of a Nation’ Is How Good It Is”. Richard Brody, The New Yorker. February 1, 2013

“A Measuring Rod to Test Text Books, and Reference Books in Schools, Colleges and Libraries”. Mildred Lewis Rutherford

“Time to Expose the Women Still Celebrating the Confederacy”. Kali Holloway, The Daily Beast. November 12, 2018