No matter what one considers to be the roots of nationalism, whether its language, religion, political views, or race, there is no question that once developed, a sense of nationalism can be very powerful amongst the people who hold it. In his book The Idea of a Southern Nation, John McCardell provides a detailed outline of the establishment of Confederate nationalism prior to secession. While there exists debate as to the strength and validity of the Secessionists’ nationalistic arguments, they were able to develop them convincingly enough to warrant a break from the culturally and commercially superior Northern states. Gaines M. Foster offers a follow-up to McCardell’s exploration of Southern nationalism leading up to secession with his book, Ghosts of the Confederacy. He meticulously examines the transitions that the legacy of the Confederacy underwent in the post-war South. Although the Southern States’ chances of abolishing their union with the Northern sates had disappeared, all of the ideals and arguments that backed up the act of Secession still existed. After their failed secession, how did the South assimilate back into the Union without abandoning the national identity that supporters of the Confederate cause had worked so diligently to establish?
In order to ease their shame or loss, Foster argues, the South had to insist that their cause was just and, “southerners had acted legally and honorably in seceding from the Union." (1) However, organizations, such as the Virginia Coalition, that attempted to revitalize the causes of the Confederacy did not achieve success. The South began to recognize that it was part of the Union, and the majority of Southerners ceased to attempt to dissociate themselves from the rest of the nation. While aspects of the Confederacy were still celebrated by way of memorial statues and celebrations, “the irreconcilables remained isolated and unimportant to the development of the New South." (2) The fervent Confederate nationalism that had been established before the war did not completely disappear merely because the South failed to permanently cut ties with the North through combat. Southerners still venerated Confederate soldiers as heroes, and residents of the South continued to honor the legacy of Robert E. Lee. However, groups such as the United Confederate Veterans were better received than the Virginians, because while they still upheld the legacy of the Confederacy, they did not attempt to stir up conflict with the rest of the Union.
Foster outlines the Confederacy’s transition from attempts to revitalize the idea of a separate state to the “New South” of the twentieth century. In this “New South” southerners cling to the idea of the Confederacy “for no coherent ideology or tradition,” but, “defiance.” (3) Foster does not portray the result of this transition completely favorably. Perhaps he thinks that Confederate ideals became too watered down in the South’s attempt to hold onto their past while still existing in a harmonious union with the rest of the nation. He points out that, “rather than looking at the war as a tragic failure…Americans…chose to view it as a glorious time to be celebrated.” (4) Perhaps our entire nation was robbed of the chance to learn from the Civil War because, “the Confederate celebration did not so much sacralize the memory of the war as it sanitized and trivialized it.” (5)

1. Foster, Gaines M. Ghosts of the Confederacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, 117.
2. Foster 75.
3. Foster 198.
4. Foster 196.
5. ibid.