The Limits of the Lost Cause: Essays on Civil War Memory. By Gaines M. Foster. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2024. Hardcover, 280 pp. $45.00.
Reviewed by Patrick Young
In spite of the title, this is not a 280-page examination of the “Limits of the Lost Cause.” Like many essay collections, some offerings are right on point with the title; others, too good to throw away, are only tangentially related to the central theme.
Gaines Foster, a professor of history at Louisiana State University, has been researching the continuing battle over the memory of the Civil War in the South and throughout the nation. Works on Civil War memory are not new ground for Professor Foster. His well-regarded book Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause and the Emergence of the New South appeared in 1988, well before most enthusiasts of the conflict had even heard the phrase “Civil War Memory Studies.” Some of the essays in Limits of the Lost Cause supplement his earlier work, while others pursue new paths. Rather than try to summarize all eight sometimes disparate selections included in the book, below are a few thoughts on some of the salient essays.
The first essay, “Woodward and Southern Identity,” questions C. Vann Woodward’s contention that the defeat of the Confederacy shaped the South’s character. Foster argues that the white South’s defeat on the battlefield did not hinder its people from recovering after 1865 and modernizing their social structure to replace romantic slavery with a legal and social system of what he calls the “racial separation and exploitation” of the Black one-third of the population of the South. After the end of Reconstruction, the Lost Cause interpretation of the war convinced white Southerners that they had nothing to be ashamed of with their performance on the battlefield. Their view was that they were overwhelmed by Union numbers, not by natural intelligence or education. The power of the Lost Cause interpretation meant that by the late 19th Century white Southerners had nothing to regret.
“Guilt Over Slavery” looks at some 20th-century historians’ claims that Southern identity was shaped by guilt. As Foster says in another essay, “Most white southerners, even some who lamented the South’s sins, turned to their faith not for judgment but for solace.” (p. 42) Guilt over slavery or for betraying their country did not afflict the white South no matter how hard academic historians tried to look for it. Ulrich B. Phillips and his progeny from the William Dunning Reconstruction school of thought offered white Southern readers “feel-good” accounts of ignorant Africans who were Christianized and civilized brought by their masters and provided with food, clothing, shelter, and protection by their natural white superiors. Why would they feel guilty over that? Additionally, the theological consensus in the white Southern community did not question the behaviors of the ruling elite during the Civil War or before it.
In another article, “The Fiery Cross and the Confederate Flag,” Foster doubts most historians’ arguments that claim that D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation was really a homage to the Confederacy. Griffith and Thomas Dixon, the author of the book the movie was based on, tied the Reconstruction Era Ku Klux Klan to symbols that were not utilized in the 1860s. Foster believes that the “Fiery Cross” set alight outside Black people’s homes in the movie was tied not to the Confederacy but to a later resurgent Protestant nationalism. This “modern” 20th-century history created by Griffith did not intend to build a new Confederacy based on sectionalism but to reinforce the ties that bound white Protestants against Catholic, Jew, and Black threats to racial and religious hegemony. Birth of a Nation was meant to unite bigots, both North and South, against a common enemy.
Yet another selection, “The Solid South and the Nation State,” explains that for all the claptrap about the white South’s resistance to Federal power, for most of the first half of the 20th Century, Southern voters wanted the Federal government to do more, not less. White Southerners supported increased Federal intervention. Southern politicians took on national crusades to use the Federal government to advance their goals like outlawing perceived sinful actions like lotteries and risqué books and magazines. Many Southerners supported Prohibition, which involved the Federal government trying to stamp out liquid vice. When Prohibition became part of the Constitution, Southern politicians voted for increased allocations to agencies designed to eradicate the flow of bootleg liquors nationally. Southern whites also supported Federal agencies to regulate agriculture. And, of course, during the Depression, Southerners lined up for Federal aid from Washington. Southern white politicians did not oppose Federal action, unless it was to ban lynchings or other forms of local terror against Black voters.
If readers are interested in Civil War memory, this collection of essays may not be the best place to start. However, if they have read David Blight and several other introductory studies in this particular field, Limits to the Lost Cause may be a good study for further examination with a long-time expert.
Patrick Young is a Special Professor at Hofstra Law School and the author of the Reconstruction Era Blog.
–emergingcivilwar.com
