Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

by S.C. Gwynne

Pardoned in 1868, he returned to Virginia to practice law and soon became the most vocal of the unreconstructed rebels. His writing helped launch the so-called Lost Cause movement, whose main tenets were that the North had beaten the South not by military skill but because it was able to field vastly more men and weaponry; that the war was about defending states’ rights against Northern aggression; that slavery was a benign institution; that Reconstruction was an attempt to destroy the Southern way of life; and that the leaders of the Confederate armies were principled, Christian men in contrast to Union leaders such as Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, who showed their low moral character in their brutally destructive marches through Georgia, South Carolina, and the Shenandoah Valley. The principal heroes of the Lost Cause were Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson; its principal villain was James Longstreet. Early died in 1894 at age seventy-seven after falling down a flight of stairs in Lynchburg, Virginia.