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1. Thread. The "Lost Cause" view of the Civil War. The Lost Cause is a pervasive and persistent myth about the Civil War, one that is still promulgated by many who often claim that attacks against it are woke attempts at political correctness about the Confederacy.
2. As many know, I'm about as anti-woke and anti-PC as it gets. I don't like the Lost Cause mythology because it is simply and demonstrably false. There's nothing woke about that. Good history ends up dispelling the Lost Cause narrative.
3. The primary myths of the Lost Cause are (1) that the South seceded because of cultural, economic, and political differences with the North, not because of slavery; (2) that the South was doomed to lose; (3) but that the South had been generals and would have won a fair fight.
4. Let's look at myth 2, before addressing myth 1. It's often said that North's victory was inevitable, a fait accompli, and that if the South had started winning, then the North would have squashed it like an annoying insect. Here's Shelby Foote:
5. It's always important to examine what people thought pre and post war, because opinions of prominent Southerners often changed after defeat. Did the South believe it was ineluctably going to lose the war? No. Of course not. If it had, then it would not have fought!
6. It is, of course, true that the North had huge advantages in both population and in industrial capacity. But the North had the much harder military task. The North had to subdue a huge territory with 7-10 million people; all the South had to do was fight to a tie.
7. The Southerners could, of course, point to the American War for Independence as an example of a weaker army winning a war by simply maintaining resistance. And Southerners made such arguments before and during the war quite often.
8. The excellent historian Gary Gallagher contends that the Confederates' odds were actually substantially better. However, after they lost, they began to argue that the slaughter machine of Northern industry was simply too much and that victory was impossible.
9. Back to myth 1 now, which I think is the most consequential of the myths. According to the Lost Cause, the causes of the war were cultural, economic, and political. And slavery played no important role. The South had a right to secede. And the North was the aggressor.
10. When assessing this myth it is again very important to look at writings *before* the defeat of the South, because prominent Southerners such as Jefferson Davis and Alexander Hamilton Stephens (Vice President) changed their views and emphases substantially across time.
11. Perhaps the most important illustration of the view from the Confederacy on the centrality of slavery comes from Alexander Hamilton Stephens's "Cornerstone speech," in which he repudiates "all men are created equal" in favor of a new understanding of human relations.
12. He declares in fact that the Confederate government is premised on the exact opposite view, the view that "..the negro is not equal to the white man..." He also noted that slavery was indeed the cause of the "late rupture and present revolution..."
13. After the war, both Stephens and Davis wrote long, tedious, and tendentious books attempting to justify the South that diminished the role of slavery and emphasized the constitutionality of secession. But, I submit that their arguments before defeat are likely more honest.
14. But those are just two (albeit prominent) people. Maybe they were wrong about the causes of the war? One can also examine the reason the states gave for secession. Here we'll just look at South Carolina, which was the first state to secede.
15. In their "Declaration of the Immediate Causes...Justify the Secession...." they very clearly blame the North's hostility to the institution of slavery and note that Lincoln's "opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery."
16. Other states in the Confederacy made similar arguments and the term "slavery" appears at least 38 times in the documents of secession. It is clear that the people in these states were chiefly worried about the institution of slavery.
17. Furthermore, common arguments about state's rights don't hold up, since the South often actually supported a strong government AGAINST states when that government worked to support slavery (strong fugitive slave laws, for example). https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/underground-railroad-states-rights-114536
18. Without slavery, the Civil War would not have happened, as Lincoln noted in his 1865 speech: "These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war."
19. On generalship, I'm less than a dilettante, but many historians have argued that Grant, often derided as a great butcher, was at least Lee's equal. And some fault Lee for his aggressive strategy, contending that he squandered too many precious resources.
20. In the Lost Cause mythology, though, Robert Lee became a flawless and chivalrous hero, a King Arthur inspiring undying loyalty in his knights. He was, we are told, opposed to slavery, but fought for love of his state, Virginia.
21. On slavery, his views were actually rather typical of aristocrats in the South. He was opposed in the abstract, but thought that agitation for abolition was appalling and that only God could and would end slavery when the time was right.
22. I don't say any of this to disparage the south. I love the southern United States. And I can understand why people would create a narrative to justify and explain such a devastating defeat in a costly and protracted war. But ultimately we should care about the truth.
23. Nor does this mean we should tear all Confederate monuments down or ridicule Lee, Davis, Stuart, Longstreet, and the other Confederates. They were flawed, fallible men. They had greatness and they had shortcomings. I can admire Lee the soldier while disliking his cause.
24. And we can honor those fought in the Civil War while disdaining their cause. The monuments, in my opinion, are a great history lesson across this country. And I don't think we need to destroy them simply because they depict blinkered, fallen men.
25. But we should be honest about them and the cause for which they sacrificed so much. The South fought the Civil War primarily to create an independent slave-holding republic. Even at the time, that was an objectionable goal.
26. It's worth noting, of course, that the North *did not* fight primarily to end slavery. It fought to preserve the Union. Histories that place emancipation at the center of the Civil War are largely anachronistic and reflect our interests, not theirs.
27. So much of history today is discussed through an ideological prism. The past is put on a procrustean bed to fit our narrative demands. But this is exactly the wrong way to understand history and to honor our forebears, flawed and fallen as they were.
