The “Lost Cause” Doctrine: Racism Thrives on Idealistic Visions of the Past that do not Correspond to Reality

In the decades following the Civil War and even up to the present, the narrative embraced by southern racists is that the war was not fought over slavery but rather the determination of southerners to maintain their way of life and to defend states' rights as embodied in the constitution. This line of thinking is known as the “lost cause.” Those who defend this thesis point out that North Carolina (which was not a heavy slave state for geographical reasons) was one of the last states to join the confederacy but their men fought the hardest and were motivated not by the defense of slavery but their regional identification with the south.

Robert E. Lee was an ideal symbol to promote the lost cause notion. In fact, I remember in high school history class learning that Lee at first was not sympathetic to succession since. After all he had graduated West Point, had fought in the Mexican War and was opposed to slavery per se, though his beliefs were belied by his actions. So following the Civil War, Lee became a darling of the “lost cause” doctrine. An implication of the “lost cause” notion is that the south’s defeat was inevitable because the north’s industrialization was bound to overpower the south’s rural-based institutions and way of life and that those who fought on the side of the south fought heroically. Thus Lee was not to blame for the south’s defeat. In contrast, General James Longstreet became a target of resentment on the part of the adherents to the lost cause doctrine. One general and a former friend of his actually blamed him for the defeat at Gettysburg (an accusation that couldn’t be farthest from the truth). First, Longstreet had opposed Lee’s tactics at Gettysburg and second after the Civil War he went on to join the Republican Party, he received good treatment from his friend President Grant, and  he rejected the notion that the Civil War was fought over anything other than slavery.

The lost cause notion continued into the twentieth century in the form of the building of statues of Confederate generals and to this very day is defended by those who oppose the removal of those statues on grounds that they represent not slavery but rather the southern “way of life” and its history.

Many if not most of those who defend the “lost cause” notion deny that they are racists. But the fact of the matter is that they are wrong about the causes of the civil war. Slavery was what the Civil War was all about (Trump’s statement that it could have been avoided notwithstanding). A Marxist analysis posits that the fundamental issues driving history (with exceptions of course) stem from the means of production and the conflicts they generate. Naturally, Marxists aren’t the only ones who attribute the Civil War to the institution of slavery.

Today the white supremacists fear that time is not on their side, because if they wait within a short time whites will be outnumbered in the United States. Thus they advocate violent actions in order to turn back the clock of time. This is another manifestation of the “lost cause” doctrine that yearns for an idealistic past without recognizing (or not wanting to recognize) that that past is based on social injustice for the vast majority of those who produce the goods for everyone to enjoy.