Edited by author 11-14-2006 11:43 AM
       Just as the victors of war experience feelings of euphoria and increased confidence, those on the losing side must find a means to cope with the psychological, economic, and political trauma that follows defeat. In the case of the American Civil War, the Lost Cause was the white South’s coping mechanism for dealing with their defeat and all that it entailed. Although historians have often interpreted the Lost Cause as a movement that was “purely backward-looking or romantic,” Gaines M. Foster offers an alternative interpretation in Ghosts of the Confederatcy.[1] According to Foster, rather than being understood as a movement that aimed to revitalize the sectionalism that dominated the South before and during the war, the Lost Cause provided opportunities for Southerners to cope with a period of extreme social change. Because of its function as a coping mechanism, the Lost Cause was transformed (i.e., reconstructed) in different periods of the postbellum South as its adherents strove to deal with distinct challenges. For example, just as the Ladies Memorial Association (LMA) and other similar organizations focused on the grieving process through their memorialization of the dead in the immediate aftermath of the war, the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) celebrated the private soldier as a model of present behavior in the 1890s, as Southern Americans came to grips with the new challenges of industrialization and commercialism.[2] That the Lost Cause was not a monolithic movement suggests the constructed nature of Southern national identity in much the same way as Paola Gemme demonstrated the constructed nature of American national identity in the antebellum period.[3]
       Foster contends that the Lost Cause should be viewed as an important cultural movement, a movement that provided white Southerners with a strong sense of social identity and unity. The Lost Cause, Foster explains, is a sort of origin myth or a “civil religion” that described “the origins of the southern people.”[4] This interpretation of the Lost Cause is consistent with Benedict Anderson’s interpretation of nationalism as a cultural system, rather than an ideology.[5] Viewing the Lost Cause in terms of culture/religion helps explain why the movement was so powerful in the postbellum period. Much like a religion, it provided its subscribers with a description of who they were and where they came from, it offered a way to interpret (rationalize) their defeat, and it offered a portrait of a future time when the South would rise again.
       Foster’s chapter on ceremonial bereavement demonstrated the extreme sense of loss and grief that white Southerners experienced after their defeat. In order to deal with this psychological trauma, a number of autonomous organizations across the south began building cemeteries and monuments to honor veterans lost in the war and holding somber Memorial Day activities. Foster’s discussion of the symbolic nature of these events is particularly astute and suggests that Southerners were attempting to hold on to the best aspects of the past while simultaneously moving on.[6] Perhaps Sicilians engaged in a similar process in 1860, as they were forced to accept rule from yet another set of “foreigners.” This may explain the theme of death evident throughout The Leopard. Di Lampedusa may have been providing Sicilians with an opportunity to grieve the past and move on, a kind of memorial in the form of a novel.[7]
       One of the most convincing aspects of Foster’s argument is his ability to explain the timing of changes to the Lost Cause, the Lost Cause’s support for reconciliation, and the decline of the Lost Cause after 1913. Advocates of the traditional interpretation of the Lost Cause have difficulty explaining the emergence and popularity of reconciliation. If the Lost Cause is really such a backward looking movement, how could its participants promote reconciliation with the Yankees? Foster’s thesis provides a sound argument for why this occurred: the Lost Cause was remolded by its new working class leaders in the 1880s and 1890s who focused less on the “whys” of the war, and more on common battlefield experience and camaraderie making reconciliation much easier.[8] Moreover, since the Lost Cause’s primary function was to help white southerners cope with a period of great social change, Foster’s argument also explains why the Lost Cause declined significantly after 1913 – southerners had habituated to industrialization and reconciliation.[9] Yet, Foster’s thesis is less successful at explaining the emergence of the New South and its alliance with the Lost Cause. Foster admits that most southerners were skeptical of both Old and New South proponents, and given the challenges of the Farmers’ Alliance and organized labor, it is difficult to reconcile how Lost Cause adherents could simultaneously support industrialization and be weary of the dangers thereof.[10]

Notes:
1. Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South 1865-1913 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 6.
  
2. On the memorialization of the dead, see Ibid., 37-39. On the celebration of the private soldier, see Ibid., 124-125.
  
3. Paola Gemme, Domesticating Foreign Struggles: The Italian Risorgimento and Antebellum American Identity (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2005).
 
4. Foster, Ghosts, 8.
  
5. Benedict Anderson, Immagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verson, 1991), 5.
  
6. Foster, Ghosts, 36-46, see especially 45.
  
7. Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard, translated by Archibald Colquhoun (New York: Pantheon, 1960).
 
8. Foster, Ghosts, 93-95.
  
9. Ibid., 198.
  
10. Ibid., 86.