To understand how the Lost Cause became revisionist narrative about the war and its causes, it’s useful to first look at the reasons given for leaving the Union. Begin by reading the full text of Alexander Stephens’s Cornerstone Speech. Then read the reasons southern states offered in their declarations of secession. Now contrast that with what Edward Pollard wrote in his book The Lost Cause and what Confederate descendants said decades after the Civil War during monument dedication ceremonies. See, for example, this 1933 speech by Heriot Clarkson, a former justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court.

To understand more about the United Daughters of the Confederacy, watch this video about how these women altered students’ understanding of history by vetting textbooks or read this op-ed about their broader work with children.

African American responses to the Lost Cause are equally important. Frederick Douglass worried that the Lost Cause narrative would erase the history of the most important outcome of the Civil War—the emancipation of slaves. He returned to this sentiment in many of his postwar speeches. See, for example, his speech in Rochester, New York, in 1882 on Decoration Day.

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