Have We Heard Enough About the Lost Cause?

What an entirely unexpected and absurd question for the Saturday morning, you say?

Hear me out.

The other day I received a notice from a subscriber, who decided to downgrade his membership from a paid to free subscription. He was kind enough to share some reasons why, which I greatly appreciate. Most people choose not to do so.

One of his comments was that I was writing too much about the Lost Cause. In short, he got it. At first, the comment surprised me, but as I gave it some thought, it started to make more sense.

The Lost Cause does dominate our Civil War memory. It does so for very good reasons. It has long dominated our collective memory of the Civil War era and Reconstruction. The Lost Cause has influenced popular culture and our politics in ways that other narratives of the war simply have not, though I do think this has changed significantly over the past two decades.

Focusing solely or even mostly on the Lost Cause can leave us with the impression that other groups or regions outside of the South were less focused on or committed to commemorating the past. One of the things that I really appreciate about Hilary Green’s new study of Black Civil War memory is that it reminds us that even though African Americans’ preferred memory of the war never dominated the public landscape, compared to the Lost Cause, they were just as emotionally bound to their heroes and stories.

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It is important that we continue to talk about it, but I also see that our continued obsession with the Lost Cause can overshadow the history and current state of Civil War memory.

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I loathe the extent to which we fail to acknowledge how our nation’s history has changed over time. It seems to me that this is one of the most important tasks for the historian. How often do we hear that we are still fighting the same Civil War or that Reconstruction never ended or that a direct line can be traced from Jefferson Davis and his followers to Trump and his sycophants?

Such an approach may score political or social media points, but it’s tiring and it sheds very little light on history or our current politics and culture.

The readers comment reminded me that this newsletter/blog is not a Lost Cause blog. It is a blog about Civil War memory.

At times I’ve explicitly acknowledged this. Not too long ago I commented on the fact that we were so focused on the question of Confederate monuments that we have lost sight of the extent to which our Civil War monument landscape has evolved in recent years.

Out With Confederate Soldiers, In With United States Colored Troops

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February 22, 2025

The news of the past few weeks on the history front makes it easy to lose sight of the larger picture. There is certainly a great deal to be concerned about and we need to remain vigilant and find ways to combat the new administration’s war on history, but I remain optimistic.

Failure to acknowledge these changes is tantamount to erasure—the very thing these new monuments and memorials were intended to counter.

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This is all just a way of saying that I plan on being more intentional moving forward in being more inclusive and selective about the stories and news that I share with you.

Let me know if this agrees with you and please let me know what you would like to learn more about. Thank you.