How the 'Lost Cause' narrative became American history

Lincoln was against slavery. Did you read the Lincoln vs Douglas debate for the Illinois Senate seat? Lincoln was an unknown until the national newspapers covered the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1958. Most White Americans in 1860s did not want to end slavery. Do you think Lincoln would have gotten elected if he did not tell the American public what they wanted to hear? Lincoln and the Radical Republicans ended slavery and automatically gave anyone born in the United States citizenship.

Abe Lincoln was not racist

Defining the lost cause is a red herring to divert attention from the real social ill/issue - reparations. Freeing the slaves is not the same as compensating the slaves with a compensatory sovereign territory (like Sherman's field order 15). Yankees (northerners) admitting northern textile plants and plantation supply firms (like Berkshire Hathaway for example) profited from king cotton will be a great leap forward.

Why can't these Confederates, in the current form of the Republicans, get over it?

Never seen the losing side celebrate so much

Meet the buffalo soldiers the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry, AKA massacres of native Americans under orders of General Sherman tecumseh who doesn't deserve the name of the great Shawnee warrior chief, these men after the Civil War wage a 20 year massacre, removal of native American children to boarding schools, they were at almost every massacre on record including Wounded Knee, it's amazing they made it through the Civil War because black people and Irish were considered cannon fodder, there is many times black people and Irish were sent in first to be shot down by the Confederacy, Lincoln made deals with 4 slaves states that they could hold slavery if they joined the union which they did and kept it even after the 1863 emancipation, it wasn't till 1865 the union boarder states gave up there slaves, and so did General grant head of the union army had a slave, then new jersey is the official last state to have slaves, messed up story and it only gets worse with time and more information discovered

Lies that are agreed upon , usually by the victors , if there are any.

🇺🇸 Re:THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
👇🏿
THE REAL CAUSES OF DISSATISFACTION IN THE SOUTH WITH THE NORTH,
👇🏾
● Are In The UNJUST TAXATION,
And EXPENDITURE of The TAXES
By The GOVERNMENT,
of the UNITED STATES,
👇🏿
● And In The REVOLUTION The NORTH,
Has EFFECTED In This GOVERNMENT,
From A CONFEDERATED REPUBLIC,
To A NATIONAL SECTIONAL DESPOTISM.”

The states rights claim biggest gaslighting in American history.

Vox honestly covered this subject way better. I found this piece to be way too neutral, like you're trying to convince me the confederacy wasn't THAT bad without actually framing the implications of maintaining said lies and victimization complex going into the Jim Crow era and even now with all the wackos that parade around with the Confederate flag unironically fighting for.. freedom? Justice? Against tyranny?

“We don’t want to join your rebellion. We’re forming our own state and staying with the Union” -West Virginia

Anybody else notice the sigma face XD

WAR OF NORTHERN AGGRESSION

Ignorance+ bigorry= lost cause

Ironic how traitors got schools named after them and monuments, and yet blacks and slavery got erased from history as much as possible. Horrible how that is still going on, had the January 6th rioters been blacks we would have had thousands of dead, we only had one dead on the side of the rioting traitors because they were white. We have governor's DeFascist in Florida still trying to erase black history. Things haven't changed as much as we thought they would.😢

I grew up in Texas in the 90s. Not once did we talk about slavery, they mentioned a Buffalo Soldier 1x in our studies (briefly).

Washington Post is pushing it's own propaganda in this video.

As a South Carolinian who is a descendent of confederate veterans of South Carolina, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia Slavery should have never existed in the US period. The confederacy lost as it should have. And the “lost cause” teachings and rhetoric has done more harm to southerners than it ever has any good.

"duh lost cause" is the most heinous GROOMING CONSPIRACY in the history of the USA.

The term Lost cause is about the losers of the Civil War telling lies by trying to make themselves feel better about dying trying to keep black people down. Racist whites died by the hundreds of thousands because of their ignorance. They believed in their own lies and the lies their wealthy masters told them. To this very day they still believe the same lies.

I missed out on the loser statues. I arrived last April

Many impartial scholars would disagree that the war was fought over slavery. The South was Jeffersonian and the north was for top down government. Lincoln embodied numerous qualities that were anathema to the strongly individualistic South. And most believe that the South had a legal right to secede . Lincolns respect for individual liberty was very lacking at tines. But then, his main objective was to greatly strengthen the power of Government.

Losers of war & traitors against our govt should not have monuments. Period. This is why the Crazy Horse monument should be destroyed immediately.

3.8k likes, 189k views

Civil war History should be preserved . I don’t know want to hear no we don’t . This is Part of who we are . This war is deeper than our society will ever understand. Was slavery wrong yes should the Civil war ever be forgotten and statues taken Down . No sad to see what is going on.

The lost cause is what says it is. The south lost the civil war an thus whatever it had was lost.

The lost cause was the Unions failure to teach former slaves to be free with equality and inculcate them into American society. The Democrats today are still screwing over black Americans just like they did during the days of slavery. Sad but true.

I was raised in AZ 1960, 70's and no way was the Civil War taught as anything except about slavery. In the History book we used it described what the slaveowner did to the slave in graphic detail. When I moved to the Carolinas I was surprised by the entrenched racism and the fond memories of white dominated history. Free labor you know.

When I first heard this notion about the Civil War being about States Rights I was like WHAT? I was born in Raised in Cincinnati, but my mum was from Canada and my dad's family was from Charleston SC and Columbia and Georgia. I will admit that my dad's side were culturally racist. My father was a good man and I never heard or believed him to be racist.. but my dads side was not KKK devoted racists they were just brought up that way and were casual about how they spoke about certain people. I have photos of my grandmothers black caregivers and stories about them. My geneology is a long deep history in Charleston (streets named after direct ancestors) but I also have recently discoverd how deep into it they were .. going so far as having ancestors directly involved in running the slave trade. It is hard square, that is for sure... My mum's side were from Canada and Iowa and so I have this history that is what it is .. I am no more a racist.. but It is funny because I was just watching a documentary about Scottish Clans, namely the MacGregor Clan which I am connected to and how the British and Clan Campbell treated them.. Mac Gregors were forbidden from using thier name MacGregor, carrying a sharpened blade and had bounties on their head and even sold into slavery for just being a Mac Gregor. The Scots were forbidden after culloden from wearing the kilt, playing the bagpipes. Point is that humans have a long history of finding ways to oppress and destroy other human beings, regardless of color of skin. Color of skin certainly makes it easy to discriminate but humans are just horrible to each other and find excuses and means to acquire cheap /free labor, to STeal land (Clan Campbell fought with the MacGregors and became wealthy through acquiring MAc Gregor lands etc. The point is.. humans are are horrible to humans...

First of all the South was not invaded over slavery it was invaded primarily to bring the southern states back to the union the war wasn't fought over slavery until Lincoln delivered the information proclamation around 1863 and another thing a flag can't be racist only people can the South was in a conundrum they were aggral Northwest industrial their slavery all over the world sixth centuries before America was discovered a piece of material with a design on it it's just that I can't think or speak or do anything to anybody to fly in the wind but it is a battle flag and the Confederacy were or fellow Americans I was born in South I love the Southland Confederate Battle flag will always be connected to the Southern States probably supposed to teach history about that time and this country without it has somebody displays it does not mean they're racist or a bigot just honoring their ancestors where the war was right or wrong it just is

They don’t even mention daughters of confederacy.. Wow

The war wasn’t over slavery…

Very good

The political argument that led to the secession and the secession itself was certainly about slavery. Was the cause of the WAR slavery? No it wasn't, the direct cause of the war was the attack on Fort Sumter. Slightly deeper than that was the Confederates not wanting to tolerate Union military on what they considered "their" soil and the Union not recognizing that soil as belonging to the Confederacy. So it was a territorial and jurisdictional disagreement that led to the actual WAR, not slavery.

Oh, and before anyone says that there wouldn't have been a territorial dispute had the slavery inspired secession NOT taken place, then I'd invite you to consider than none of this would have happened had the Revolutionary war not occurred and the British colonies in America outlawed slavery at the same time the British did in 1833.

So does that make the war the fault of the founding fathers?

thomas sowell is way better at explaining the truth

It’s not dark yet is it?

The surrender of Lee was not the death of the south but the birth of the UNITED STATES.

iT wAs AbOuT SLaVeRy

yeah. and Lincoln was the pro equality great white savior. the emancipation proclamation did not declare freedom across the entire south, but only freed slaves in specific counties/parishes - incidentally, those in which there was a rebel presence.

this entire narrative is reductionist horseshit. any time a victor declares a war - any war at all - to be 'only about x', then you know you're being fed a load of garbage. ask a historian/professor the following and american history goes like:
what was the war of 1812 about? "well that's a complicated question, you see it all started with..."
what was the Revolution about? "well that's a big question...."
what was the Vietnam war about? "oh well there's a lot to that..."

but then what was the civil war about?
"oh slavery"

come tf on

This low-effort hitpiece was cranked out in the year 2020 in the United States and it has the balls to say "most people think the war was about states' rights". Every time anything about the Civil War was covered in my entire education beginning in the early 1990s, it was shoved down our throats that it was slavery slavery slavery and made all the black kids mad at all the white kids. Stop lying. All you people do is lie. Deify the Union, demonize the Confederacy. Really groundbreaking..

It’s unfortunate I can’t see those statues any more.

If the so-called Civil War was about slavery, why was there no U.S. law forbidding slavery. The first Congress of the Confederacy passed a law that said five years after cessation of hostilities with the North, there would no longer be slavery in the South. Southern states voluntarily joined the Union. They thought that they could voluntarily leave it. As a matter of fact, several southern states ratified the Constitution conditionally, saying that they would leave the Union if it went against their interests.Our founding document, The Declaration of Independence states that the only legitimate government is one that governs with the consent of the governed. The South removed their consent. Lincoln started a war to stop the South from leaving the Union. By his own words he had no concern for slaves ,or, any other black people. Then, as now in most places, people wanted to be with their own kind. I don't think that this is the definition of racism. If it is, we are all racists.

British society is created as a hierarchy by invaders.
EVERYONE was a slave and the invading force ran the country.
That slavery was termed Serfdom.
British society was not a meritocracy, it was vast financial empowerment of interbreeding rich European families for extreme wealth, maintained by extreme violence.

Music = Distraction

I think the 'southern lost cause' in the 21st century made the word DERP!

I've been reading some of the alleged Lost Cause mythology. There are some things false about what people are saying about it. First, I would never defend slavery. Slavery was absolutely evil. Its is evil to treat anyone the way slaves were treated. Even if the slaves were treated well by their owners, slavery is still evil. I'm not saying all slaves were treated well when I make that statement either. 2nd, slavery should never have happened for any reason. The slave narratives are very fascinating to read and listen to. I can't imagine what it must have been like for a oppressed people to see monuments to their oppressors while suffering terrorism and having to fear for their lives. That is one reason I will never display a confederate flag. I do see it as a symbol of hate. Now I want to say something about the alleged Lost Cause mythology. Yes, its true Robert E. Lee has been portrayed as a gentleman and he has been portrayed as admirable. Its also true that Grant was portrayed as a drunk and Sherman a war criminal. One of the things I read this morning about a lost cause mythology is that Confederate generals like Lee were portrayed as honorable while Union generals like Grant and Sherman were portrayed as brutes. That's exactly how they were portrayed in our school textbooks. But mainstream Hollywoods movies also portrayed them that way. It surprises me some of the things I've read this morning about Reconstruction. We were taught in our school textbook that Reconstruction was brutal. Its a fact the Southern states were occupied by Union military. Its kind of surprising to hear anyone say otherwise. Reconstruction was taught as harsh to us in our history textbook in school. I don't believe a school textbook in the 1990's is going to contain false information. Slavery WAS PORTRAYED AS EVIL IN OUR SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS. Our textbook in school had eye witness accounts of slaves and the eye witness accounts of slaves told about the harshness of slave life. I don't know how it was portrayed to school children a 100 years ago, but in the 1990's I can honestly say slavery was portrayed as evil in our southern school textbooks in the 1990's. This was a school in a southern state that's a border state that remained in the Union during the Civil War, but textbooks in the other Southern states and state are going to teach the same thing. I'm a little surprised at the implications schools use different textbooks to teach different things. I always assumed schools use the same textbooks. I always assumed a school in California used the same textbook as a school in a Southern state. When I read what people define as lost cause mythology, I think how much most of it stereotypes of the South and bigotry toward the South. For most of my life I watched rural people in small towns laughed at and made a joke of. I think some of the lost cause mythology idea is one more way to erase a culture people have misconceptions about and ridicule. There are so many misconceptions about the South. I think the idea of a lost cause mythology is a way to spread bigotry toward the South, which so many people outside the region are willing to embrace. Wow. Just wow. Basically, the idea of lost cause mythology says a whole region has been brainwashed. I think someone has came up with one more way to try to brand a culture they don't like as wrong so they can try to erase that culture. I mean, if the South has been brainwashed, then rest of the country is going to feel like they have the right to correct it. How long until all these people that think the South is a bad place thats been brainwashed go into the libraries and burn books by writers like William Faulkner? I'm done with this topic.

Saying the South fought to maintain slavery is rewriting history. Succeeding and fighting are not the same things. People are rewriting history too when they say the North fought to free slaves. Most of the people who think the South fought to maintain slavery are probably themselves prejudice against the South because they've been taught to view the South as inferior stereotype. I was taught in a Southern school in the 80's and 90's. The history textbook we used wasn't wrong and our education system wasn't inferior to the education system of the other parts of the country. Our history textbook wasn't racist either. We were taught about the Middle passage and evils of slavery. We were taught the reasons leading up to the Civil War in 2 or 3 chapters and slavery was not given as a reason for the South fighting. Then for 2 or 3 chapters we were taught about the battles of the Civil War. After that we were taught about Reconstruction.

Slavery was evil. But the South didn't fight for slavey just like the North didn't fight to free the slaves.