Southern Nationalism and the Lost Cause

 Although an outspoken and influential minority of antebellum Southerners held strong sentiments of southern nationalism prior to the War Between the States, the culture of Southern nationalism that pervaded the former Confederate states after the surrender at Appomattox was far more widespread and substantially affected a greater portion of the population. Noted historian David M. Potter has characterized this “deeply felt southern nationalism” as arising from “the shared sacrifices, the shared efforts, and the shared defeat” of the war and flourishing in the “cult of the Lost Cause.”[1] In Ghosts of the Confederacy, Gains M. Foster further investigates the collective memory of the Confederacy in postwar Southern society by examining the men, women, and organizations that perpetuated the tradition of the Lost Cause in their memorials, celebrations, writings, and reunions. Extensively researched yet sometimes repetitive, Foster’s analysis of the Lost Cause and the burgeoning New South movement adeptly tracks the defense of Southern honor and definition of Confederate tradition from the Virginia Coalition to the United Confederate Veterans and Daughters of the Confederacy.
 One major facet of postwar remembrance chronicled by Foster was the erection of Confederate monuments and the celebrations held in conjunction with their unveiling. The unveiling of the equestrian statue memorializing Robert E. Lee was a monumental event in the veneration of Confederate heroism and was indicative of the intertwinement of the Celebration of the Lost Cause and the New South movement. Though the project was initiated and financed in large part by Jubal Early and the Virginia Coalition, the committee decided to locate the statue on the outskirts of Richmond’s suburbs at the behest of progressive local boosters. In a ceremony attended by well over 100,000 people, unreconstructed Confederate General Jubal Early introduced the keynote speaker, Archer Anderson, treasurer of Tredegar Iron Works and advocate of the new South. After a rousing speech where Anderson pronounced that Lee embodied, “the perfect union of Christian virtues and old Roman manhood,” General Joseph E. Johnston unveiled the majestic statue amidst the sounds of cannon fire and rebel yells.[2] Nearly two decades later on June 3, 1907, reverent southerners again journeyed to Richmond’s Monument Avenue to witness the unveiling of the Jefferson Davis memorial. Financed by the United Confederate Veterans and Unitized Daughters of the Confederacy, the inception and celebration of the Davis Monument was telling of the shift that had occurred in the ranks of the arbiters of the Confederate tradition. According to some estimates, as many as 200,000 people attended the unveiling of the grand monument honoring the “vicarious sufferer of all Southerners.” [3] Nationalistic celebrations at the unveiling of monuments honoring renowned heroes is not, however, a distinctly Southern occurrence. In Italy, Victor Emmanuel II was deified by his burial in the Pantheon and the subsequent construction of an ostentatious monument in his honor.[4] Built on the Capiotiline Hill and recalling the “glories and greatness of ancient Rome,” the Vittoriano monument took nearly twenty six years to complete and was described by the New York Times as “the most colossal structure of its kind in the world.” According to the Times, nearly one million people attended the celebration of Italian nationalism at the unveiling of the monument.[5] Although the Vittoriano monument was a prime example of “the effort by a state to impose the national ideal from on high” in contrast to the construction of the Confederate monuments which was driven by popular sentiment and private donations, it is interesting to note the role of monuments in the nationalistic movements during the postwar period in both countries. [6]
 Another similarity between the perpetuation of Confederate traditions in the post war South and the attempt to establish national unity in Italy was the use of the education systems to instill nationalistic ideals in the minds of the young. As Foster points out, the historical committee of the UCV and many other local entities were committed to ensuring that schools assigned only books that justified the South in the act of secession and viewed the war from a Southern perspective.[7] When professional historian Franklin L. Riley was lobbying a school to adopt his history textbook, he argued that the competition devoted “nearly 27 pages to the heroes who saved the union…and only about 7 pages… to only one Southern hero of the War-General Robert E. Lee.” He went on to inquire, “What will the little children think about the South after studying this book?”[8] Likewise, in the years following the Risorgimento Italian public schools were widely regarded as “the only suitable means of planting the sentiment of italianita by force in the hearts in which it is absent.” [9] The national government mandated that all classes be taught in Italian as opposed to regional dialects and encouraged teachers to assign essays on topics such as, “Why do I love Italy.” In practice, the nationalistic Italian indoctrination programs may not have had the desired effect on the Southern peasantry, but they provided another means to achieve a semblance of national unity. [10]
 Foster makes his strongest argument regarding the ascendancy and influence of the UCV in the dissemination of confederate tradition in his portrayal of the annual meetings of the UCV. The annual meetings were the central ritual of the Confederate celebration and fostered feelings of southern nationalism by renewing southern sentiments in the older generation and introducing Confederate honor to those too young to have remembered the war.[11] One veteran endorsed the reunions because they intensified southern loyalties by preserving in the South “that respectful devotion to its splendid womanhood that the Southern manhood inherited from their chivalric ancestors.”[12] Furthermore, the parades held during the annual meetings provided the best occasion for the former Confederates to outwardly exhibit their interminable Southern patriotism. The parades allowed certain southern men, characterized by the New York Times as the “large, but diminishing, class of professional veterans, who derive political and social advantage from keeping alive as long as possible the memories of the civil war,” to once again adorn themselves in gray and ride on horseback leading their men in front of multitudes of adoring supporters.[13] Indeed, as Foster suggests, the parades fostered unity in Southern society by reinforcing the deference to Confederate leadership that was inaugurated during the war. To borrow from W.J. Cash, the parades of the Confederate reunions served as a reminder to the former confederate privates and common whites of “not only a great body of memories in common with the master class, but a deep affection for these captains, a profound trust in them, a pride which was inextricably intertwined with the commoners pride in themselves.” [14]
 Although Foster briefly mentions the relationship between the Confederate Celebration and the post reconstruction ascendancy of the Bourbon Democrats, his analysis of the Lost Cause would have benefited from a more in depth treatment of the southern political situation in the years following reconstruction. In his conclusion, Foster attempts to build a wall of separation between the Bourbon Democrats, who exploited the Confederate celebration, and the more responsible members of the UCV who “subtly influenced the development of the New South.” [15] In fact, many of the former Confederate officers who held offices in the UCV were also Democratic politicians elected to public office largely because of their wartime reputation. John B. Gordon, whose presidency legitimized the UCV, was also one of Georgia’s leading Conservative Democrats. He helped the Democratic Party gain control of the state by promoting the glorification of the Confederate heroes yet also endorsing progress and commercial enterprise. In the forty-fifth Congress, which served from 1877-1879, 77 of the 107 Representatives from the former Confederate States had served in the Confederate Army. [16] The same underlying cultural ideals of Confederate nationalism that caused more than 100,000 people to attend an annual meeting of the UCV also influenced southerners to vote for Democratic war heroes such as Wade Hampton and Francis T. Nicholls.


1. David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 469.
2. Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) p. 98-103 (101).
3. Ibid., p. 158-(159)
4. Don H. Doyle, Nations Divided: America, Italy, and the Southern Question (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002) p. 62-63
5. New York Times, 05 June 1911, p. 4; “Italy’s Tribute to Victor Emmanuel.”
6. Doyle, Nations Divided, p. 63.
7. Foster, Ghosts, p. 116-117.
8. Foster, Ghosts, p. 185.
9. Doyle, Nations Divided, p. 53.
10. Doyle, Nations Divided, p. 54-56.
11. Foster, Ghosts, p. 133.
12. Foster, Ghosts, p. 135.
13. New York Times, 07 June 1901, p. 8, “Cherishing Southern Memories.”
14. W.J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) p. 111.
15. Foster, Ghosts, p. (194)-195
16. Dewey W. Grantham, The Life & Death of the Solid South: A Political History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988) p. 4-5.