Can we avoid the "Lost Cause" mythology after the American Civil War?

[Mikestone8]

There was no mass executions of confederate leaders, nor were the plantation owners dispossesed, that's absurdly lenient treatment for a failed rebellion by the standards of the 19th century. Honesly that doing the bare minimum of supporting democratically elected state governments against hooded terrorists and disenfranchising traitors is seen as going to far just goes to show the effectiveness of lost cause propaganda today.

We Brits took that line toward Irish rebels. It wasn't a brilliant success.

Bsically, such a TL is impossible from an 1865 PoD. Your best bet is to have the Confederacy collapse in 1861/2, so that the secession is remembered as an ignominious flop. Also, athis point many Southern Whites will have played little or no part in the war, so have less motive to romanticise the Southron cause. And in that situation there is probably no move to give Blacks the vote (if indeed they are even emancipated) so far less for Southern whites to wax nostalgic about.

 

[History Learner]

Of course it "failed" to be achived, because wealth redistribution was never a goal of the federal government in the first place. Sure the state governments could have gone out on a limb and tried that on it's their own, but could they trust the federal government to balk at the violation of peoperty rights and pull out leaving them vunerable during the transition period. It's very understandable why they would avoid such risks and follow the federal government rather than anger it, even if that left them unable to conaoldate local support because without federal troops you wont have a chance to build that support in the first place. Without the explicit blessing of the federal government southern republicans none of the radical actions that could have been taken had any real chance to begin with.

I don't see how confiscations of wealth would've changed anything with regards to Whites-both Northern and Southerner-hating Blacks.

I actually agree that would have lead to less resentment, but I will say that OTL reconstruction was the worst of both worlds in that it used enough force to piss people off but lacked the commitment to truly revolutionize Southern society.

Take in note how even Northern states at this time were passing Black codes; it was never going to happen.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

At all costs, avoid revanchism. Do not give any space to the sentiment that the South lost a war. Do not ever, ever, ever call the Southerners "traitors". The narrative must be that they were misguided. Perhaps even deceived by a small, self-interested cabal of planter aristocrats. (But don't mane any names. Keep it vague. Anyone you accuse can become a symbol for a cause you wish to prevent from ever existing.)

Don't go the way of even revoking citizenship or voting rights for leading Southerners. Instead, get those exact people on board. Have Lee and Longstreet preaching Unionism along with Grant and Sherman. Depict them as gentlemen who always respected each other (which, by the way, is true in most cases). Re-embrace the "wayward sons" warmly, depict slavery not as a confederate error and sin, but as an antebellum error and sin, and do everything to just put the "late unpleasantries" behind you (as a nation). The postbellum period must be an "era of good feelings" to such an extent that the feeling associated with the whole secession is one of embarrassment. Something you wouldn't want to be reminded of, and which you'd like to minimise in the historical record, because it was that infamous time you did that silly thing for no good reason. Basically a nation-spanning Noodle Incident.

That's it. No Lost Cause. Of course, this automatically means no forceful Reconstruction, either. On the other hand, without all that bad blood and division, a more gradual improvement of race relations is vey likely. This happened in other countries, after all. The initial period would be worse for former slaves, but I strongly suspect things would thereafter improve, with no "regression" into Jim Crow and segregation. As always, 'slow & steady' and rule by soft decrees is the recipe for a more tranquil and desirable outcome in the long run.

Though, this opens the door for another form of Lost Cause narrative though. For instance, more left-wing mentalities within southern circles, such as Populists or certainly the later image of Long come to mind. Who will harken to the days wherein capitalism seemed slight or in the mindset of the rural farmer, did not exist. In their view, the southern planting elite, alongside the rest of the Southern ruling caste will be interpreted as having sold the South to major industry as otl. Without any other narrative to compete with this, it is plausible for a more tangible Socialist movement to arise within said lands, no?

 

[Skallagrim]

Though, this opens the door for another form of Lost Cause narrative though. For instance, more left-wing mentalities within southern circles, such as Populists or certainly the later image of Long come to mind. Who will harken to the days wherein capitalism seemed slight or in the mindset of the rural farmer, did not exist. In their view, the southern planting elite, alongside the rest of the Southern ruling caste will be interpreted as having sold the South to major industry as otl. Without any other narrative to compete with this, it is plausible for a more tangible Socialist movement to arise within said lands, no?

The outcome is certainly possible, although I wouldn't expect it to take the form of a Lost Cause narrative. The war would, from such a perspective, presumably be interpreted as (yet another) case of powerful elites sending common men to die for their economic interests (which are also intrinsically based on oppression of lower classes in general, whether it be industral capitalism or plantation neo-feudalism) -- and then making peace afterwards, joining their interests together and "fuck all those people who died, right?"

As far as the Civil War would be concerned, the narrative wouldn't be some romanticised lost cause, but a bitter tale amounting to "there ain't never been a rich man who didn't feel mighty willing to send a dozen poor men to die on his behalf".

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

The outcome is certainly possible, although I wouldn't expect it to take the form of a Lost Cause narrative. The war would, from such a perspective, presumably be interpreted as (yet another) case of powerful elites sending common men to die for their economic interests (which are also intrinsically based on oppression of lower classes in general, whether it be industral capitalism or plantation neo-feudalism) -- and then making peace afterwards, joining their interests together and "fuck all those people who died, right?"

As far as the Civil War would be concerned, the narrative wouldn't be some romanticised lost cause, but a bitter tale amounting to "there ain't never been a rich man who didn't feel mighty willing to send a dozen poor men to die on his behalf".

True, but it would still engender a nascent left-wing nationalism within the South that would perhaps be far more fearsome than otl's southern ideologues. I doubt that the poster wants to only remove the romantic notion of the Civil War and yet create a more rabid and fearsome sectional conflict that could lead to another civil war engulfing more of the country. But perhaps I am reading in too much as to the poster's intentions.

 

[TastySpam]

Yeah, I agree almost entirely with @HistoryLearner here.

The idea that punishing the Confederate leaders would have prevented the Lost Cause mythology is extremely silly. The actual Confederate leaders actually knew the real history - and although they were mostly fervent supporters of slavery at the start of the war (they all knew secession was about slavery), most had a very keen understanding how badly the South got wrecked by the war and that the whole enterprise was just not a good idea. Some of them were dead-enders, but the vast majority of Confederate leaders were not sore losers.

The entire point of the Lost Cause narrative is that it was largely the product of a younger generation that wasn't really in charge back then - so they could just believe stuff that was just totally objectively not true. Most bad historical narratives aren't a result of people deliberately lying - it's ignorant people believing things that are highly convenient for the things they already want,

"We'll shoot you till you learn better." not only will not make Confederate sentiment go away, it's liable to get 200,000 Confederate soldiers still in the field in April/May of 1865 to turn to Bushwhacking.

Important historical note: By 1876, Northern voters and party bosses had made it clear to national leaders that their voters no longer had the stomach for enforcing Reconstruction and wanted the last troops pulled out. This informed the thinking of the "Bargain of 1876"; Reconstruction was going to end one way and one way only no matter who got elected.

Yeah - also important to mention, the South didn't immediately collapse into Jim Crow-ism after federal troops left. The first disenfranchisement of blacks didn't hit until the 1890's - and the last biracial government lasted until 1898 (a Republican-Populist government in NC overthrown in a coup).

 

[Skallagrim]

True, but it would still engender a nascent left-wing nationalism within the South that would perhaps be far more fearsome than otl's southern ideologues. I doubt that the poster wants to only remove the romantic notion of the Civil War and yet create a more rabid and fearsome sectional conflict that could lead to another civil war engulfing more of the country. But perhaps I am reading in too much as to the poster's intentions.

Certainly a fair point! On the oher hand... would the existence of such sentiment bring the certainty of conflict? A more united "working class" across the USA, not really that divided by regionalism, would be a bigger threat to the existing order. That might become very unpleasant. But in OTL, in most Western countries, that very factor led a lot of social reforms to get support-- "If we don't change things, we'll have another 1848 on our hands!"

For all we know, the outcome could be a USA that is rather more like a typical Western European country, socio-economically. More social-democratic.

 

[Bulldoggus]

There's an almost absurd level of apolitical thought here. @Moderate Hero was the closest of you lot to hitting on it. First of, @NHBL - you're asking the wrong question. Of course there will be a Lost Cause argument of some form. That is literally fucking inevitable. There are pro-Nazi arguments out there, after all. What you should be asking is how such a narrative can be kept from being almost a default one.

Everyone here, but particularly @TastySpam read this thread.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1186468302400507904

There was no reconstruction soft or generous enough to appease the plantation elite, because they lost their slaves! The thing for which they fought the war! And @Skallagrim you have a lot of big ideas on how to prevent a Lost Cause narrative. Trouble is, they all implode the moment someone asks "well how can that be achieved"? Sad!

Here's what you all are missing- the Lost Cause narrative is one strengthened by institutional power. Groups like the UDC had the money and political power to put up those statues everywhere, to decide what got (and still gets) written in school textbooks. They had the power to force a bogus "reconciliation" in 1876 that turned over the South to the depredations of the old Plantation elite. Here's an alternative solution that will make sure the Lost Cause Narrative is not a powerful one.

There were less than 10,000 households who owned 50 or more slaves. Expel them all from the United States (with the exception of the few of those who served the Union). Parcel out their lands to their freedmen (giving the latter an independent base of political and economic power rather than the serfdom that we euphemistically call "sharecropping"). Do the same for everyone who served as a governor, congressman, or senator of the Confederate States (I'm generous- I'll spare the State Legislators). And do the same for everyone who served as a General in the Confederate Army. There's a lot of overlap between these groups. It would significantly undercut the power of the Lost Cause Myth, that's for sure, and it would elevate those best positioned to fight the myth. Also, keep a major force of Northern Federal Troops, sustained by National Service requirements of some sort, garrisoned there until the turn of the century. In any town where there is an attack on freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags", deportation and expropriation of all former Confederate officers is in order.

Thus, the Lost Cause has no institutional power on which to grow. The people who pushed for it hardest are scattered to the four winds and penniless. Oh, sure, it will exist, there will be deadenders out there, but it will be a weak, fringe ideology.

 

[TastySpam]

At all costs, avoid revanchism. Do not give any space to the sentiment that the South lost a war. Do not ever, ever, ever call the Southerners "traitors". The narrative must be that they were misguided. Perhaps even deceived by a small, self-interested cabal of planter aristocrats. (But don't mane any names. Keep it vague. Anyone you accuse can become a symbol for a cause you wish to prevent from ever existing.)

Don't go the way of even revoking citizenship or voting rights for leading Southerners. Instead, get those exact people on board. Have Lee and Longstreet preaching Unionism along with Grant and Sherman. Depict them as gentlemen who always respected each other (which, by the way, is true in most cases). Re-embrace the "wayward sons" warmly, depict slavery not as a confederate error and sin, but as an antebellum error and sin, and do everything to just put the "late unpleasantries" behind you (as a nation). The postbellum period must be an "era of good feelings" to such an extent that the feeling associated with the whole secession is one of embarrassment. Something you wouldn't want to be reminded of, and which you'd like to minimise in the historical record, because it was that infamous time you did that silly thing for no good reason. Basically a nation-spanning Noodle Incident.

That's it. No Lost Cause. Of course, this automatically means no forceful Reconstruction, either. On the other hand, without all that bad blood and division, a more gradual improvement of race relations is vey likely. This happened in other countries, after all. The initial period would be worse for former slaves, but I strongly suspect things would thereafter improve, with no "regression" into Jim Crow and segregation. As always, 'slow & steady' and rule by soft decrees is the recipe for a more tranquil and desirable outcome in the long run.

I actually think what you described is a pretty accurate depiction of what really did happen in OTL America. Important to realize that after 1865 - Southern secessionism was basically dead forever. Sherman was good friends with most Confederate generals! When northern troops left in 1876 - Reconstruction actually looked pretty successful. The nation had been stitched together, slavery was ended, and most blacks enfranchised (with fairly rapid economic recovery in the South for both whites/blacks). Yet two decades later, we had Jim Crow and segregation.

I think it's tempting to speak of slavery and Jim Crow as identical phenomenons (Jim Crow being slavery 2.0), but despite the shared nucleus of white supremacy, they were very different institutions. Economically, slave power was an existential threat to EVERYONE in the North (from yeomen farmers to industrialists). Important to remember Abraham Lincoln never tried to abolish slavery - the Republican Party was formed on the agenda of merely stopping slavery from expanding. Jim Crow and the ideology behind it was something much less threatening to the North.

To get rid of the Lost Cause and Jim Crow, I don't think you need to change how Southern political culture developed. I think you need to change how Northern political culture adopted - and honestly to change that, I think you need to change a lot of other countries. Another growing idea in this time period was scientific racism. There's one thing to think that a certain group of people are inferior- people have always thought that. It's a whole other thing to organize your political structures entirely upon that basis.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

Certainly a fair point! On the oher hand... would the existence of such sentiment bring the certainty of conflict? A more united "working class" across the USA, not really that divided by regionalism, would be a bigger threat to the existing order. That might become very unpleasant. But in OTL, in most Western countries, that very factor led a lot of social reforms to get support-- "If we don't change things, we'll have another 1848 on our hands!"

For all we know, the outcome could be a USA that is rather more like a typical Western European country, socio-economically. More social-democratic.

Though ultimately, that may not be enough. The US may have to cajole such movements into place with military power. In otl, Long was able to cause massive stirrings and threatened war in a country mostly unready for such talk of radical socialism. If the country is made ready for such things, and considering the rural nature of the US in this time, I do nto find it outlandish to say that mild social reformism will be inefficient. History shows us that reformism did not quell class alienation in the US, but a sort of renewed patriotism and nationalist assurance did.

Especially without a southern establishment of redeemers as otl with figures like Woodrow Wilson, the impetus will become more radical. That being, economic redistribution is a must and a requirement, not simple welfare policies but activities that would be made illegal by the Supreme Court, such as nationalization of industries, targeted taxation with intent to harm, removals of profit motives in farming and the shielding of the private poor farmer in the South. Such mentalities cannot be abated by reform, nor will the southern establishment given pardon by the US be willing to give the necessary reforms. Rather, the majority of the working class populace will be arrayed against the pardoned Southern elites. The only thing that may save them would be immigrants, US direct aid or attempting to court the Freed Slave vote.

 

[TastySpam]

There's an almost absurd level of apolitical thought here. @Moderate Hero was the closest of you lot to hitting on it. First of, @NHBL - you're asking the wrong question. Of course there will be a Lost Cause argument of some form. That is literally fucking inevitable. There are pro-Nazi arguments out there, after all. What you should be asking is how such a narrative can be kept from being almost a default one.

Everyone here, but particularly @TastySpam read this thread.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1186468302400507904

There was no reconstruction soft or generous enough to appease the plantation elite, because they lost their slaves! The thing for which they fought the war! And @Skallagrim you have a lot of big ideas on how to prevent a Lost Cause narrative. Trouble is, they all implode the moment someone asks "well how can that be achieved"? Sad!

Here's what you all are missing- the Lost Cause narrative is one strengthened by institutional power. Groups like the UDC had the money and political power to put up those statues everywhere, to decide what got (and still gets) written in school textbooks. They had the power to force a bogus "reconciliation" in 1876 that turned over the South to the depredations of the old Plantation elite. Here's an alternative solution that will make sure the Lost Cause Narrative is not a powerful one.

There were less than 10,000 households who owned 50 or more slaves. Expel them all from the United States (with the exception of the few of those who served the Union). Parcel out their lands to their freedmen (giving the latter an independent base of political and economic power rather than the serfdom that we euphemistically call "sharecropping"). Do the same for everyone who served as a governor, congressman, or senator of the Confederate States (I'm generous- I'll spare the State Legislators). And do the same for everyone who served as a General in the Confederate Army. There's a lot of overlap between these groups. It would significantly undercut the power of the Lost Cause Myth, that's for sure, and it would elevate those best positioned to fight the myth. Also, keep a major force of Northern Federal Troops, sustained by National Service requirements of some sort, garrisoned there until the turn of the century. In any town where there is an attack on freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags", deportation and expropriation of all former Confederate officers is in order.

Thus, the Lost Cause has no institutional power on which to grow. The people who pushed for it hardest are scattered to the four winds and penniless. Oh, sure, it will exist, there will be deadenders out there, but it will be a weak, fringe ideology.

I think it's pretty fair to say that Michael Harriot's understanding of history and really race in general is monomaniacally focused on race. Obviously not chat, so I won't try to document his various strange distortions and sometimes conspiracy theories, but it is safe to say he's not someone I should go task for a nuanced view on the intersection between race/class (also as a side note, I can guarantee you most black people don't know abut the Tulsa race riots because most people of all races don't know as much history as the people in his social network do).

The idea that Jim Crow was merely a product of the old Confederate planter elite is deeply ahistorical if just for the fact that Jim Crow had far larger buy-in across society. Something like 25% of Southern whites owned or rented slaves, the vast majority not that many. There's an American tendency to treat racism as this immutable personal trait that is fungible between people (ie, there are just hordes of people who just caught the racist virus and immediately become zombies) and thus apply that not just to the present, to an era where basically everyone held some wildly racist viewpoints, but there was quite a bit of difference between someone like Wade Hampton (who was pretty much as bad as it got with the old Planter Elite) and someone like Ben Tillman (who dialed it up to 12). Jim Crow was in practice much more a creation of the upper-middle class than the aristocracy - a group of people who saw both poor whites and poor blacks as both a social and economic threat (which is why Jim Crow measures started flooding in as soon as the prospects of Republican-Populist governments rose). Both race and class reductionism are not appropriate to discussing Jim Crow. As an aside, the market for racial reductionism also seems to be upper-middle class people, which is kind of ironic when you consider the background of Jim Crow...

And this isn't really a new understanding. This is something the Beard school, C. Vann Woodward, even Martin Luther King, Jr. understood very well. The forces animating Jim Crow were not some psychic evil motivating all white people as if they were created by Yakub to be devils, they were a deep intersection of both race/class that was too deeply rooted to be defeated by mere force (it's why MLK opted for economic and multiracial solidarity through nonviolent socio-political organization - why the March on Washington was for both jobs and freedom).

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

I actually think what you described is a pretty accurate depiction of what really did happen in OTL America. Important to realize that after 1865 - Southern secessionism was basically dead forever. Sherman was good friends with most Confederate generals! When northern troops left in 1876 - Reconstruction actually looked pretty successful. The nation had been stitched together, slavery was ended, and most blacks enfranchised (with fairly rapid economic recovery in the South for both whites/blacks). Yet two decades later, we had Jim Crow and segregation.

I think it's tempting to speak of slavery and Jim Crow as identical phenomenons (Jim Crow being slavery 2.0), but despite the shared nucleus of white supremacy, they were very different institutions. Economically, slave power was an existential threat to EVERYONE in the North (from yeomen farmers to industrialists). Important to remember Abraham Lincoln never tried to abolish slavery - the Republican Party was formed on the agenda of merely stopping slavery from expanding. Jim Crow and the ideology behind it was something much less threatening to the North.

To get rid of the Lost Cause and Jim Crow, I don't think you need to change how Southern political culture developed. I think you need to change how Northern political culture adopted - and honestly to change that, I think you need to change a lot of other countries. Another growing idea in this time period was scientific racism. There's one thing to think that a certain group of people are inferior- people have always thought that. It's a whole other thing to organize your political structures entirely upon that basis.

That is a sugarcoating of the situation no? Immediately following the Civil War and Reconstruction is when the noose tightened far greater upon the poor farming folk of much of the South. The great entry of capitalism into the south as it is sometimes referred to. Ultimately, the Reconstruction under a certain opinion, was the introduction of capitalism into the south and provided the possibility for a socialist cause to develop.

In otl, I would argue, that the last southern politicians that spoke of a sort of southern nationalism that had teeth, were to the left generally and not of the cadre that were the 'slave power' in the South. The old order in the South is also different and separate from segregationism, a fundamentally middle class and bourgeoise conception. As works in southern history assert, the old order imposed a supremacy of proximity, whilst the middle class segregationists advocated a supremacy via difference or seclusion. A third idea among southern peoples of the time, was a thoroughly Populist vision for the southern region, regarding the implementation of radical policy and the removal of capitalist interference in the South. The removal of the Lost Cause narrative, as I see it, means the lessening power of both the Old Order and the 'New Order' of Middle Class Segregationists and replacing it with the Populist narrative of class solidarity and revanchism against the long march of capitalism.

And I would say, it seems a more fearsome foe to me, a movement preaching a strong grievance against economic woes related to radical policy change and economic redistribution than it is to have an opinion like the otl Redeemers.

 

[Bulldoggus]

@TastySpam I agree that Harriot is, well... a blinkered asshole who is just talented enough as a writer to pass off his distortions as some sort of speaking truth to power. His election takes were particularly atrocious. However, a stopped clock is right twice a day, and viewing Reconstruction as a series of coups and pogroms to destroy Freedman power isn't off-base. And that's also why pretty severe, community-levels, to anti-freedman violence would be a part of my solution to the problem.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

I think it's pretty fair to say that Michael Harriot's understanding of history and really race in general is monomaniacally focused on race. Obviously not chat, so I won't try to document his various strange distortions and sometimes conspiracy theories, but it is safe to say he's not someone I should go task for a nuanced view on the intersection between race/class (also as a side note, I can guarantee you most black people don't know abut the Tulsa race riots because most people of all races don't know as much history as the people in his social network do).

The idea that Jim Crow was merely a product of the old Confederate planter elite is deeply ahistorical if just for the fact that Jim Crow had far larger buy-in across society. Something like 25% of Southern whites owned or rented slaves, the vast majority not that many. There's an American tendency to treat racism as this immutable personal trait that is fungible between people (ie, there are just hordes of people who just caught the racist virus and immediately become zombies) and thus apply that not just to the present, to an era where basically everyone held some wildly racist viewpoints, but there was quite a bit of difference between someone like Wade Hampton (who was pretty much as bad as it got with the old Planter Elite) and someone like Ben Tillman (who dialed it up to 12). Jim Crow was in practice much more a creation of the upper-middle class than the aristocracy - a group of people who saw both poor whites and poor blacks as both a social and economic threat (which is why Jim Crow measures started flooding in as soon as the prospects of Republican-Populist governments rose). Both race and class reductionism are not appropriate to discussing Jim Crow. As an aside, the market for racial reductionism also seems to be upper-middle class people, which is kind of ironic when you consider the background of Jim Crow...

And this isn't really a new understanding. This is something the Beard school, C. Vann Woodward, even Martin Luther King, Jr. understood very well. The forces animating Jim Crow were not some psychic evil motivating all white people as if they were created by Yakub to be devils, they were a deep intersection of both race/class that was too deeply rooted to be defeated by mere force (it's why MLK opted for economic and multiracial solidarity through nonviolent socio-political organization - why the March on Washington was for both jobs and freedom).

Right. The Old Order was something different entirely. The later segregationist who arose in the late 1880s, were radical in their racist overtones. Much of this is achieved by say the life of James Vardaman. Wherein the ideal was to utilize middle class notions of race and then use that to demagogue about the Old Order + Freedmen/African populaces. Vardaman for instance, if I am not mistaken, considered the freedmen to be instruments of the capitalist elites and of the Old Order plantation masters. This was the opinion generally of the later KKK, at least in how it operated in Mississippi and Louisiana, the Deep South. Hence Long's war upon the KKK and movements like that of Vardaman's (even though that level of vitriol was maybe a bit lower by 1930), specifically because Long and the Populist rhetoric he was advocating from the poorer districts of the rural South was one that turned the anger of the Southern farmers and workers to big finance, capitalism, the redeemers and the military; instead of against the freedmen and immigrant, Jews or whomever.

 

[mork23]

Honestly this discussion is pointless. If you want to avoid the Lost Cause just avoid the south at all. By that I mean have the English colonies be very different from conception or simply don't have the English come in the first place. I mean you have all of history and the only thing you can think of is avoiding the Lost Cause.

Why introduce slavery or large scale African slave trade in the first place? I mean so what if it isn't the USA, after all if the suffering is less than our world than it simply is less.

 

[Jack Doe Obviously]

I'm something of a radical on the civil war. I hate the slave owning classes of the south. Honestly being unrealistic here the best thing would be to have some earlier development in small portable camera's (small enough to be concealed) so that civil war propaganda could include things like slave owners raping their slaves and post civil war norther veterans could be galvanized by seeing the people they worked to free being lynched.

 

[Wendell]

I don't think it's a matter so much of needing to come down harder on the rebel leaders after the war as it is a matter of Lincoln's untimely demise in the Booth conspiracy, the inability of Andrew Johnson to overcome his John Tyler problem, and Republicans responding every bit as aggressively as the Whigs earlier when Tippecanoe didn't wear a coat. Compound that with Grant empowering too many of the wring people, the 1876 debacle, Guiteau getting his Booth on, and a series of weak presidents until Theodore Roosevelt, and you have a ripe recipe or an effective publicity campaign rewriting the causes of the war, and the motivations of southern leaders.

 

[Raferty]

The Lost Cause is overstated in terms of its impact, and yes, it could have been avoided. It began really as a form of exculpatory letter writing between leaders of the failed cause, and evolved into a broader tradition of nebulous negationism, but it wasn't particularly important on contemporary issues. Prof. David Blight has it right when he called Jefferson Davis's memoirs "the longest, most turgid, and tedious reflection of a failed political movement in the history of the English language". To avoid the Lost Cause, you need less recriminations between CSA leadership, or quite simply, the deaths or tribunals of this leadership.

However, Lost Causism also thrived because of the desire after wars for people to explain and conceptualize why it all happened. You had the Avant-Garde after WW1, etc. Lost Causism tried to explain the war, but it was not alone in doing so. There were other interpretations that existed, but did not go about holding public events and gaudy funerals and tributes in the same way that the Lost Cause did. In academia, economic determinism was all the rage in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but they were mostly a closed circle. The Needless War theory also failed to leave its academic circles, and the same applied to the Neo-Abolitionists, the agrarianist theory, the honor vs. dignity culture theory, etc., all of which were at some point or another reflected in Lost Cause debates.

Essentially, Lost Cause history was popular history. It was the Mary Beard, Barbara Tuchman, Niall Ferguson, Patrick Wyman, etc. of its time, in that it brought historical discussions to the level of the common people. That is why it perpetuated.

Part of the problem though is that there were elements of truth in the Lost Cause. It is true that the Confederacy suffered from numerical disadvantage, a lack of industrial base, and that its infrastructure was often destroyed deliberately as part of the war. It is also true from primary source documentation that the political cause of the war (the slavery debate) differed from the stated view of most actually fighting it, on both sides, including even the USCT forces. Fire Eaters and Abolitionists were tiny minorities in their respective sides. Abolitionism had some popular religious appeal in New England, and the Planter class overrepresented among CSA officers had become more ideological in their advocacy of slavery, but neither represented a critical mass. This isn't a normative judgment, it is a fact. This was mixed with more vapid arguments on the source of the war that were discounted almost from the beginning by everyone outside the Lost Cause circles, and even some within. As a result, drawing a clear red line around Lost Causism is kind of a problem.

This is the same issue that exists regarding the Dunning school. The corruption of Reconstruction governments was actually kind of egregious, and not simply a self serving fiction for the Redeemers. It was not universal in each state, with some governments more corrupt than others. It is also true that the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party, which was for spoils and bossism, was also the far more pro-civil rights faction, and as a result, there was a problem in that the good government advocates associated freedmen with corruption, something that harms modern sensibilities. But this was used to excuse the violence inherent in the 1876 Revolts, and as a result, Dunningite ideas have been dismissed, and its factual aspects with it.

One of the topics I have often heard debated is whether Civil War buff culture ended up scourging Lost Causism from popular opinions. To an extent, I think it did, in that Civil War historians with ties to this emergent subculture could plainly refute Lost Causism at the level of the common people. It is also true that changing perceptions of certain Lost Cause villains like Longstreet, often from revised opinions stemming from said buff culture and works of narrative fiction like the Killer Angels and Jeff Shaara's work, have done similar work. The problem I think is that certain elements of Lost Causism are much easier to refute (like the cause of the war) than others (like the conduct of the war, and certain historical figures), either factually or otherwise. The Sherman and Lee myths are particularly hard to get past.

 

[Mikestone8]

a bogus "reconciliation" in 1876

What was bogus about it?

North and South *were* reconciled. By 1898 thousands of young Southerners, whose fathers had fought for the Confederacy, were enlisting to fight for the US against Spain. Iirc at least one Confederate *general* did so.

As for Jim Crow, had that anything in particular to do with Lost Cause nostalgia? There was never any Lost Cause myth in the North, yet as late as Nov 1864 some 44% of Northerners voted for a party which would have allowed the South to keep *slavery* on condition it returned to the Union. . If Northerners would later allow their Blacks to vote, this was mainly because Blacks were too small a minority to matter. Had Blacks been numerous in the North as in the South, then the North would also have had Jim Crow.

Didn't Lincoln himself observe that Southerners were "only what we [Northerners] would be in their place, as we are what they would be in ours"?

 

[Skallagrim]

And @Skallagrim you have a lot of big ideas on how to prevent a Lost Cause narrative. Trouble is, they all implode the moment someone asks "well how can that be achieved"? Sad!

What kind of an absurd claim is this? Of course what I propose can be achieved. The insane suggestions that some revanchists (but I repeat myself: all revanchist are insane) on this forum are so often proposing-- those are the things that can't be achieved. You can have OTL's muddled record, or you can have a bit more revanchism (which would only make things worse)... or you you can have true reconciliation. That last one is the only real solution. And it has a super-easy POD: John Wilkes Booth chickens out, and there is no plot to kill Lincoln. That pretty much solves everything. Lincoln knew reconciliation was key. His murder by that thrice-damned idiot Booth only served to kill the man best equipped to handle the conflict's aftermath, and tragically even legitimised -- to some extent -- those crying division and discord.

If Lincoln lives and goes through with a far more organised, deliberate show of reconciliation, the whole matter is basically solved. He knew and understood what many a short-sighted fellow on this forum apparently just can't seem to grasp: that the most effective victory is achieved by making your enemy into your friend. Better yet: your brother; your kinsman. Never allow the conflict to be stressed again, but instead brush it over and stress the reconciliation. Don't wait for Confederate veterans to set up veterans' associations-- set up joint veterans' associations before they can even think of it. Go down that road, and your national history will be a very peaceful walk.

I actually think what you described is a pretty accurate depiction of what really did happen in OTL America. Important to realize that after 1865 - Southern secessionism was basically dead forever. Sherman was good friends with most Confederate generals! When northern troops left in 1876 - Reconstruction actually looked pretty successful. The nation had been stitched together, slavery was ended, and most blacks enfranchised (with fairly rapid economic recovery in the South for both whites/blacks).

There was clearly enough ill sentiment left for it to fester. You still had a situation where many Southerners were sorry they lost. What you need is a scenario where they're sorry they fought. (Which is why the insane revanchists need to get their heads checked: their sort of "solution" would only make far more people far more sorry that they lot, while proving beyond any doubt that they had a good reason to fight.)

I think Lincoln, who commented along these lines repeatedly, understood this very well. Rather than trying to punish the South, I think he'd want to... more that stitch things together, actually heal the gash. He also understood the power of institutions. I could see him working with leading Confederates, offering them easy and complete rehabilitation (even retaining their pre-war military ranks etc.) is they all become a bunch of Longstreets and preach the virtues of the Union, side-by-side with Sherman and Grant (who would be all too willing). That's what you need: to ensure that all former Confederate leaders follow the James Longstreet line, rather than the Nathan Bedford Forrest one. (And that is very possible, even if @Bulldoggus doubts that. after all, even Forrest back-tracked on his nasty ideas a bit, near the end of his life. So I'm fairly confident that with Lincoln firmly in the saddle, the post-war situation would be far more than tolerable: it would be amicable. And stuff like the KKK, without patronage of notable men like Forrest, would probably wither away before gaining any clout.)

I think you need to change how Northern political culture adopted - and honestly to change that, I think you need to change a lot of other countries. Another growing idea in this time period was scientific racism. There's one thing to think that a certain group of people are inferior- people have always thought that. It's a whole other thing to organize your political structures entirely upon that basis.

As far as the notion of Jim Crow existing within the context of 'scientific' racism and such things is concerned: to some extent, that is true. But on the other hand... that way of thinking became popular in other countries, too, but Jim Crow was a US phenomenon. There is no doubt in my mind that it is the legacy of the Civil War that is the relevant factor there. (But under the right conditions, that legacy could be changed.)