The Myth of the Lost Cause is an inaccurate account of the Civil War that remains prominent in American society. The myth alters key aspects of the war such as its cause, participants, and outcome. It is my hypothesis that one reason many Americans misunderstand the war is because they learned inaccurate information as children. Most children first learn of the war in school textbooks. I became curious as to the accuracy of Civil War information. As there is little research on this topic, this paper begins the process of bridging the gap between education curriculum and the Lost Cause. I examined textbooks used in Tennessee schools between 1889-2002. I discovered that the Lost Cause is most prominent in textbooks used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century but remains present in modern textbooks. I conclude that material will continue to correct itself as the twenty-first century continues.

This thesis examines the homefront experience of middle class, white women living in Winchester, Virginia during the Civil War. The experience of women in Winchester was unique because of Winchester's proximity to both the Union and Confederate capitals. Although the majority of Winchester's women were Confederate supporters a significant minority of the population remained loyal to the Union. Winchester citizens' divided status was further complicated by numerous occupations of the town by both armies. This thesis argues that in order to cope with wartime hardships women's concepts of patriotism changed as homefront morale waned. While early in the war women's patriotism reflected their support of the military, as the war progressed women began defining themselves as either Unionists or Confederates in order to maintain a sense of self. These wartime identities centered on the legitimacy of a particular cause and the vilification of the "enemy" thereby creating a clear line between good and evil to help women cope with the death and destruction of war. Winchester's various wartime occupations, however, undermined women's emotional justifications for war as contact with soldiers humanized the enemy and skewed the battle lines.

Mildred Lewis Rutherford, as one of the most prominent members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, has been scantly researched in the past, however her speeches and writing had a profound impact on southern historical consciousness during the New South Period. Her influence, interestingly, was not entirely based in reality. A poststructural analysis of her speeches reveals that she strategically fabricated and excluded information in order to create a specific memory of the past in the minds of southerners. Rutherford had difficulty discerning whether or not the economic benefits of industrialization outweighed the accompanying social consequences. Yet, she used the power of text in an attempt to recreate the Old South social structure based on a racial hierarchy that was bound to be defeated by the rising tide of indu-strialization.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Between 1920 and 1940, South Carolina saw major changes in its education system both in response to low literacy rates in the state and as part of a national trend in education reform. The period also saw the emergence of one history textbook as the dominant history text for middle school students across the state. William Gilmore Simms and his granddaughter, Mary C. Simms Oliphant, the authors of this history text, had influence over middle school-aged children’s history education for over a century with their books being used in South Carolina schools in some capacity from around 1840 until 1985. These books exhibit strong influence from the Lost Cause Movement, as well as reconciliationist and white supremacist ideology, to present a more pro-southern point of view of the Civil War. Through heroification—the remaking of historical figures into heroes despite their flaws—revision/omission, and both implicit and explicit racism, Simms and Simms-Oliphant weaved narratives that twisted the facts of the Civil War era. These narratives implanted in the seventh and eighth grade students’ minds who typically read the textbooks’ false ideas about the events and people involved in the war. While research on history textbooks generally is widespread, there have been no in-depth studies of the influence of Simms and Simms-Oliphant on South Carolina’s education system. In the 1920s and 1930s, when students across the country on average completed eight to nine years of school, Simms’ and Simms-Oliphant’s books would have been the last history book many of those students would have read before ending their schooling. This gave these two authors immense power to influence public opinion in South Carolina. Ultimately, it appears that education is the primary tool through which South Carolina, and other southern states, have institutionalized Lost Cause, reconciliationist, and white supremacist narratives of the Civil War era that continue to influence public opinion in South Carolina and across the South.

This dissertation examines issues of neo-Confederate collective memory, heritage, and geographical imagination within the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I analyze a whole range of material cultural practices throughout the entire region centered on the memory of the Civil War including monuments, battlefields, museum exhibits, burial rituals, historical reenactments, paintings, and dramatic performances. These mnemonic sites and rituals throughout the Great Valley of Virginia serve to circulate a dominant and mythologized reading of the Civil War past, one that emphasizes the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy. In addition to uncovering neo-Confederate forms of memorialization, I also examine how normative lessons of morality, honor, patriotism, masculinity, and hyper-militarism become naturalized as a result of Lost Cause remembrance. The dissertation combines qualitative, practice-based modes of research with a Foucauldian influenced archival methodology that attempts to uncover particular silenced and alternative versions of the past that do not fit with normative version of heritage. / Ph. D.

This dissertation will examine the formation of the myth that William T. Sherman laid waste to the state of Georgia in 1864, and almost single-handedly invented the concept of “total war.” It will also examine how Sherman’s reputation has evolved over the years from accusations of being a Southern sympathizer and traitor at the end of the Civil War to the modern image of Sherman as the destroyer of the old South. William Tecumseh Sherman was the most controversial general of the American Civil War. The modern image of Sherman is either a destructive monster who violated the laws of civilized warfare or a strategic genius who invented modern warfare. Both of these images have evolved over the years. In large part, they have been the product of Lost Cause writers trying to reinterpret the history of the war, but also the product of Union generals and politicians attempting to glorify their own place in the history of the war, men with personal grudges against the general and modern historians using Sherman to make their own arguments about contemporary society. The sources used for this dissertation were the journals, letters and memoirs of the participants. The Official Records of both the Union and Confederacy were examined as well as nineteenth and twentieth century newspapers and magazines. This dissertation will show that the modern conception of General Sherman is not the same as the historical fact, but rather a post-war creation. Individuals’ agendas have created and sustained the myth of Sherman to explain defeat in the Civil War, justify later military strategy, condemn later conflicts and for personal gain. It is not enough to know that historical events as commonly understood are inaccurate; it is important to understand how and why these inaccuracies came about.

This thesis examines the methods and actions of selected Virginians who chose to adopt irregular tactics in wartime, and focuses on the reasons why they fought that way. The presence of the Cavalier image in Virginia had a direct impact on the military exploits of several cavalry officers in both the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War. The Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War gave rise to the original Cavalier image, but as migrants came to Virginia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the image became a general term for the Southern planter. This thesis contends that selected Virginia cavalry officers attempted to adhere to an Americanized version of the Cavalier image. They either purposefully embodied aspects of the Cavalier image during their military service, or members of the Southern populace attached the Cavalier image to them in the post-war period. The Cavalier thus served as a military ideal, and some cavalry officers represented a romanticized version of the Southern martial hero. This thesis traces the development of the Cavalier image in Virginia chronologically. It focuses on the origins of the Cavalier image and the role of the Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War. After the Royalist migration, and especially during the American Revolution, Virginians like Henry Lee embodied aspects of the Cavalier image during their military careers. Between the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of the Civil War, some Southern authors perpetuated the image by including Cavalier figures in many of their literary works. In the Civil War, select Virginians who fought for the Confederacy personified the Cavalier hero in the minds of many white Southerners. Despite a Confederate defeat, the Cavalier image persisted in Southern culture in the post-Civil War period and into the twentieth century.

Following the end of the Civil War, the revisionist myth of the Lost Cause spread over the South as an apologist narrative for white hegemony and slavery, which protected the former Confederate states from the devastating effects of their loss. Pro-Confederate organizations lobbied to replace real history with this collective memory of the South through education and memorialization. This national myth then served as a legitimization of white Southern nationalism that sought to restore white hegemony of the antebellum racial order. The white nationalist organization League of the South, whose goal is the second secession of the Southern states, embraces and manifests the ideology of the Lost Cause in its textual and audiovisual discourse and use of iconography. This discourse anchors their separatist intentions in the context of postwar collective memory, and aids the organization in the legitimization of their actions on the basis of revisionist history. The League derives its identity from this collective memory as the self-established white Southern ethnicity of Anglo-Celtic origin and the descendants of Founding Fathers as well as Confederate leaders. In doing so, the League identifies itself as the organization of true heirs of America stigmatized by the external aggression of the federal...

Cyrus Ingerson Scofield portrayed himself as a decorated Confederate veteran, a successful lawyer, and a Bible scholar who was providentially destined to edit his 1909 dispensational opus, The Scofield Reference Bible. This thesis offers a multilayered image of Dr. Scofield's life by considering political and regional influences, racial and gender attitudes, and religious views he encountered between 1861 and 1921. This study includes an examination of his participation in the American Civil War including his desertion of the South in 1862. After becoming a Union loyalist, Scofield excelled as a lawyer and Republican politician before corruption rumors radically altered his life in 1874. By 1882, he emerged as a minister in Dallas, Texas where he built an image as a Confederate veteran and Bible scholar. Drawing on Scofield's manuscripts and other sources, this study shows the self-aggrandizing Bible editor consistently adapted his life and rhetoric to his regional and social circumstances.

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