Early wrote a memoir that put forward most of the Lost Cause ideas. It was the first memoir written by a senior commander on either side and shaped the dominant view not only in the South but eventually in the entire country. Early argued that the war was about not slavery but the “inestimable right of self-government.” The enslaved became a “class of laborers as happy and contented as any in the world, if not more so.” The South lost because of the overwhelming combat power and the “cruelty and barbarity of the Federal Commanders.”40
