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'''Element The Elements of the "Myth of the Lost Cause"'''
*''The southern states did not secede over the issue of slavery, but even if they had, that secession would have been legal.
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These are several (though four, but not all) of the tenets of the Lost Cause. The name, the name given Lost Cause, was hatched as a way to the build a positive mythological model which . This Myth of the Lost Cause was wildly successful and has guided much a majority of Civil War interpretation historical interpretations in the century and a half since Appomattox. Despite emerging from the crucible of war victorious, the Union perspective of the conflict has been overshadowed in word and deed by that of the vanquished Confederate, to the point that Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee are often grouped together as the conflict’s most popular figures. (44) The reasons for how and why this is so are deconstructed by numerous historians in "The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History." Edited by Gary Gallagher and the late Alan Nolan, this collection of essays examines both the overall concepts related to the myth as well as specific aspects which shed light on how former Confederates worked to “fabricate a collective memory of the past” which existed so often at odds with objective fact. (5)
"The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History" fills a dual role in the ranks of Civil War literature by serving as both a history of memory as well as a historiographic work which traces the evolution and nature of the myth itself. The essay-centric formulation thus works well for the book, in that it allows for disparate foci and thesis without detracting from the integrity of a focused argument in a single-author work. By utilizing and organizing essays which take the reader from the general to the complex, the work serves as a fascinating and readable primer into the mythmaking undertaken by Southerners in the decades after the Civil War.
While the Lost Cause is rife with accusations of inferiority and moral turpitude toward Union leadership, perhaps no single individual suffered as much or so deeply as former Confederate General James Longstreet. Longstreet, a corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee, had the misfortune to oppose Lee's aggressive tactics at the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. For Lost Cause warriors to whom no man could equal the genius or prowess of Lee, this was unsettling indeed, and proved the basis by which a campaign would be waged against Longstreet, scapegoating him and him alone for the Confederate defeat in Pennsylvania. Jeffery Wert illustrates this in his ''James Longstreet and the Lost Cause'': "Lee's defeat at Gettysburg, in the words of two modern historians, 'threatened the entire rationale' of the Lost Cause argument. Lee's performance and responsibility for the battle's outcome required explanation and a defense ... [Lost Cause adherents] needed a scapegoat, a subordinate office whose conduct had been so egregious as to bring defeat to the great Lee and the Confederate cause." (130)
By tracing the various popular arguments made against Longstreet by Jubal Early and others, Wert shows how the message was espoused time and again as to how Longstreet disobeyed orders (which had not actually been issued) and ultimately bore the responsibility for losing the battle - a fight which became known as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy." (130-132) The seriousness of this charge (as well as Longstreet's post-war acceptance of the Republican Party and his testy and sometimes ill-founded defense of his Gettysburg conduct)resulted in Longstreet's near-exclusion from Confederate commemorative activities in the years prior to his death; upon his death, "numerous camps of the United Confederate Veterans refused either to send a delegation or to offer resolutions of condolences." (132) Wert proceeds to show how modern historiography has been kinder to Longstreet in the light of modern scholarship, and also presents a timeline of events that show Longstreet's actual actions and inactions at Gettysburg. If there is to be a weakness in his argument, it would be that Wert relies heavily on Longstreet's own writings to validate his timeline, despite having shown earlier that many of these writings have a dubious claim to truthfulness. In addition, much of this essay cites Wert's earlier biographical work on Longstreet, raising questions as to the originality of this particular line of thinking.
If a cause has a pantheon of heroes, it also has its fair share of villains. In addition to Longstreet, Union General Ulysses S. Grant found himself and his actions a linchpin of the Lost Cause argument, particularly through a line of his own writing in 1864 in which he planned "'to hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his resources, until by mere attrition, if in no other way,' the Confederacy would collapse." (156) In ''Continuous Hammering and Mere Attrition: Lost Cause Critics and the Military Reputation of Ulysses S. Grant'', Brooks Simpson traces the de-contextualized use of this line by Lost Cause advocates to give weight to their argument that Grant was an outmatched, outfoxed commander who only defeated Lee's better-trained, better-led army through his unfair access to the Union's superior resources and material. The reasoning, as Brooks explains, proceeded from the belief that "if the quest for Southern independence could have succeeded, then one had to account for why it fell short - and that in turn meant either making a begrudging admission about the quality of the foe or searching for scapegoats or other answers." (148) The Lost Cause mythology does not allow for grudging admissions about the Union foe, therefore the alternative course was a foregone conclusion.
Through a prolific series of writings and memoirs, Southerners sought to show how Grant bungled his way through the war, succeeding only by luck or the ineptitude of those Confederate commanders whom he had opposed prior to facing Lee in 1864. The crux of their arguments stemmed from both Grant's own "mere attrition" quote (a line taken from an overarching plan which called for strategic attrition along the ''entire'' Confederate front, not tactical attrition against a single army) and the work of William Swinton, whose 1866 work "The Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac" paints Grant in a negative light, largely due to Grant's snubbing of the author during the war in Virginia. These ideas were seized upon and oft-repeated by neo-Confederate defenders who refused to accept that Lee had been beaten by another man and not a confluence of national supply and poor luck. Their goal was nothing short of destruction: as Simpson writes, Lost Cause contenders "sought to achieve in print what they could never accomplish on the battlefield: the defeat of the Union's foremost commander." (167) That Grant is today rarely acknowledged with the same reverence and respect shown to Lee is indicative of how persuasive, far-reaching, and long-lasting the claims of his opponents were.
Additional essays make up the remainder of "The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History." An examination of the post-war rise of former Confederate General Wade Hampton, a statistical analysis at Confederate Veterans Reunions in Georgia, and a lengthy and vivid comparison of the Lost Cause mythology to that of a regional religion are among the highlights, though all of the contributions are worthy entries into the scholarship surrounding the Lost Cause. These essays, while well-argued, are not without flaws. As noted earlier, Wert's reliance on his own earlier research renders the historian's inquiry into source material somewhat difficult. In addition, while Brooks Simpson argued at great lengths as to the poor quality of William Swinton's 1866 history of the war in the East, Wert described Swinton's work as "a popular history, heavily researched, and written by a skillful author" and "praised in both sections as fair and balanced." (128) To be fair, Wert does not indicate whether this is his assessment of Swinton or his perception by his contemporary audience. However, however the contrary positions are at least striking and at most confusing; Gallagher and Nolan, in their roles as editors, would have done well to rectify this. Lastly, while the book examines the principles behind and rise of the Lost Cause as a medium of memory, it admits to leaving the questions of why the ideas behind the myth became to accepted unanswered. As noted by Gallagher, the answer to that question would require a "far longer" essay, though the reader would do well to note the tone of challenge in that statement. (53)
The Lost Cause is a myth that shows no signs of disappearing, however modern events have shown it to be weakening. Recent arguments against Confederate iconography provide evidence that the public majority perception of the vanquished Confederacy has turned its back on the glorification of Lee and Jackson and embraces the Union restored. The case for studying the Lost Cause remains a strong one, however, and this work provides a solid footing for any future attempts at understanding this fascinating American phenomenon.
