It seems inconceivable that the Civil War, after extracting an unimaginable toll of suffering and death, did not at least exorcise the original sin of slavery and prejudice that still undermines American democracy.
But after the war, the South continued its abuse of black citizens with renewed vigor, for example, inventing a new, industrial version of slavery by entrapping thousands of blacks accused of petty crimes into servitude in mines and factories. It’s chillingly documented by Douglas A. Blackmon, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Slavery by Another Name.”
And of course, the postwar South engineered an apartheid society, enforced by a warped legal system, as well as by lynchings and other terror tactics used by the Ku Klux Klan and others. For a taste of the century of violence and cruelty that followed General Lee’s surrender to General Grant at Appomattox, read Gilbert King’s “Devil in the Grove,” about four black men persecuted by a murderous Florida sheriff for a rape that never happened.
Now, historian Edward H. Bonekemper III chronicles another perverse response to the end of the war that’s perhaps more subtle than segregation, but still was crucial to its establishment and to the legacy of racial divide that confounds us today.
In “The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won,” Bonekemper describes how southern apologists concocted a distorted version of history that ennobled the Confederacy and hid the war’s ugly origins.
Notably, the myth worked to extinguish slavery as the core motive, replacing it with a seemingly higher-minded cause – a crusade to preserve states’ rights.
It’s a fabrication that Bonekemper dismantles with convincing, sometimes disturbing, evidence.
* * *
Still, the whitewash has been remarkably successful in softening our collective memory. Consider, as Bonekemper suggests, “Gone With the Wind,” one of America’s enduring classic movies, with its sympathetic portrayal of the Confederacy.
One of the ironies of this mythmaking is its upending of the cliché that says that a war's victors get to tell its history.
“To the contrary,” Bonekemper writes, “a coterie of disappointed Southerners, aided by many other ‘conveniently forgetful’ and ‘purposely misleading’ comrades, spent three decades after the Civil War recreating the Myth of the Lost Cause.”
The results, Bonekemper says, “is a collection of fictions, lies and component myths that purport to explain why much of the South seceded from the Union and why the Confederacy lost the Civil War.”
This is Bonekemper’s sixth book about the Civil War. The first five also are myth-busters, dispelling common impressions of the war and its leaders with contrarian titles like “How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War,” and “A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant’s Overlooked Military Genius.”
The earlier books plunge deeply into the weeds of Civil War battles and strategy, details vigorously debated by Civil War buffs and academicians. Bonekemper himself is the book review editor of “Civil War News,” a monthly newspaper.
But in the prologue to this latest book, Bonekemper widens the scope: “This is a book I have felt compelled to write for a number of years as I encountered too many people with mistaken impressions about the Civil War.”
* * *
He marshals the case against the myths with the zeal of prosecutor, who seems personally and professionally offended by the suspect historians, methodically listing a seven-count indictment, then laying out the overwhelming evidence for each charge.
In truth, Bonekemper is a lawyer by trade. After graduating from Yale law school, he represented federal agencies that regulated strip mining of coal and transportation of hazardous materials.
The myths of the book’s title include the assertion that slavery was a benevolent “institution” benefiting both blacks and whites, but which nevertheless was on the wane. A related myth portrayed the Confederacy as a victim of the North’s superior numbers, so that the valiant losers shouldn’t be faulted for the outcome. Other myths complained about the Union’s “total war” tactics; another venerated General Robert E. Lee as a military wizard, in contrast to the Union’s thuggish general, Ulysses S. Grant, whose success depended on the North’s superior resources.
But the compelling centerpiece of the book is its focus on the Confederacy’s motive for secession.
Bonekemper first deals the fairy tale that slavery was a benefit to oppressor and oppressed alike. Here’s how Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate states, described slavery’s paradise: Slaves “were trained in the gentle arts of peace and order and civilization; they increased from a few unprofitable savages to millions of efficient Christian laborers. Their servile instincts rendered them contented with their lot.”
Bonekemper counters by describing the brutal reality: slaves working 18 hours every day of the week, with minimal food and poor housing. Slaves were governed by state codes that required obedience to their masters, forbade reading and writing and limited church-going. Rules were enforced by whips and other instruments of torture. One owner slashed the feet of disobedient slaves with a knife; another hitched a man to a plow, which the slave pulled until he dropped dead. Black women were raped. Families were dispersed when their members were sold at slaves markets like one in New Orleans, where prices for a “prime field hand” ranged from $600 to $1,800. A “virtual police state” headed off slave revolts.
* * *
The most convincing testimony dispelling the postwar myth that defense of states’ rights, not slavery, drove the secession movement comes from the speeches and documents from the time that advocates were making their case.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world,” Mississippi officials wrote, saying that cotton and other slave-generated “products” were key to a world economy.
“These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions,” the declaration said. “And by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear the exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
As for states’ rights, what actually bothered the South were laws passed by northern states to impede return of escaped slaves. The complaint was that the United States federal government failed to override the actions of northern states. What’s more, when the Confederacy created its own constitution, one provision decreed that no law “impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
As you can see by now, among the most shocking elements of the book is the blatantly racist language used by advocates of secession
A Mississippi judge, William L. Harris, dispatched to persuade the Georgia legislature to join the movement, argued that the North was now rejecting the endorsement of slavery by the founding leaders of the United States.
“Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.”
Henry Lewis Benning of Georgia, in recruiting Virginians, predicted dire results if slavery were abolished:
“By the time the North shall have attained the power [to end slavery], the black race will be in a large majority and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything.”
The North would invade the South to end slavery, Benning warned: “We will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth, and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination.”
Bonekemper marshals many other arguments against the myth, including data that show a correlation between the percentage of slaves in a state’s population and the likelihood the state would secede. For example, the first state to leave the Union was South Carolina, whose 402,406 slaves made up 57 percent of its population.
* * *
If I have any criticism with Bonekemper’s arguments that southern mythmakers were chiefly responsible for confusing our later views about the origins of the war, it’s that he leaves out the role of President Abraham Lincoln. As the war began, Lincoln said his goal was to preserve the Union, thereby making slavery a secondary issue.
The president’s approach may have been politically astute in taking the nation into what would be a terrifying conflict. But he nonetheless helped cloud history’s appreciation for the central role that Bonekemper convincingly argues was played by slavery.
Still, “The Myth of the Lost Cause” is a masterful, if disturbing foundation for understanding how racial issues are deeply embedded in our history, enduring to distort and impair the politics and culture of present day America.
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Two books on the “Lost Cause"
Thomas J. DiLorenzo presents the case for the Lost Cause in The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an UnnecessaryWar, while Edward H. Bonekemper argues against the Lost Cause in The Myth ofthe Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won.What is the Lost Cause? The basic tenants are as follows: the War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do with slavery; the South did nothing to provoke war; the Constitution included a right to secede and the South should have been allowed to leave peacefully; antebellum life in the South was prosperous, dignified, and just; slavery was already dying; Robert E. Lee deserved deification, U. S. Grant deserved demonization, the North deserves condemnation for engaging in total war; the South had no chance of winning, and most important of all, Lincoln was a despot who started the war by invading South.Basically, the Lost Cause is innocence unjustly victimized.I chose these two specific books because they are both relatively recent (2003 and 2015) and each author presents their respective positions clearly, with entertaining gusto. On which side of this controversy did I land? You can probably guess, but this argument has raged for over one hundred and fifty years and these books will provide all the information you need to make up your own mind.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2015
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Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2023
Thomas J. DiLorenzo presents the case for the Lost Cause in The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an UnnecessaryWar, while Edward H. Bonekemper argues against the Lost Cause in The Myth ofthe Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won.
What is the Lost Cause? The basic tenants are as follows: the War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do with slavery; the South did nothing to provoke war; the Constitution included a right to secede and the South should have been allowed to leave peacefully; antebellum life in the South was prosperous, dignified, and just; slavery was already dying; Robert E. Lee deserved deification, U. S. Grant deserved demonization, the North deserves condemnation for engaging in total war; the South had no chance of winning, and most important of all, Lincoln was a despot who started the war by invading South.
Basically, the Lost Cause is innocence unjustly victimized.
I chose these two specific books because they are both relatively recent (2003 and 2015) and each author presents their respective positions clearly, with entertaining gusto. On which side of this controversy did I land? You can probably guess, but this argument has raged for over one hundred and fifty years and these books will provide all the information you need to make up your own mind.
What is the Lost Cause? The basic tenants are as follows: the War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do with slavery; the South did nothing to provoke war; the Constitution included a right to secede and the South should have been allowed to leave peacefully; antebellum life in the South was prosperous, dignified, and just; slavery was already dying; Robert E. Lee deserved deification, U. S. Grant deserved demonization, the North deserves condemnation for engaging in total war; the South had no chance of winning, and most important of all, Lincoln was a despot who started the war by invading South.
Basically, the Lost Cause is innocence unjustly victimized.
I chose these two specific books because they are both relatively recent (2003 and 2015) and each author presents their respective positions clearly, with entertaining gusto. On which side of this controversy did I land? You can probably guess, but this argument has raged for over one hundred and fifty years and these books will provide all the information you need to make up your own mind.
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