The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History

by Gary W. Gallagher (Editor), Alan T. Nolan (Editor)

Was the Confederacy doomed from the start in its struggle against the superior might of the Union? Did its forces fight heroically against all odds for the cause of states' rights? In reality, these suggestions are an elaborate and intentional effort on the part of Southerners to rationalize the secession and the war itself. Unfortunately, skillful propagandists have been so successful in promoting this romanticized view that the Lost Cause has assumed a life of its own. Misrepresenting the war's true origins and its actual course, the myth of the Lost Cause distorts our national memory. In The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, nine historians describe and analyze the Lost Cause, identifying ways in which it falsifies history -- creating a volume that makes a significant contribution to Civil War historiography.

Genres: History, Civil War, American Civil War, American History, Nonfiction, Politics, Military Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Gary W. Gallagher, the John L. Nau III Professor of History at the University of Virginia, is the author or editor of many books in the field of Civil War history, including The Confederate War; Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War; and The Union War.

Reviews

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The term 'white supremacy' is much in the news today. Truthfully, it has probably never been out of the news, just pushed to the back by other major considerations. It was part of the reason for the Civil War: 9 million gallant white southerners defending their way of life against hordes of northerners who wanted to force them to accept the 'wisdom' of centralized government against states' rights. Of course, there might also have been a few other reasons, but one was NOT slavery. Or, at least the South in the aftermath of defeat. wanted to believe that. To push forward the agenda of the overwhelmed loser who fought so gallantly, many unreconstructed southerners preferred to adhere to the idea of the 'Lost Cause.'

This book discusses the reasoning behind the 'Lost Cause' and why so many went along with the idea that the Confederacy hadn't really lost, but had been overwhelmed by hordes of northern soldiers with an abundance of weapons. As part of their need to justify their loss, it became necessary to practically deify Robert E. Lee. This saintly man was not well-served by some of his generals, except for his stalwart right arm, Stonewall Jackson, who had managed to get himself killed right before Gettysburg. Any losses were not the Virginian's fault, and anyone who said otherwise was attacked mercilessly. By the time of Lee's death in 1870, the myth of the Lost Cause was securely in place, only to expand as the years passed. At reunions, in elections, and in the years after Reconstruction was overturned, southerners took every opportunity to promote what they saw as the truth about the war--and it definitely was not about slavery! After all, black men and women were not able to take care of themsekves so the 'small' number of southerners who actually owned slaves were only doing their Christian duty.

Divided up into chapters, the book discusses how the spurious ideas of the Lost Cause took hold in the South. Unfortunately, many of the ideas seem to be still simmering just below the surface of American political life even today.

[Dollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love reading Civil War history, so I enjoyed this book of nine essays, which basically warns the reader that one shouldn’t wholeheartedly believe any history they read about the Civil War. I have a BA in History and learned long ago that not everything written as history is true. But the South took it to a new level after the end of the Civil War. Their leaders were glorified, former Northern leaders slandered and every Rebel soldier revered as a hero for the Old South. I was surprised to learn that it was the women of the South who memorialized the graves of the southern dead every year, which led to what we now celebrate as Memorial Day. I especially liked the essay about George Pickett’s widow, LaSalle, who built herself a brand-new history as his child bride and who wrote several books about what a saint her husband had been. She made herself famous writing and by appearing at the various veterans’ celebrations. It’s really like they couldn’t deal with reality for a while and so made up and believed a myth about how great their cause was. Benjamin Harvey Hill, former senator from Georgia said of the war, “Though defeated on the fields of bloodshed, they must emerge victorious on the pages of history.” This is an interesting book if you want to learn more about the results of the Civil War on the South.

[Metal Nyankos · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the noteworthy features of this collection is that the nine essays (and introduction) are all surprisingly consistent in tone and voice, to say nothing of overall quality. If you've read The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture you'll see some thematic overlap, primarily because it's impossible to discuss the legacy and memory of the Civil War without talking about the long shadow and insidious reach of Lost Cause ideology, symbolism, and myth.

While every essay was strong, there are some that were stronger and more engaging. I particularly enjoyed this collection's opening essay by Alan T. Nolan. Nolan breaks down the flaws inherent to the Lost Cause mythos ("The Anatomy of the Myth") and shows a willingness to spell out the ideology's flaws and double-think. He has no qualms driving home the point that - hello! - the war was absolutely caused by the "peculiar institution" of slavery. In essence, Nolan calls a spade a spade and a loss and loss.

One of my favorite Civil War historians, Gary W. Gallagher, is both an editor of this collection as well as a featured essayist. His work ("Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History: A Persistent Legacy") highlights the Herculean work done by former-general and "unreconstructed rebel" Jubal A. Early in solidifying the core dogma of Lost Cause ideology. Early's reach is far and still pervasive today (the film Gods and Generals anyone?). Gallagher has also edited numerous Civil War essay collections and wrote the excellent book The Union War.

As I write this review, and look back at the collection's articles and my notes, I realize how difficult it is to pick essays for special mention. Two works in particular gave us a "zoomed-in" view of how two specific southern states utilized myth after the war: Charles J. Holden's article on Wade Hampton explained how in South Carolina the war was already a political tool even as early as the 1870's and Keith S. Bohannon's essay on Confederate army reunions in the 1880's and 1890's shows how veterans organizations were organized and reunions held in Georgia.

We get two excellent back-to-back essays on James Longstreet and Ulysses S. Grant that discuss how each became vilified in Lost Cause writings - in part because both dared challenge the accepted gospel that Robert E. Lee was anything other than a godly commander. Both "James Longstreet and the Lost Cause" by Jeffry D. Wert and "Continuous Hammering and Mere Attrition: Lost Cause Critics and the Military Reputation of Ulysses S. Grant" by Brooks D. Simpson are excellent explorations into how both men scrabbled hard to maintain their wartime legacy, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Both writers, it is worth noting, also "wrote the book" on their respective topics: Wert penned General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier (a book that currently resides on my shelf) in 1993 and Simpson followed with Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865 in 2000. Both books are highly rated here on Goodreads.

I think one of my favorite articles is to be found toward the end of the collection: Lesley J. Gordon's fabulous essay on Sallie Pickett, wife of ex-Confederate general George Pickett of the titular Pickett's Charge. Gordon writes that Pickett (styling herself LaSalle Corbell Pickett) spent the fifty years after her husbands death "publicly fostering an idealized and romanticized image of him, herself, and the Old South." Pickett did a masterful job doing so and provided generations of Lost Cause adherents with a living connection to their increasingly distant and mythic past. When we think of the South as a land of "moonlight and magnolias" we have Sallie Pickett, in large part, to thank.

In summary, this collection was a masterful work detailing the rise and continued rise of Lost Cause ideology in the South in the immediate years following the end of the war. If you're curious to see how the idea of the Lost Cause took root in the late nineteenth century then let this be your starting point.

[Jack · Rating 1 out of 5]

My Great Grandfather talked extensively about the War Between the Blue and Grey and as a youngster I became obsessed with the calamity. My Great Grandfather understood that the industrialization of the North along with the financing coming from the South into the Northern institutions created the problems from which we are still suffering.
The author successfully dispels some misconceptions perceived as fact from this war but did so by so blatantly creating his own creation of the statistics of the new industrial economy. The war further subjugated blacks in the South. To think that war was the solution to slavery and the only reason to go to war is obscene. To act as the North was not contemptuous in the creation of said war is EGREGIOUS. Sadly it appears that the "New Historians" will rewrite history and perpetuate the same said reasons to start new wars.

[Sean Chick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some essays are good, others are quite awful, espcially Nolan's pitiful contribution that betrays his hatred of almost all things Southern. What the books fails to do is explain the attraction, growth, and ramifications of Lost Cause mythology. I also get the feeling that the abolitionist myth is the basis of this work. Since I don't like either myth my feelings on this book are ambivalent.

[George P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

After Charlottesville, I have spent a fair bit of time on Facebook arguing about the Confederacy, the Civil War, and statues of Confederate heroes such as Robert E. Lee. My position is that the Confederacy was incorrigibly racist, that it started the war to defend slavery, and that its “heroes” should not be given statues because they were traitors. I am a conservative Republican and evangelical Christian, so my opposition to Confederate statues comes from the Right, not the Left, which always seems to catch people off guard.

I mention this because I have been surpised by the defense of Confederate statues by my fellow conservatives and Christians. Not all of them, of course, but enough of them to disappoint me. Most of them defend these statues on slippery-slope grounds—e.g., if Lee today, then why not Washington and Jefferson tomorrow? They worry that taking down statues equates to erasing history. But as the conversation continues, someone else will join in with a rosy view of the Confederacy as a redoubt of state’s rights and small government in which slavery was an unfortunate but historically ancillary problem. (Talk about the erasure of history!)

Historians term this point of view the myth of Lost Cause. It is an interpretation of the war that arose in the immediate aftermath of the Confederacy’s defeat in order to explain away that defeat away while simultaneously justifying the antebellum South’s way of life. It is a tendentious way of reading history, one that downplays the central role of slavery in both secession and the Confederacy, and romanticizes the valor of the Southern warfighter, who fell victim to the superior manpower and materiel—though not martial skill—of Northern forces.

Unfortunately, writes Alan T. Nolan in his sketch of the Lost Cause interpretation, “The victim of the Lost Cause legend has been history, for which the legend has been substituted in the national memory.” The goal of this volume, as the editors put it, is “to build on previous literature by engaging various aspects of the white South’s response to defeat, efforts to create a suitable memory of the war, and uses of the Confederate past.”

Nine authors examine various topics. Alan T. Nolan describes the contours of the Lost Cause interpretation (Chapter One). Gary W. Gallagher highlights the crucial role of Jubal A. Early in promulgating the myth (Chapter Two), while Lesley J. Gordon does the same for LaSalle Corbell Pickett, the wife of Major General George Pickett of “Pickett’s Charge” fame (Chapter Eight).

Three authors examine how Lost Cause mythology was put to use in as many states: Charles J. Holden on South Carolina (Chapter Three), Keith S. Bohannon on Georgia (Chapter Four), and Peter S. Carmichael on Virginia (Chapter Five). Chapters Six by Jeffry D. Wert and Chapter Seven by Brooks D. Simpson examine how the Lost Cause interpreted the martial skill of James Longstreet and Ulysses S. Grant, leading Confederate and Union generals, respectively. Longstreet became the “Judas Iscariot” of the Confederacy, blamed for losing Gettysburg by Jubal A. Early, and reviled for working with Republicans during Reconstruction. Lost Cause historians gave (and give) Grant little credit as a leader for defeating Lee, attributing his success to his willingness to hammer Confederate forces into attrition by means of sheer numbers and mechanized weaponry. This allows Lost Cause historians to valorize—if not apotheosize—Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

Finally, Chapter Nine by Lloyd A. Hunger looks at “Lost Cause Religion,” namely, the entanglement of Protestant religion with the Confederate cause, so that the symbols of one became symbols of the other. As an evangelical Christian and a minister of the gospel, I read this chapter in particular as a warning to the present of the way that the gospel can be used and abused in support of self-interested ideology.

The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History is an excellent book, but it is probably not the best book to read if you are unfamiliar with Civil War history generally or Lost Cause mythology specifically. It assumes a lot of background knowledge, and its assortment of essays do not make for a unified look at the topic. Historian John Fea has put together a list of essential readings on the Lost Cause, and this book makes the list, however. For that reason, and because it was so informative, I nonetheless recommend it highly to anyone with a decent background knowledge of the issues.

 

Book Reviewed:
Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan, The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000).

P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book edited by University of Virginia Professor of Civil War History, Gary W. Gallagher. The "Lost Cause" is a phrase used to describe how some describe the Civil War from a decidedly biased viewpoint from the Confederate point of view and how it has worked it's way into a popular way of defending the southern states during the war. Many of the key belief's are(although not limited to): 1. Slavery had little or nothing to do with the conflict. Common saying is it was about "states rights". Conflict is also described as a revolution rather than a rebellion. 2.Confederate heroes are given a God-like status. Popular figures Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson are prime examples. 3. War was only lost due superior manpower and industry rather than by any skill or doing by Federal Generals or soldiers. General Ulysses S. Grant, overall Union commander, skill and ability was attacked or belittled in comparison to his counterpart Robert E. Lee. Even the common soldier on the ground was described as superior to their Union counterparts.

The individual essays take an interesting look how this happened. It did open my eyes to see how even I may have fallen to some belief's. I can't imagine Confederate apologists would like this book as it tears there enlargements apart. This is just as relevant today with all the recent controversy over Confederate Flags, monuments and so on that many still defend.

[Steve Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historian and lecturer Gary Gallagher edits and contributes to this work on the fabled "Lost Cause" myth of the Civil War.

The collection of essays defines the "Lost Cause" as the notion that the South, for all its valor and righteousness of cause (read...ahem..."States Rights"), lost only because of the North's overwhelming numbers of men and material. The war, according to the myth, wasn't started because of slavery--and slaves were depicted in the myth as happy, childlike, and content.

Gallagher, whose engaging lectures are on YouTube, has a needfully skeptical eye as an historian, and he and his colleagues do able and necessary service in defining and tearing down the myth, though the issue of the actual attitudes of slaves were left largely to the reader to figure out or read elsewhere in ample documentation showing they were anything but happy with their lot.

Any American history buff with integrity will want to include this work in their reading list.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally, a book that destroys the myth.

[Guðmundur Arnlaugsson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hugmyndin um "The Lost cause" í bandarískri sögu er bæði margslungin og stórhættuleg, og það er nauðsynlegt að þekkja til hennar og geta greint áhrif hennar á bandaríska söguritun og þjóðmálaumræðu. Ég hlakkaði því mikið til að lesa þessa bók, en satt best að segja varð ég fyrir nokkrum vonbrigðum. Fyrsta ritgerðin er frábær samantekt um hvað Lost cause hugmyndafræðin er mikil afbökun á sannleikanum, en svo fylgja nokkrar ritgerðir um sagnaritun eftir stríðið, samkomur hermanna á árunum eftir, einstaka stjórnmálamenn og hershöfðingja, sem, satt best að segja þá, voru frekar langdregnar og endurtekningarsamar fyrir minn smekk. Ég hafði mesta ánægju af greininni um Ulysses Grant og LaSalle Corbett Pickett og þátt kvenna í mótun þessarar túlkunar. Hitt hefði að ósekju mátt stytta, þótt sérfræðingar á þessu sviði séu mér líklega ósammála.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I especially enjoyed Gordon's essay about Sallie Pickett and Hunter's on the "religion" of the Lost Cause

[Drew Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well researched, but repetitive and dry

[Daniel Woodworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times bordering on dry, but always informative.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

While in general I am leery about books that demonize the South for the Lost Cause with with a broad brush, there is at least some value here because the targets are narrower and it is easy to see what aspects of the Lost Cause are being discussed in each of the essays, although it should be obvious that all of the people who write are immensely hostile to the Lost Cause myth, so one is not going to get anything like a fair-minded discussion of the myth but rather specific historical criticisms of various components of the myth as they have appeared in historiography.  That said, the criticisms that are made are certainly worthwhile ones to consider because of the way that they deal with the many tentacles that the lost cause myth has with regards to Civil War history and how it is viewed in society.  But it is a shame that the book is not written with more sympathy, because historical lies are not limited to one group of people or one perspective, but they are a common human problem with unreliable and corrupted memory.

This book is a bit more than 200 pages long and it is divided into nine essays that discuss different aspects of the Lost Cause myth.  After an introduction by one of the editors, the other editor discusses the anatomy of the Lost Cause myth (1) as it appears in various forms.  This is followed by an essay by the first editor on the relationship between the Lost Cause and Jubal Early (2).  This is followed by a discussion of the relationship between South Carolina and Wade Hampton and how political success and love as a Civil War legend were not always entirely the same (3).  After that there is an essay on Confederate soldier reunions in Georgia between 1885 and 1895 and how they were connected with Civil War tourism and memory (4).  After that there is a discussion of Virginia's last generation of slave owners and the way that they continued their support of industrial development in the postwar period (5).  One essay explores the complex role of James Longstreet as a loyal subordinate to Lee but also the scapegoat of Gettysburg in the Lost Cause myth (6), which is followed by a discussion of the Lost Cause butchering of the historical record regarding Grant's role in the Union victory and the sophistication of his approach (7).  The book is ended by essays that look at the role of LaSalle Corbell Picket in the Lost Cause myth (8) as well as lost cause religion (9) before a discussion of the contributors and an index.

As human beings, we feel the need to justify ourselves and our course of action, especially when those actions have serious negative repercussions.  Without being an adherent to the Lost Cause myth, it is nevertheless possible to understand why it developed and what aspects of it were found appealing by others who had a latent degree of cheering on the underdog and a hostility for logistics.  This book is to be praised for the nuanced way that it looks at a cause it clearly has no sympathy for, pointing out the way that different people could be cheered on in some aspects of their identity but not necessarily in others.  If the people who created and capitalized on the Lost Cause myth are certainly not well-respected or appreciated by their enemies, hopefully we can learn about ourselves and our own tendency to warp our perspective of the past in the light of changed circumstances.  In looking at this book, I think the authors here, while their analysis of narrow issues is excellent, could have done far better at looking at the wider implications and repercussions of the distortion of memory that results from traumatic negative experiences and how this is a common human phenomenon rather than something for which the Southeners and their descendants deserve to be blamed for as if they were somehow less human for it.

[Andrew Pratley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a series of essays that explore the myth making that followed the end of the American Civil War. It is said often that the victors write the history & it is their story or version of it that prevails. I have found that this is not always the case. So it is with the American Civil War.

At the end of this conflict there was a determined effort by many leading proponents of the Confederate cause to "win the peace". In many ways they succeeded because the North their opponents were more interested in moving on than finishing the job. Their indifference led to Jim Crow & segregation.

It is also led to the glorifying of Confederate soldiers & their commanders especially in the cases of Robert E Lee & Stonewell Jackson. Both were fine battlefield commanders but the real military genius of the war was neither of them. That personage was U S Grant. His place as such is only recently being fully acknowledged by military historians of the conflict.

This book is a good introduction into the subject.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

As many other books, this is EDITED by Gary Gallagher. He's great at writing overviews and editing, but this is 10 essays on various aspects of the Lost Cause, and some of the chapters hit home way better than others.

I found two parts of it to be terrific -- Gallagher's introduction, and his chapter on Jubal Early. Also strong were Brooks Simpson's chapter on Grant, and Jeffrey D. Wert's chapter on Longstreet.

The other six chapters were fine for browsing through. The point of the book is made very well by the four key chapters.

What's more, the point of the book is captured much more accessibly by Gallagher throughout his book, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten.

[Tim Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Some essays are strong and beautifully written, particularly Pete Carmichael and Lesley Gordon's essays. The latter was my favorite because I didn't know anything about the Lost Cause author LaSalle Cobrell Pickett, who basically wrote counterfactual histories and stories that even northerners reviewed positively.Gordon, then, like many authors in the collection show that the North played an important role in Codifying Lost Cause histories of secession, war, leadership, etc., that remain with us today (e.g. When states remove slavery from history curricula).

[Cheryle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of essays debunking the myth of the "Lost Cause," how it was perpetuated by both North and South, and how and why it influences thinking about the Civil War into the 21st Century.

A bit tedious at times, and some of the essays are contradictory, but enlightening information about the big names of the war. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're either a history buff or have a specific interest in the Civil War, unromanticized.

[Jj Kwashnak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good essays looking at how our memory of the Civil War was formed, and controlled, by a handful of people in the ante-bellum period.

[Christopher Blosser · Rating 3 out of 5]

As other reviewers have already noted, this book suffers on account of its being an anthology -- some contributions fail to impress (I found Nolan's too insubstantial; found the presentation on Georgian Confederate Reunions of 1885-95 a hard slog to get though and confess to abandoning mid-way the reflection on Wade Hampton and South Carolina). On the other hand, I appreciated "The Immortal Confederacy: Another Look at Lost Cause Religion" as a fascinating sociological evaluation, raising some good observations about how many in the postwar Confederacy elevated the "Lost Cause" as a substitute religion in its own right, practically replacing that of traditional Christianity and the role of organizations as Daughters of the Confederacy in implementing such. I chiefly benefited from reading Gallagher's essay on Jubal Early; Jeffrey Wert on the postwar ill-treatment of Gen. James Longstreet, and Lesley Gordon on LaSalle Pickett's nostalgic romanticizing of her husband and life in the old South.

While some no doubt are inclined to dismiss the tenants of "The Lost Cause" outright, one observation of Gallagher's which stood out to me:

“Lost Cause interpretations of the war gained wide currency in the nineteenth century and remain remarkably persistent today. The longevity of many of these ideas can be attributed in considerable measure to their being grounded in fact. Robert E. Lee was a gifted soldier who inspired his army to accomplish prodigious feats on the battlefield. The Army of Northern Virginia and other Confederate forces consistently fought against serious disadvantages in numbers and materiel. A number of Northern newspapers as well as some soldiers in the Army of the Potomac joined Confederates in complaining about Grant’s “hammering” tactics in 1864. Stonewall Jackson won his reputation honestly and served Lee as a superb lieutenant. Most people at the time -- Northern, Southern, and European -- looked to Virginia as the crucial arena of the war, as have a number of historians since. The distortion came when Early and other “proponents of the Lost Cause denied that Lee had faults or lost any battles, focused on Northern numbers and material superiority while ignoring Confederate advantages, denied Grant any virtues or greatness, and noticed the Confederacy outside the eastern theater only when convenient to explain Southern failures in Virginia."

I think it's worth noting that while Southerners, precisely as losers in the war, were prone to elevate their situation through historical revisionism, the North certainly wasn't immune to participating in such. I couldn't help but recall how Gen. Early himself was (perhaps justifiably) motivated to respond to what Gallagher refers to as "McClellan’s habit of grossly inflating Lee’s strength." The success of any historical investigation would thus be contingent on the degree to which it sifts fact from fiction, revealing what actually happened.

One benefit of reading this anthology was the discovery of additional gems, among them Gallagher's Lee and His Generals in War and Memory (1998) and Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (2013).

[Jon Harris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gallagher should have known better. He tries to separate the "Myth of the Lost Cause" from the objective truth of history. Alan T. Nolan, Gallagher’s co-author, defines the “truce” between the North and South forged in the 1880s as an expression of the “Lost Cause” itself. After stating that “The political legacy of the Lost Cause . . . facilitated the reunification of the North and South,”Nolan goes on to say that, “The virulent racism that the North shared with the South, in spite of northern antislavery views, was a premise of the Lost Cause and the principal engine of the North’s acceptance of it. The reunion was exclusively a white man’s phenomenon and the price of the reunion was the sacrifice of the African Americans.”

Nolan makes the case that “the Lost Cause . . . is a caricature of the truth. . .” when the war was actually a rebellion against the Constitution in which rich planters seceded in order protect the inhumane system of slavery, occupying land that was not theirs and attacking Fort Sumter, thus starting the war. Lincoln defended the United States with skill and success. Nolan’s goal is to “start again” by putting away “distortions, falsehoods, and romantic sentimentality of the Myth of the Lost Cause.”

There exists the “Myth of the Lost Cause,” and there exists the unbiased truth. Of course, this interpretation would require the presupposition that northerners, having victoriously defeated the South in a costly war, were blinded enough by their own racism to the point of being duped by their recent enemy into conceding the moral high ground, all at a time when they were economically, politically, and socially more influential than the South. There is, of course, another way to interpret the collapse of the reconciliatory “truce” which remained the status quo until recently.

Nolan considers Nathan Bedford Forrest to be “a strange hero,” describing him as
looking “on as his troops helped massacre black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow after they had
surrendered” and then becoming a “prominent Ku Klux Klan leader. Nolan leaves out the
question of conflicting testimony in the incident. No mention is made of the performance of
Forrest’s slaves as Confederate cavalrymen, his granting their freedom, their commitment to him
after the war, and his reputation as a charitable employer to former slaves after emancipation.
The Forrest responsible for disbanding the first Klan while disavowing any subsequent entities
claiming to be part of the organization is unnoticed. Nolan offers no trace of the Nathan Bedford
Forrest who kissed Lou Louis, a black woman, after giving a speech in support of an early civil
right’s group in Memphis in 1875.

[John Findlay · Rating 5 out of 5]

History is usually written by the victors, but there is one very notable exception. Civil War history was written largely by various representatives of the South, and has resulted in an extremely biased perspective. This book is a collection of essays which explain how this bias came about, what the main falsehoods are, and who were some of the chief perpetrators. Amongst the myths that must be laid to rest is the assertion that the war was not about slavery! Nothing could be more false. The primary "states right" that the South was protecting was the right to own slaves. There are official documents of the Confederacy that make this point clear. A second myth pertains to the nobility of the Southern cause. No cause to protect slavery can be noble. A third myth concerns the relative abilities of Lee and Grant. Lee has been enshrined as the Christ figure of the South, virtually infallible, while Grant has been routinely presented as a butcher who succeeded only because he had far greater resources. Modern history is gradually resurrecting Grant. He was a great general and his siege of Vicksburg is a classic. Southern historians focus primarily on the war in the East and downplay Grant's success in the West by claiming he fought inferior generals. Of course, the exact same charge could be made of Lee's victories early in the war in the East; the Union generals he encountered were extremely poor. After the war, when the South had lost on the field, and was devastated politically and economically, certain Southerners were determined to create a glorified picture of the Confederacy and "win the peace". One of these was Gen. Jubal Early who wrote many biased accounts of the war. A second was the wife of Gen. George Pickett. These biased accounts were perpetuated through veterans reunions. The Confederate battle flag, the gray uniform, and the song Dixie became living symbols of the false narrative of the glorified South in the Confederacy. Obviously, we are still living with this narrative, as Confederate flags are everywhere, as are statues to Lee and other Confederate Generals. Jefferson Davis is held in high esteem, as is Stonewall Jackson. I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like if the Germans had been able to dominate the writings about WWII. Obviously it did not happen, and it was unfortunate that it was allowed to happen in this country. This book is very illuminating.

[Jose Vitela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a gateway drug to appreciating the film Gone With the Wind and songs like Dixie - I.e., there’s a romanticism that was crafted to help many southerners deal with loss (of relatives, of economic status, of social status, and of pride in your country). If you’re like me and don’t really understand the veneration of confederate heroes which in some towns persists to this day, this book/collection of essays will help you appreciate what much of the antebellum aristocracy was truly about: “cotton, slavery, and arrogance” (quote: Rhett Butler - Gone With the Wind). It’s tragic the Southern “gentleman” of the era confiscated a future for so many yeomen farmers, slaves, women, and pro-union southern residents. This serves as a reminder that wealth and power trapped in the hands of an entitled elite is a massive threat to a true democracy.

To be fair, this book’s overall aim is to discredit the myth, memory, and romanticized confederate experience. I’d like to round out my understandIng of this era by reading about folks like Wayne Hampton III (Who allegedly owned 3000 slaves and has a monument in full display in South Carolina) along with Stephen Douglass and another individual who experienced slavery first hand (on the painful side if it) and lived to tell about it.

[Marilyn Getts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series of essays are an important read as we try to understand current day events. The selling of the noble confederate and the lost cause has long infiltrated American history books. State rights becomes the main reason for the conflict rather than maintaining a slave labor force. The leaders of the Confederacy were not traitors. They were men defending their homeland. Robert E. Lee is worthy of acclaim as a brilliant general. The South lost due to lack of resources and not strategy. The essays track down the validity of these claims and who promoted them in academia, women's groups, novels and the laws in the Jim Crow South. The foundation of "lost cause" continues to plague our current politics. As we become a more diversified population, state legislatures in the South continue to limit the self determination of minority populations through gerrymandering and suppressing the vote, especially in voting districts with minority population. The South gave us the original "Big Lie" and we're still living it. It's time to take a closer look.

[Monte Lamb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be very enlightening on how the idea of the Southern patriot was just in fighting for the Confederacy and how the story of why the war was fought and why the South did not win were developed in the years after the war. It was a concerted effort to put Southern leaders like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on a pedestal where they were idealized as near perfect people who only lost the war due to Northern materials and far more soldiers. Slavery was not the cause of the war, but instead states rights and the need to throw the invaders from their soil. This book is composed of 9 essays that discuss various ways and means on how these theories were developed. The authors do a good job of making their case with useful facts and stories. I strongly suggest that everyone with any interest in the Civil War or American History read this book as it exposes how history can be used to tell a story, no matter how accurate or false.

[Stephen Selbst · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of historiographical essays on the process by which the South mythologized the Lost Cause, starting almost immediately after the conclusion of the Civil War. The book consists of nine separate essays, which focus on different aspects of the creation of the mythology Two clear messages emerge: 1) from it's inception, the myth of the Lost Cause sought to obscure and deny the role of slavery in the secession; and 2) the process of "sacralization" of that history preserves the idea that the end of the Civil War was not a conclusion, but an interim setback that might be reversed in some glorious future time. Interesting reading at a time when the meaning of Confederate monuments and the Confederate battle flag are being re-examined.

[Jeff Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good intro for me into Lost Cause thinking

Recognize as the use of Myth implies this book comes from position of opposing Lost Cause thinking. For me it did a really good job of introducing the entire concept. I'm pretty sure Lost Cause followers probably hate this book.

I debated between 4 and 5 stars, as I found content good but would have liked accompanying PDF documents for the many references made to other sources and a few references to battlefield maps.

I would recommend this highly, but also feel I need to followup with more books about Lieutenant General James Longstreet. Pretty sure I bought a biography about him at a National Battlefield park but after two moves no idea where it might be.

[Frederick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding history using primary sources and many firsthand accounts. This is not a polemic against the South or those who admire the Confederacy. It is a thoughtful examination of the beliefs that rose after the war to justify and glorify those who fought and lost. It is worth reading just for all of the great sources that it uses and also for a well-written narrative that should make all of us examine current events more carefully, although this book is not at all about statues, but real flesh and blood people who started a myth that Northerner and Southerner alike repeat almost daily. This is how the myth began.

[Kyle Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having grown up in the South, I've always noticed the religiosity surrounding Confederate hero worship. It's is a perplexing thing to consider. Then a friend passes this book to me, where I learn that the Lost Cause myth is formal and intentional and planned. I am amazed but not entirely surprised.

This book is interesting for anyone who is looking to understand one possible path for culture to survive a loss of war or a conquest. And in these several essays, some illuminating and some quite dry, you will see how the people of the United States deal with losing a rebellion over so inhumane a cause.

[barbara stanisz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A serious study of what actually happened in the Civil War and exposes the hypocrisy of the southern states. How anyone in the south can seriously espouse that the Civil War anything less than a war over slavery is totally beyond me. One thing that really struck me was the quote that the south never lost a battle because they did not have enough guns or ammunition-so the whole argument that the North had overwhelming superiority is truly a myth. The book is well researched and the author provides source material for you to check its accuracy. While it is definitely dry, it is well worth the reading.