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==Emergence==
[[File:Edward A. Pollard, National Cyclopedia of American Biography.jpg|thumb|Edward A. Pollard published several works about Lost Cause ideology. Those books have led to debates about the origins of the Civil War.]]
[[File:The Union as It Was.jpg|thumb|right|The image "The Union As It Was" was published in ''Harper's Weekly'' in 1874. On a pseudo-heraldic shield are a black family between a lynched body hanging from a tree and the remains of a burning schoolhouse, with the caption "Worse than Slavery". The supporters are a member of the White League and a hooded KKK member, shaking hands in agreement with the Lost Cause.]]{{blockquote | quote=They say that history is written by the victors, but the Civil War has been the rare exception. Perhaps the need for the country to stay together made it necessary for the North to sit silently and accept the South's conception of the conflict. In any case, for most of the past 150 years, the South's version of the war and [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]] has held sway in our schools, our literature and, since the dawn of feature films, our movies.|source=Mick LaSalle, ''[[The San Francisco Chronicle]]'', 2015<ref name="LaSalle2015">{{cite news | newspaper=[[San Francisco Chronicle]] | title=Romanticizing Confederate cause has no place onscreen | date=July 24, 2015 | first=Mick | last=LaSalle | url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Romanticizing-Confederate-cause-has-no-place-6403446.php | access-date=July 8, 2020 | archive-date=July 8, 2020 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200708114300/https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Romanticizing-Confederate-cause-has-no-place-6403446.php | url-status=live }}</ref>}}The movement that took ''The Lost Cause'' for its name had multiple origins, but its unifying contention was that slavery was not the [[Origins of the American Civil War|primary cause]], or even a cause at all, of the Civil War.<ref name="Janney2014">{{cite book |last1=Janney |first1=Caroline E. |editor1-last=Sheehan-Dean |editor1-first=Aaron |title=A Companion to the U.S. Civil War |year=2014 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-118-80295-3 |page=1148 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-bfQAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT1148 |chapter=Memory}}</ref> This narrative denies or minimizes the explanatory statements and constitutions published by the seceding states—for example, the wartime writings and speeches of [[Confederate States of America|CSA]] Vice President [[Alexander H. Stephens|Alexander Stephens]] and especially his [[Cornerstone Speech]]. Lost Cause historians instead favor the more moderate postwar views of Confederate leaders.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Coates|first1=Ta-Nehisi|title=What This Cruel War Was Over The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it.|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/|website=The Atlantic|access-date=June 13, 2017|date=June 23, 2015|archive-date=May 13, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190513024042/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/|url-status=live}}</ref> The Lost Cause argument stresses [[secession]] as a defense against a Northern threat to a Southern way of life and declares that this threat violated the [[states' rights]] guaranteed by the [[Constitution of the United States]]. The Lost Cause's assertion that any state had the right to secede was strongly denied in the North. Lost Cause arguments universally portray [[Slavery as a positive good in the United States|slavery as more benevolent than cruel]]. In its mythology and peculiarly Southern iconography, Confederate generals are characterized as morally flawless, deeply religious, and saintly or Christ-like.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Lost Cause |url=https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lost-cause-the/ |website=Encyclopedia Virginia |publisher=Virginia Humanities |access-date=February 1, 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Medlin |first1=Eric |title=The Lost Cause |url=https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/lost-cause |website=North Carolina Encyclopedia |publisher=North Carolina Government and Heritage Library |access-date=February 6, 2024}}</ref>
=== Origin of the term ===
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===UDC Support of the Ku Klux Klan===
{{Further|United Daughters of the Confederacy}}
[[File:UDC-marker-fort-sanders-tn1.jpg|thumb|The [[United Daughters of the Confederacy]] helped promulgate the Lost Cause
The Lost Cause became a key part of the reconciliation process between North and South by virtue of political argument, outright sentimentalism, and white Southerners' [[Commemoration of the American Civil War|postwar commemorations]].<ref name="Blight2009266">{{cite book |last1=Blight |first1=David W. |title=Race and Reunion |date=2009 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-02209-6 |page=266 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3R-yvmpYaqAC&pg=PA266}}</ref> The [[United Daughters of the Confederacy]] (UDC) is a major organization and has been associated with the Lost Cause for over one century.<ref>{{Cite book|title= Race and reunion: the Civil War in American memory|last=Blight |first=David W.|isbn=978-0-674-00332-3|publisher=Harvard University Press|location= Cambridge, Mass.|oclc= 44313386|year= 2001|url= https://archive.org/details/racereunion00davi}}</ref>
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{{blockquote|Lost Cause ritualistic forms that celebrated their regional mythological and theological beliefs. They used the Lost Cause to warn Southerners of their decline from past virtue, to promote moral reform, to encourage conversion to Christianity, and to educate the young in [[Culture of the Southern United States|Southern traditions]]; in the fullness of time, they related it to American values.<ref>{{cite book|author=Charles Reagan Wilson|title=Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lk84N6NnwO0C&pg=PA11|year=1983|publisher=[[University of Georgia Press]]|page=11|isbn=978-0-8203-0681-0|access-date=December 11, 2015|archive-date=June 10, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160610135436/https://books.google.com/books?id=lk84N6NnwO0C&pg=PA11|url-status=live}}</ref>}}
Acting in their cultural and religious environments, white Southerners tried to defend what their defeat in 1865 made impossible for them to defend on a political level. The South's loss in what they viewed as a [[Religious war|holy war]]
Poole stated that in fighting to defeat the Republican Reconstruction government in [[South Carolina gubernatorial election, 1876|South Carolina in 1876]], white conservative Democrats portrayed the Lost Cause scenario through "Hampton Days" celebrations and shouted, "Hampton or Hell!" They staged the contest between Reconstruction opponent and Democratic candidate [[Wade Hampton III|Wade Hampton]] and incumbent Republican Governor [[Daniel Henry Chamberlain|Daniel H. Chamberlain]] as a religious struggle between good and evil and called for "[[Redemption (theology)|redemption]]".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Poole |first1=W. Scott |title=Religion, Gender, and the Lost Cause in South Carolina's 1876 Governor's Race: "Hampton or Hell!" |journal=The Journal of Southern History |date=August 2002 |volume=68 |issue=3 |pages=573–598 |doi=10.2307/3070159|jstor=3070159 }}</ref> The white Southern conservatives who committed to the dismantling of Reconstruction called themselves "Redeemers".<ref name="Stowell">{{cite book |last1=Stowell |first1=Daniel W. |editor1-last=Blum |editor1-first=Edward J. |editor2-last=Poole |editor2-first=W. Scott |title=Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction |date=2005 |publisher=Mercer University Press |isbn=978-0-86554-962-3 |pages=133–135 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=46yZTSn32MsC&pg=PA134 |chapter=Why "Redemption"? Religion and the End of Reconstruction, 1869–1877}}</ref><ref name="Cresswell2021">{{cite book |last1=Cresswell |first1=Stephen |title=Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race: Mississippi After Reconstruction, 1877-1917 |year=2021 |publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi |isbn=978-1-61703-037-6 |page=90 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lyLdEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA90}}</ref>
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Contemporary historians overwhelmingly agree that secession was motivated by slavery. The most important of secession's numerous causes were preservation and expansion of slavery. The confusion may come from blending the causes of secession with the causes of the war, which were separate but related issues.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}
According to [[Henry Louis Gates, Jr.]], "the Lost Cause was fundamentally based on white supremacy". He posits that [[W. E. B. Du Bois]] understood, even beyond [[realpolitik|political realities]], that the falsified narrative of the Lost Cause was anti-
Scholar [[Peniel E. Joseph]] explained in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine that Du Bois, an African American author, [[Civil rights movement|civil rights activist]], and [[Pan-Africanism|Pan-Africanist]], published ''[[Black Reconstruction in America]]'' in 1935 to expose the myths and lies of the Lost Cause. Du Bois wrote about African American excellence in business and politics, about Black progress in democracy, and how their success received white supremacy backlash.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Joseph |first1=Peniel |title=The Perils and Promise of America's Third Reconstruction |url=https://time.com/6211887/america-third-reconstruction/ |access-date=January 31, 2024 |agency=Time Magazine |date=2022}}</ref>
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