The Evolution of Lost Cause Mythology, Symbology, and Confederate Memory
摘要
In this chapter, I tackle the question of what happened to the Lost Cause in the twentieth century after World War I, which is often considered a critical moment in national reconciliation. Under the presidential leadership of Virginia-born Woodrow Wilson, Southerners once again took up arms in large numbers for the United States. The Lost Cause did not fade even as its sons wore the uniforms of the American nation once again; if anything, it proved that it could shapeshift. As the decades passed and the immediate memory of Confederate defeat lost some of its sharpest edges, the Lost Cause and the symbology associated with it found new employment. Some symbols became more associated with white supremacy than with the old Confederacy. And, interestingly, some Civil Rights Movement-era Confederate heritage organizations sought to retrofit the myth to make it more palatable to the American nation in a new sociopolitical moment. And even as of this writing over 150 years after Appomattox, the Confederacy and Lost Cause both still have massive communities. I end this chapter with a field survey of three contemporary Lost Cause/Southern nationalist organizations: the Southern Legal Resource Center, the League of the South, and CSA II. Each of these organizations show that, even though the Lost Cause has become a permanent and durable part of American mythology, its advocates tend to maintain the core sense of victimhood that has always animated the myth.