Legacy of the Lost Cause and Further Reading

Legacy of the Lost Cause:

One of the most difficult and dangerous aspects of the Lost Cause narrative is how appealing the narrative is. Using romanticized and poetic language, people like Confederate Veteran founder Sumner Archibald Cunningham, played into powerful emotions like guilt, reconciliation, and nostalgia for a simpler time before the war. It used women and children's recollections to soften its delivery, manipulate memory, and succeed in gaining subscribers and continuing the Lost Cause sentiment. 

While it may be easy to assume the Lost Cause narrative is just a relic of the past and is no longer a reflection of modern America, this too would be a  fabricated narrative. Especially given recent events like opposition to Confederate monuments' removal in cities like Richmond, the Lost Cause narrative is alive and well in the United States. In fact, while the original Confederate Veteran magazine ended following financial hardships during the Great Depression, it was revived in 1984 and continues to be published six times a year under the same name and format as its original manifestation. 

John A. Simpson described in his article “The Cult of the Lost Cause,” that “defeat in 1865 haunted Southern memories… The only cure to their special dilemma of defeat required a total revision of the Southern role in American history.” Defeat in 1865 still haunts the South's collective memory through the continuance of the Lost Cause propaganda and will continue to do so until the narrative is truly a relic of the past.

Questions to Consider:

What is the Lost Cause narrative, and why is it still so powerful in the United States?

How should sources like these be used and approached? 

Further Reading: 

Articles 

Evans, Josephine King. "Nostalgia for a Nickel: The 'Confederate Veteran.'" Tennessee Historical Quarterly, WINTER 1989, Vol. 48, No. 4 (WINTER 1989), pp. 238-244

Goff, Reda C. "The Confederate Veteran Magazine" Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1 (SPRING 1972), pp. 45-60

Simpson, John A. "The Cult of the 'Lost Cause'" Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 4 (WINTER 1975), pp. 350-361

Sodergren, Steven E. “The Great Weight of Responsibility' The Struggle over History and Memory in Confederate Veteran Magazine" Southern Cultures, Vol. 19, No. 3, Remembering the Civil War (FALL 2013), pp. 26-45

Books

Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.

Cox, K. L. (2003). Dixie's Daughters The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture. Gainesville: UPF.

McRae, Elizabeth Gillespie. Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Simpson, J. A. (1994). S.A. Cunningham & the Confederate heritage. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Legacy of the Lost Cause and Further Reading