5. The Lost Cause facilitated the reconciliation between North and South
By the end of the 19th century, the revision of the causes of the American Civil War had grown too wide acceptance among whites in both North and South. The military leaders of the contending armies, who had fought each other with abandon during the war, re-established the ties of brotherhood in most cases. Army officers leaned on their shared experiences at West Point and in the pre-war Army, and honored their respective leadership. With few exceptions, the leaders of Confederate troops gained respect as American soldiers, who had followed their sense of honor to great sacrifice.
The United States Congress passed a law allowing the honorably discharged dead of the Confederate Army burial at the then new National Cemetery at Arlington in 1873, on the former site of the Lee-Custis plantation. In 1900 a designated section of the Cemetery allowed for Confederate dead to be buried in what became known as the Confederate Cemetery. In 1914, following a campaign spearheaded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Confederate Monument, designed to celebrate the images of the Lost Cause, was unveiled at the Cemetery. The monument included two images of enslaved blacks, one depicting a “Mammy” caring for a white child, the other a loyal slave following his owner to war. Both images were stereotypes common to the myth of the Lost Cause.