Lost Cause, cont
”Lost Cause” is a phrase that implies the Confederacy fought the good fight and lost. It’s origins actually go back to Walter Scott, the author of Ivanhoe, whose stories of chivalric knights intrigued southerners even before the Civil War. It was also influenced, romantically, by Alfred Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” which was transposed into Pickett’s charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.
I’m going to list the main points of the Lost Cause:
1. The Civil War was not fought because of slavery; it was fought because the federal government attempted to destroy the individual freedom of the southern states.
2. The South lost the Civil War due to overwhelming odds, despite the fact that all the heroes were in the southern side (notably Lee, Jackson, Stuart, but NOT Longstreet. Longstreet was a hero too but after the war he became a Republican and a promoter of black rights, at which point it was suddenly discovered that he was a traitor who lost the Battle of Gettysburg.)
3. At the end of the war villainous Yankees led by Sherman committed war crimes, starved the southern people, raped and pillaged, etc.
4. After the war, Northern Carpetbaggers gave the vote to ignorant blacks in order to help them, the carpetbaggers, take over. These cruel Yankees cared nothing for blacks who had been happy on the plantations.
There’s a whole lot more but this was the gist. As I wrote, prior to World War I it was a fringe movement. Then under Woodrow Wilson and one of his best friends, a Hollywood pioneer named DW Griffith it exploded...