Content deleted Content added
ce; standardize refs; Schivelbusch only implies that the Lost Cause was part of the wider romanticization of defeat in the West that stretched back to the Aeneid and the Fall of Troy; the Lost Cause is not directly compared to these on page 1 or anywhere in the book as far as I can find; saying that the fall of Troy was "the prototype for all western defeats" is not the same thing |
|||
Line 23:
{{blockquote|We shall not enter upon the discussion of the moral question of slavery. But we may suggest a doubt here whether that odious term "slavery", which has been so long imposed, by the exaggeration of Northern writers, upon the judgement and sympathies of the world, is properly applied to that system of servitude in the South, which was really the mildest in the world; which did not rest on acts of debasement and disenfranchisement, but elevated the African, and was in the interest of human improvement; and which, by the law of the land, protected the negro in life and limb, and in many personal rights, and, by the practice of the system, bestowed upon him a sum of individual indulgences, which made him altogether the most striking type in the world of cheerfulness and contentment.<ref>{{cite book | first=Edward A. | last=Pollard | title=The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates | date=1866 | page=49 }}</ref>}}
Pollard in ''The Lost Cause'' and its sequel ''The Lost Cause Regained'' drew inspiration from [[John Milton]]'s [[Paradise Lost]] with the intention of portraying the pre-war South as a "paradise" that was lost in its defeat.<ref name="Schivelbusch2003 58">{{Cite book |first=Wolfgang |last=Schivelbusch |title=Culture of Defeat |
===African Americans oppose Lost Cause monuments===
Line 88:
In 1907, [[Hunter Holmes McGuire]], physician of Confederate general [[Stonewall Jackson]], published in a book papers sponsored by the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans of Virginia, supporting the Lost Cause tenets that "slavery [was] not the cause of the war" and that "the North [was] the aggressor in bringing on the war". The book quickly sold out and required a second edition.<ref name="McGuire1907">{{cite book |last1=McGuire |first1=Hunter |last2=Christian |first2=George L |last3=Grand Camp Confederate Veterans |first3=Department of Virginia |title=The Confederate Cause and Conduct in the War Between the States as Set Forth in the Reports of the History Committee of the Grand Camp, C.V., of Virginia and other Confederate Papers |date=1907 |publisher=Richmond, Va., L.H. Jenkins |pages=20, 185 |url=https://archive.org/details/confederatecause00inmcgu/page/n23/mode/2up}}</ref>
The South and the Confederate cause were also romanticized by Northern intellectuals like [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], [[Herman Melville]], [[Henry Adams]], and [[Henry James]] who were disillusioned that Union victory was followed by [[Gilded Age]] America, which they thought was consumed with greed and materialism.<ref name="Schivelbusch2003 98">{{Cite book |first=Wolfgang |last=Schivelbusch |title=Culture of Defeat |
====Reunification of North and South====
Line 402:
Davis labeled many of the myths that surround the war "frivolous", including attempts to rename the war by Confederate partisans. He stated that names such as "[[War of Northern Aggression]]" and "[[War Between the States]]" (the latter expression having been coined by Alexander Stephens) were just attempts to deny the fact that the American Civil War was an actual civil war.<ref>Davis, ''The Cause Lost'', p. 178</ref> He said, "Causes and effects of the war have been manipulated and mythologized to suit political and social agendas, past and present."<ref>Davis, ''The Cause Lost''{{page needed|date=February 2024}}</ref> Historian [[David Blight]] said a key to the Lost Cause is "its use of white supremacy as both means and ends".<ref name="auto"/> Historian [[Allan Nolan]] wrote: "[T]he Lost Cause legacy to history is a caricature of the truth. The caricature wholly misrepresents and distorts the facts of the matter. Surely it is time to start again in our understanding of this decisive element of our past and to do so from the premises of history unadulterated by the distortions, falsehoods, and romantic sentimentality of the Myth of the Lost Cause."<ref>Gallager and Nolan, p. 29</ref>
==="War Between the States"===
Line 537:
* Wilson, Charles Reagan, (1980) ''Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920''. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press {{ISBN|0-8203-0681-9}}.
* Wilson, Charles Reagan (1997) "The Lost Cause Myth in the New South Era" in Gerster, Patrick and Cords, Nicholas, editors ''Myth America: A Historical Anthology, Volume II''. St. James, New York: Brandywine Press. {{ISBN|1-881089-97-5}}
* {{cite book |last=Schivelbusch |first=Wolfgang |title=The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VcUTAAAAQBAJ |location=New York |publisher=Picador |year=2001 |isbn=0312423195 |ref=none}}
==Further reading==
| |||