Open Thread Thursday: Has the Lost Cause Really Lost?
I have certainly attempted over the past few years to make the case that the Lost Cause, as an explanation or interpretation of the Civil War and the Confederacy, has lost.
[Note: This essay by Chris Graham is by far the best overview of the Lost Cause.]
You don’t have to go back far at all, perhaps just a few decades, to arrive at a point when the Lost Cause was one of the dominant narratives of the war, alongside that of a reunion-centered memory.
The Lost Cause narrative could be found in textbooks in popular history books, and throughout popular culture. In many public spaces its symbols were untouchable.