White Lies: Part Two: Building the Lost Cause

“We all know how hard it is to eradicate early impressions,” Early would later note.

These ministers had taken on positions of authority in their new southern organizations, but they would have lost their newfound influence if the factions had reunited after the war.

Chapters of the group soon spread around the region and began terrorizing Blacks during self-appointed vigilante patrols.

Soon after Lee’s death, Douglass penned an editorial in his recently established New National Era: “Is it not about time that this bombastic laudation of the rebel chief should cease?” he wrote.

These and other judicial decisions allowed White supremacists to begin to regain control of the former Confederacy.

Most withdrew from participating to protest their planned segregation, and Early attended after all.

It had taken concerted effort North and South to disrupt the forward momentum of Reconstruction, an effort that had been sparked by racism and fueled by lies.

His bones were exhumed and put on display at Washington and Lee University, where students surreptitiously carved their initials in them in a quest for good luck on exams until they deteriorated to the point of being buried again, this time just steps away from Lee’s tomb.

His answer was blunt: “This glorification of States Rights Doctrine—the right of secession, and the honoring of men who represented that cause, fosters in this Republic, the spirit of Rebellion and will ultimately result in handing down to generations unborn a legacy of treason and blood.”

Democrats had regained their dominance over the region as a result, creating a political power bloc that was called the Solid South.

In addition to using Lost Cause falsehoods in his attempt to preserve White supremacy in the South, Herbert’s group employed classic scare tactics to recruit powerful allies for the congressional fight.

That maxim would fail to hold true, however, when it came to the Civil War, because of writers like Herbert and those who followed him.

His work perpetuated the Lost Cause portrayal of slavery as a benign institution, of enslaved people as well cared for by loving enslavers, and of the symbiotic relationship that existed between enslavers and the people they enslaved.

NOTABLE INSCRIPTION: “Not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children. Jefferson Davis, January 21, 1861, U.S. Senate.”

The Daughters were adamant about that point.