Huh. I always took the term “lost cause” at face value, and thought it simply meant that the confederacy was hopeless and doomed to fail. I didn’t realize it was based on hypocrisy and lies. Thanks for the heads up!
Edit: the more I read that Wikipedia page, the angrier I get
Shit, if you think you’re mad now, wait until you run into someone that’s still running that line of bullshit in 2025
I’ve always heard it called the “Lost Cause Of The South” by racist rednecks; they seem to be aware enough (or someone was, whoever it is they’re parroting) to attempt to distance it as much as possible from terminology that associates it with slavery because otherwise it looks even worse. Even though slavery is absolutely what it was all about.
“There is no evidence that the civil war was about slavery”
looks at the speech by Davis talking about how it was all about slavery plus hundreds of other documents
As a southern man, I absolutely love this meme
Indeed. Some of the seceding states had it written into their new constitutions. The post-hoc notion that this was not the case is laughably absurd.
The Confederate constitution mentions slavery everywhere
Its almost like they wanted to ensure slavery continued to last
But actually it was democrats who were the slavers! That’s why republicans honor their democrat heritage by flying a traitor flag? Fuck I can’t even keep up with their mental gymnastics.
“It’s about states rights!”
“Yeah, their right to do what, again? Hmmm?”
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
My Texas history teacher in 7th grade actually pushed this narrative
…likewise; my wife was apoplectic when i suggested that the civil war was about secession…
Can you explain that a little more? I’m guessing you meant secession, but even then I don’t get what you mean. Like, they seceded but the topic would be about WHY they did that.
But I’m probably missing something.
(yes, secession; autocorrect squiggled it into another word as i was typing)
…just that, though: we were taught that emancipation was just one of many issues stemming from increasingly-fundamental differences in economic, social, and international policy, and that the war itself precipitated from the southern states asserting a right to secession and sovereignty which the federal government did not grant…
…we were also taught that the spark was actually southern states’ seizure of federal assets…
my fucking midwestern education was like that. the textbooks said that there was an open question about whether states have the right to secede from the union as if the Confederacy was just Just Asking Questions
Did you mistype “wasn’t”?
…nope; her education was 1980s DoDDS, mine was 1980s TEA…
I had struggled with AP Euro in high school and had decided to just take regular US history the following year. Absolute mistake. My teacher was the football coach and was a huge proponent for the ‘states rights’ BS. This was in one of the better funded school districts in SoCal.
These days that wouldn’t fly (or at least it shouldn’t fly)
Weird we learned that it was states rights to own people in VA Middle School and how the plantation system worked
And it was egged on by the early movie birth of a nation
Other way around I’d say. The Lost Cause myth started way before Birth of a Nation was created.
I don’t know the dates but thanks for telling me
crazy such a revolutionary movie that changed the game is so…problematic 😂
Gone With The Wind is lost causer propaganda.
Part of it is also the constant push to try to weave the principles of confederacy into the fabric of American history via monuments and memorials, to build up this idea that the confederacy is part of the modern American identity rather than antithetical to it.
See for example the recent controversy surrounding the military installation called Fort Bragg. Braxton Bragg was a slave-owning confederate general who, by all accounts, was not even a good leader. But given the fort’s location in North Carolina, one of the former confederate states, it got its name presumably due to local military officials sympathetic to the “Lost Cause” narrative, and stuck until just recently.
In 2023, the Biden administration pushed to change the name of the fort to “Fort Liberty” so as to continue removing these Lost Cause memorials and end this myth, but this year the Trump administration just recently renamed it back to Fort Bragg, ostensibly now named after a different Bragg who was just a paratrooper during World War II. But no one is fooled by what they’re trying to do.
It’s almost sad, really, just how badly they’re clinging to this myth even today. But I guess more scary than sad, given that half of the government is essentially run by traitors. And it’s really been that way for a long time now I suppose, but shocking how strongly they still choose to hold their ground on these ridiculous narratives when pushed.
