The Lost Cause Narrative and U.S. Racial Policy, 1865–1920s

Introduction: Reconstruction and the Persistence of Southern Ideology

Racial policy in the United States after the Civil War was supposed to be grounded in the egalitarian principles espoused by Lincoln at his Second Inaugural Address. However, with Lincoln's assassination, the Reconstruction Era got off to an ugly start. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) developed to carry on the traditions promoted by the Lost Cause narrative; the KKK led the charge to preserve white supremacy in the South and to resist the participation of freed Black Americans in public life and governmental administration (The Lost Cause, n.d.). Jim Crow laws followed (Schultz, 2018), and the segregation of Black and white Americans continued well into the twentieth century, reinforced by the Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (Schultz, 2018). This paper argues that the Lost Cause narrative of the Confederacy effectively sabotaged and distorted racial policy in the United States throughout the post-Civil War period.

The Ku Klux Klan and the Legacy of the Lost Cause

Reconstruction was meant to usher in a new era of rebuilding in America. People were now supposed to be equal. Slavery was over, and Black and white Americans were to live as one people. However, the ideology of the South was not as dead as might have been expected. The South had lost the war, but its ideals lived on — particularly through the Ku Klux Klan (The Lost Cause, n.d.).

The KKK formed to carry on the torch of the Lost Cause — the belief system that Southerners refused to surrender — and their formation led directly to the antagonistic spirit that continued to harass Black Americans throughout the South. Though freed, Black Americans now had to contend with a vengeful community that refused to participate in the healing of the nation's wounds. In popular media, the KKK was portrayed as heroic: in 1915, for instance, Hollywood director D. W. Griffith's American epic film Birth of a Nation depicted the KKK "as continuing the noble traditions of the South and the CSA soldier by defending Southern culture in general" (The Lost Cause, n.d.). This portrayal helped to perpetuate the traditions and ideology of the South in the broader national culture.

Jim Crow Laws and Institutionalized Segregation

The spirit of the Lost Cause also proceeded to inform regulations and laws throughout the country. The concept of Jim Crow was manifested in the way that police, businesses, schools, and churches treated Black Americans as categorically different from white Americans. While legal equality may have been granted in theory, it was nowhere near realized in practice. Black Americans had to ride separately from whites, eat in separate restaurants, and were excluded from equal participation in social life throughout the South (Schultz, 2018). In the 1920s, for example, Black Americans could not serve alongside white soldiers in the Army; they were required to obey the Jim Crow laws that institutionalized their inferior status. This spirit did not advance the ideals of Reconstruction — it advanced the ideals of the Lost Cause narrative.

Conclusion

The Lost Cause narrative negatively impacted the racial policy of the United States in the aftermath of the Civil War — but that narrative was finally dismantled in the 1960s. For the century between the end of the war and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, however, Black Americans were subjected to the violent campaigns of the KKK, the glorification of that organization in films like Birth of a Nation, Jim Crow laws that barred Black soldiers from serving alongside white ones, and the Supreme Court's "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Lost Cause may have been a mythology of noble defeat, but its real-world consequences for racial equality in America were devastating and long-lasting.

References

Davis, J. C. Bancroft. (1896). Plessy vs. Ferguson. Retrieved from http://college.cengage.com/history/wadsworth_9781133309888/unprotected/ps/plessy_ferguson_1896.htm

The Lost Cause. (n.d.). Civil War Journeys. Retrieved from

Schultz, Kevin M. (2018). HIST5: Volume 2: U.S. History Since 1865 (Student edition). Boston: Cengage.