Question

Purpose of the “lost cause”

Answer 1

ANSWER:

The Lost Cause is the name commonly provided to a intellectual and literary and movement that sought for reconciling the traditional Southern white society to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the Civil War. It is interpretation of the America Civil War (1861-1865) that seeks to present the war, from the Confederates perspective, in the best possible terms. White Southerners sought consolation by attributing the loss to factors that were beyond their control and due to their heroes betrayals. Around the time of World War 1, the Lost Cause activity came as the last Confederate veterans began to die and efforts were made to preserve their memories, and during the Civil Rights Movement the 1950s and 1960s, in reaction to growing public support for equality in racial.

The Lost Cause primarily purpose was to argue that slavery was not the primary cause of the Civil War. It portrayed the South as more adherent to values in Christianity than the allegedly greedy North. It provided an image of slavery as more benevolent than cruel, alleging that it taught civilization and Christianity. Stories of happy slaves were generally used in their propaganda of defending the slavery. These stories described slavery to Northerners. Majority of the times they also portrayed slave owners being kind to their slaves. In their explanation on Confederate defeat, the Lost Cause said that the primary factor was not qualitative inferiority in leadership or fighting ability however the massive quantitative superiority of the Yankee industrial machine.