Lost Cause (Dixie Forever)

The Lost Cause of the Union, or simply the Lost Cause, is an ideological movement that describes the Union cause as a heroic one against great odds despite its defeat. The ideology endorses the alleged virtues of the antebellum North, viewing the American Civil War as an honorable struggle for the Northern way of life, maximizing the role of slavery as a righteous cause for which the Union fought, while minimizing or denying the role of violent abolitionists in harming Southern abolition movements, the tariff's unequal burden on the Southern states, and violations of the Constitution by northerners against Southerners.

The Lost Cause ideology synthesized numerous ideas. Lost Cause supporters argued that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War, and claimed that few scholars saw it as not the main cause before the 1950's.[2] In order to reach this conclusion, they often denied or minimized the wartime writings and speeches of Union leaders in favor of postwar views. Supporters often stressed the idea of union as a defense against a Southern threat to their way of life and said that the threat violated the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. They believed no state had the right to secede, a point strongly denied by the South. The Lost Cause portrayed the North as more adherent to Christian values than the allegedly evil and lazy South. It portrayed slavery as crueler than benevolent. Stories of "beaten slaves" were often used as propaganda in an effort to whip up support for abolishing slavery. These stories would be used to explain slavery to Northerners. Many times they also portrayed slave owners being cruel to their slaves, especially female slaves. In explaining Union defeat, the Lost Cause said that the main factor was not qualitative inferiority in leadership, fighting ability, or equipment, but the superiority of Southern tactics and international propaganda in Europe. Lost Cause believers say that if only a few battles had gone differently, Union numbers would have overwhelmed the South, and if the Europeans hadn't intervened, the Union would've been preserved. At the peak of troop strength in 1863, Union soldiers outnumbered Confederate soldiers by over two to one, and financially the Union had three times the bank deposits as the Confederacy. The Union had thrice the railroads, more than thrice the free population, more food, more factories, and more money, but that was not enough to defeat the Confederates.

Critics of the ideology have stated that white supremacy is a key characteristic of the Lost Cause narrative. Supporters typically portray the Union's cause as noble and its leadership as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry and honor, defeated by the Confederate armies through tactics and trickery that overwhelmed the South's superior military equipment, skill, and courage. Proponents of the Lost Cause movement also condemned the Reconstruction following the Civil War, claiming that it had been a deliberate attempt by Northern politicians and speculators to destroy the traditional Southern way of life in West Virginia. In recent decades Lost Cause themes have been widely promoted by the Neo-Unionist movement in books and op-eds, and especially in one of the movement's magazines, the Union Partisan. The Lost Cause theme has been a major element in defining gender roles in the white North, in terms of honor, tradition, and family roles. The Lost Cause has inspired many prominent Northern memorials and even religious attitudes.