Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Holly, this
Speaker 1: has been a weird year. What show that's a totally
Speaker 1: normal I live in a closet. I mean, it's been
Speaker 1: a weird year in general, has been a really weird
Speaker 1: year to work on this podcast. We recorded an episode
Speaker 1: back in March where we talked about some of that
Speaker 1: and how just strange it was to be working on
Speaker 1: the show and living in this moment that was clearly
Speaker 1: historically significant, that moment being the pandemic at that time,
Speaker 1: and that sense of strangeness has really continued. It also,
Speaker 1: i think escalated with the other things that have also
Speaker 1: happened since then. Yes, future historians will have quite a
Speaker 1: lot of layers to peel on this onion that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So like this whole sense of very surreal uh, stuff
Speaker 1: like that went on through the widespread protests against police
Speaker 1: brutality and racism that started in the late spring and summer,
Speaker 1: and now as we're recording this, the truly bizarre afterlife
Speaker 1: of the presidential election. For most of this year has
Speaker 1: really felt like either we just wrote an episode that's
Speaker 1: suddenly not relevant anymore, or we've been working on episodes
Speaker 1: feeling like they're just gonna come out in this black hole.
Speaker 1: If we don't know what the world is going to
Speaker 1: be like, then is this gonna seem really tone deaf
Speaker 1: when it publishes in a week and a half. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: we're recording this on December one. Who knows what the
Speaker 1: world is going to be like when it actually gets
Speaker 1: to people's feeds. In a way, with all this just bizarre, strange,
Speaker 1: disorienting chaos that we have all been living through, the
Speaker 1: election has felt uniquely disord orienting because there are clear
Speaker 1: historical precedents for the pandemic and the protests and the
Speaker 1: conditions that led to the protests, and we have talked
Speaker 1: about a lot of those things on the show before.
Speaker 1: But while there have been disputed elections in the United States,
Speaker 1: we don't really have a one to one comparison to
Speaker 1: a sitting president having clearly lost the election making all
Speaker 1: kinds of baseless and often verifiably false claims about having
Speaker 1: actually won it in all caps yes. However, another piece
Speaker 1: of this very strange post election season is this attempt
Speaker 1: to just promote the idea that the election was somehow
Speaker 1: rigged in favor of President elect Joe Biden. And so
Speaker 1: if we look at things more generally and we talk
Speaker 1: about attempts to create a narrative to reframe a loss
Speaker 1: so that it will be more favorable to the losing side,
Speaker 1: there are definite precedents for that in history, and one
Speaker 1: of them is the subject of today's episode, which is
Speaker 1: the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, which
Speaker 1: was a distortion of the history of the US Civil
Speaker 1: War that is still affecting the world today. Just a
Speaker 1: heads up that we cannot possibly delve into every conceivable
Speaker 1: nuance of this in an episode. UH. One of the
Speaker 1: many books about how the Civil War is remembered is
Speaker 1: called Race and Reunion The Civil War in American Memory.
Speaker 1: That's by David W. Blight. And not counting the notes
Speaker 1: and the index of that book, it is almost four
Speaker 1: hundred pages long, and the author describes that as a
Speaker 1: quote synthetic and selective work on a vast topic. So
Speaker 1: we are kind of looking at the big picture overview
Speaker 1: of this and not every conceivable facet of it. So
Speaker 1: the Lost Cause was part ideology, part social movement. Since
Speaker 1: its purpose was to promote an a historical interpretation of
Speaker 1: the U. S. Civil War, we gotta start with a
Speaker 1: recap of what exactly the Lost Cause was trying to undermine.
Speaker 1: Although there were other factors that played a much smaller role,
Speaker 1: the primary issue that drove the U. S. Civil War was,
Speaker 1: of course slavery. You can certainly make the argument that
Speaker 1: the North went toward to preserve the union, but under
Speaker 1: that argument, the reason the Union was in jeopardy in
Speaker 1: the first place was still slavery. And this was not
Speaker 1: a new division. Disagreements over slavery and efforts to accommodate
Speaker 1: slave states for the sake of keeping the union together.
Speaker 1: Let's go all the way back to before the drafting
Speaker 1: of the U. S. Constitution, and they're represented in the
Speaker 1: Constitution itself. So all the language that we're about to
Speaker 1: talk about still exists in the Constitution today, although the
Speaker 1: thirteenth and fourteenth Amendments supersedes some of it. Article one,
Speaker 1: Section two sets up the framework for the House of
Speaker 1: Representatives and how members of that body will be apportioned.
Speaker 1: It reads, in part quote, Representatives and directs taxes shall
Speaker 1: be apportioned among the several states which may be included
Speaker 1: within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall
Speaker 1: be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons,
Speaker 1: including those bound to service for a term of years,
Speaker 1: and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.
Speaker 1: So this is known as the three fifths Compromise. And
Speaker 1: even though it doesn't specifically mention slavery, everyone understood that
Speaker 1: other persons here met enslaved Africans. Southern states wanted their
Speaker 1: enslaved population to count for the purpose of apportionment, and
Speaker 1: that would give those states more legislative power and help
Speaker 1: protect the institution of slavery. They did not want their
Speaker 1: tax burden to increase by that amount, though, so this
Speaker 1: solution was to count three fifths of the enslaved population.
Speaker 1: Article one, section nine address us the international slave trade,
Speaker 1: though again without using that language, it reads quote, the
Speaker 1: migration or importation of such persons as any of the
Speaker 1: states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not
Speaker 1: be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and eight, But attacks or duty may be
Speaker 1: imposed on such importation not exceeding ten dollars for each person.
Speaker 1: In other words, while the government could impose attacks or
Speaker 1: a duty on enslaved people brought into the country, it
Speaker 1: could not ban the international slave trade. Before eight and then,
Speaker 1: Article four came to be known as the fugitive slave clause. Quote.
Speaker 1: No person held to service or labor in one state
Speaker 1: under the laws thereof escaping into another, shall, and consequence
Speaker 1: of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such
Speaker 1: service or labor, but shall be delivered up on the
Speaker 1: claim of the party to whom such service or labor
Speaker 1: maybe do Delegates from the slaveholding states would not have
Speaker 1: accepted the Constitution without these provisions, each of which protected
Speaker 1: slavery and the interests of enslavers and slave states, And
Speaker 1: over time, the growth of anti slavery sentiments and abolition
Speaker 1: movements in the northern states became increasingly threatening to the
Speaker 1: slave states of the South. To be clear, there were
Speaker 1: also abolitionists in the South, including enslaved people advocating for
Speaker 1: their own liberation and liberating themselves, but the national balance
Speaker 1: of power between North and South is what we're really
Speaker 1: focused on here. Beginning in about eighteen twelve, the United
Speaker 1: States started intentionally admitting new states into the Union in
Speaker 1: pairs one slave and one free state to maintain this
Speaker 1: purported balance, and this continued until eighteen fifty, when California
Speaker 1: became the first free state admitted without a corresponding slave state.
Speaker 1: The Compromise of eighteen fifty was a collection of laws
Speaker 1: meant to diffuse some of the tension from this shift,
Speaker 1: one of those being a much stronger Fugitive Slave Act.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty four, the Republican Party was established to
Speaker 1: try to resist the expansion of slavery into the western
Speaker 1: territories of the United States. By the election of eighteen sixty,
Speaker 1: it was widely believed that the election of a Republican
Speaker 1: president would spell the end of slavery and would prompt
Speaker 1: slave states to secede from the Union. This came to
Speaker 1: pass after Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected as president on
Speaker 1: November six, eighteen sixty. After Lincoln's election, Senator John J.
Speaker 1: Crittenden of Kentucky proposed a collection of constitutional amendments and
Speaker 1: Senate resolutions, some of which would make slavery permanent and
Speaker 1: part of the country, to try to head off a
Speaker 1: secession crisis. Unsurprisingly, this proposal was supported by the slave
Speaker 1: states but denounced by the free states, so it failed.
Speaker 1: And then on December eighteen sixty, South Carolina became the
Speaker 1: first eight to announce that it was seceding from the Union.
Speaker 1: South Carolina issued a declaration of the immediate Causes which
Speaker 1: induce and justify the Secession of South Carolina from the
Speaker 1: Federal Union. This document read, in part quote, an increasing
Speaker 1: hostility on the part of the non slaveholding states to
Speaker 1: the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of
Speaker 1: their obligations, and the laws of the general Government have
Speaker 1: ceased to affect the objects of the Constitution. Other states
Speaker 1: issued similar documents when they succeeded. They're going to have
Speaker 1: a couple of examples. This one's from Georgia. Quote. For
Speaker 1: the last ten years, we have had numerous and serious
Speaker 1: causes of complaint against our non slaveholding Confederate states with
Speaker 1: reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored
Speaker 1: to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility,
Speaker 1: and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations
Speaker 1: to us in reference to that property and by the
Speaker 1: use of their power in the federal government have striven
Speaker 1: to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common
Speaker 1: territories of the Republic. This is from Mississippi quote. Our
Speaker 1: position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery. The
Speaker 1: greatest material interest in the world. Its labor supplies the
Speaker 1: product which constitutes by far the largest and most important
Speaker 1: portions of commerce on the earth. These products are peculiar
Speaker 1: to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by
Speaker 1: an imperious law of nature, none but the black race
Speaker 1: can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have
Speaker 1: become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery
Speaker 1: is a blow at commerce and civilization. Texas and Virginia
Speaker 1: issued similar documents containing similar sentiments as well, and while
Speaker 1: some of these documents did also spend a significant amount
Speaker 1: of space discussing states rights in general, the rights that
Speaker 1: were being discussed all circled back to slavery. They included
Speaker 1: things like the right to take enslaved people into free
Speaker 1: states without there being freed as a consequence. So these
Speaker 1: documents supported the slave states rights to maintain slavery, but
Speaker 1: not really the free states rights to outlaw or restrict it.
Speaker 1: A Constitution of the Confederate States was adopted on March eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen one. Unlike the US Constitution, this one made several direct,
Speaker 1: specific references to slavery and enslaved people. Ten days later,
Speaker 1: Alexander Stephens, vice President of the Confederate States of America,
Speaker 1: delivered what came to be known as the Cornerstone Speech.
Speaker 1: It said that this new constitution had quote put at
Speaker 1: rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution,
Speaker 1: African slavery as it exists amongst us, the proper status
Speaker 1: of the Negro in our form of civilization. This was
Speaker 1: the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there were, of course cultural and economic differences
Speaker 1: between the North and the South, and other issues that
Speaker 1: you can cite as contributing factors in all of this,
Speaker 1: but there is overwhelming documented evidence that the biggest issue,
Speaker 1: and the one that was the most important, was slavery.
Speaker 1: It seems unlikely that the Confederate States would have shied
Speaker 1: away from that stance had they won the war. Slavery
Speaker 1: was right there in the Confederate States Constitution, including the
Speaker 1: clause quote no bill of attainder ex post facto law
Speaker 1: or law denying or impairing the right of property in
Speaker 1: negro slaves shall be passed. But instead the Confederacy suffered
Speaker 1: a humiliating defeat that left the question of how the
Speaker 1: nation could possibly be whole again and how the South
Speaker 1: could envision itself after this turn of events, And we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about that after we pause for a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. After the US of A War, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about how to reunite the country,
Speaker 1: like what would states have to do to be readmitted
Speaker 1: into the Union? What would former confederates have to do
Speaker 1: to earn some kind of pardon, How could the places
Speaker 1: that had suffered material damage as a result of the
Speaker 1: war be rebuilt? And how could the social, economic, and
Speaker 1: political injustice that had both enabled and grown from the
Speaker 1: existence of slavery be addressed and rectified. We have talked
Speaker 1: about a lot of this in previous episodes of the
Speaker 1: show that relate to the period of U s history
Speaker 1: known as Reconstruction, and those episodes include our two part
Speaker 1: on Robert Small's that we put out as a Saturday
Speaker 1: Classic this summer, and our two part on the Wilmington's
Speaker 1: coup that came out in a lot of these questions
Speaker 1: were practical, like would former Confederate leaders have to stand trial?
Speaker 1: What kind of services would be provided for formerly enslaved people?
Speaker 1: Where would the money come from to pay for those services?
Speaker 1: But some of these questions were a little bit more abstract,
Speaker 1: like what did this mean for white Southern identity? How
Speaker 1: could the Southern States defend themselves from mockery, shame, and
Speaker 1: accusations of treason from the white Southern point of view.
Speaker 1: Answers to a lot of these more nebulous questions rested
Speaker 1: on a set of ideas that came to be known
Speaker 1: as the Lost Cause. That's a term that was popularized
Speaker 1: by the eighteen sixties six book of the same name
Speaker 1: by Edward Pollard of Virginia. The biggest and most important
Speaker 1: piece of the Lost Cause myth was that the Civil
Speaker 1: War had not been about slavery. Southern States had succeeded
Speaker 1: over the issue of states rights, and that had been
Speaker 1: the cause of the war. According to this idea, still
Speaker 1: here it on occasion. I don't know if on occasion
Speaker 1: is even strong enough. And being super polite, even though
Speaker 1: the Lost Cause narrative claimed that the Civil War was
Speaker 1: not about slavery. It also reimagined slavery itself. According to
Speaker 1: Lost Cause proponents, slavery was not an evil institution. Enslavers
Speaker 1: in this version of the story are benevolent. They looked
Speaker 1: after their enslaved workforce, providing housing, clothing, and food, and
Speaker 1: generally giving enslaved people a better life than they would
Speaker 1: have had otherwise. Also, according to this narrative, enslaved people
Speaker 1: were happy, grateful, loyal, dedicated to their enslavers. Folded into
Speaker 1: all of this was the idea that people of African
Speaker 1: descent weren't capable of handling their own affairs, that they
Speaker 1: somehow needed the guidance and supervision of their enslavers. Even
Speaker 1: though the Lost Cause took great pains to minimize the
Speaker 1: documented horrors of slavery, it also contended that slavery was
Speaker 1: well on its way to dying out on its own.
Speaker 1: Sort of a corollary to this reimagining of slavery was
Speaker 1: the myth of the Black Confederate, which became way more
Speaker 1: popular later on, uh in the nineteen seventies in particular,
Speaker 1: like it had kind of a heyday. This was the
Speaker 1: idea that enslaved black people were so loyal and cared
Speaker 1: for that they willingly volunteered to fight for the Confederacy,
Speaker 1: and enormous numbers estimates for how many Black Confederates they're
Speaker 1: supposedly were are all over the place. There anywhere from
Speaker 1: five hundred to a hundred thousands such soldiers, depending on
Speaker 1: who you read. The reality is that enslaved Africans were
Speaker 1: a massive source of labor within the Confederate army. They
Speaker 1: worked as body servants, cooks, and manual laborers. But they
Speaker 1: weren't soldiers and they were not volunteers. They were enslaved.
Speaker 1: Confederate forces also captured and enslaved free black people in
Speaker 1: the places they moved through or occupied during the war.
Speaker 1: Historian Kevin m Levin has written a whole book about
Speaker 1: this called Searching for Black Confederates. The Civil Wars most
Speaker 1: persistent myths. Yeah, people like to use photos of soldiers
Speaker 1: posing with their enslaved servants as like some kind of
Speaker 1: evidence that there were a whole lot of soldiers and
Speaker 1: that the person the picture is really depicting is enslaving.
Speaker 1: The person next to them like that is not a
Speaker 1: volunteer soldier who went with him. So the lost cause
Speaker 1: ideology also framed the South's defeat as something that was inevitable.
Speaker 1: Under this ideology, Confederate generals were brilliant, they were gifted
Speaker 1: in their strategy and their tactics, and the South was
Speaker 1: defeated only because the North had superior numbers and resources.
Speaker 1: So the ideas the South was just overwhelmed. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't that Robert E. Lee and other Confederate leaders failed
Speaker 1: to develop an effective strategy to offset the fact that
Speaker 1: the Northern states were more industrialized and more densely populated.
Speaker 1: It was just that there was no strategy that ever
Speaker 1: would have been enough. This idea that the Confederate war
Speaker 1: effort was doomed from the beginning is the source of
Speaker 1: that lost cause Moniker. Within this reframing, Confederate generals were
Speaker 1: universally gentlemen. All of the soldiers were noble and gallant.
Speaker 1: White women were also perfect examples of Southern femininity. They
Speaker 1: had sacrificed for the cause of freedom and had borne
Speaker 1: up under immense struggle. More broadly, Antebellum life in the
Speaker 1: South was described as universally genteel and refined, with plantations
Speaker 1: romanticized as idyllic, expansive homes and fields rather than the reality,
Speaker 1: which was that they were slave labor camps. Yes, so
Speaker 1: I want to take a minute for like a more
Speaker 1: personal note. I understand that for a lot of people
Speaker 1: this this history is very personally important to them and
Speaker 1: their families. If you're about to write us an angry
Speaker 1: email about your second or third great grandfather who served
Speaker 1: for the South, I have second and third great grandfathers too,
Speaker 1: So I get it. Like you want to think that
Speaker 1: your ancestors were on the right side of history, but
Speaker 1: they really just were not in this case. Eventually, proponents
Speaker 1: of the Lost Cause ideology started to read frame the
Speaker 1: period of reconstruction as well, and under this idea, reconstruction
Speaker 1: was not an attempt to repair the damage of the
Speaker 1: war and to address injustice. It was an effort to
Speaker 1: just punish the South and exact retribution. And Northerners who
Speaker 1: came to the South to assist with this whole process,
Speaker 1: We're not, according to Lost Cause proponents, motivated by altruism
Speaker 1: or philanthropy. According to the Lost Cause, they were unscrupulous,
Speaker 1: corrupt carpetbaggers who were only in it for the money,
Speaker 1: money that they were going to get illegitimately. So we
Speaker 1: referenced Edward Pollard's book The Lost Cause earlier, and while
Speaker 1: that book did popularize this term, the movement itself is
Speaker 1: not something that just started and ended with one book.
Speaker 1: It was much bigger. Glimmers of the Lost Cause ideology
Speaker 1: were present at least as early as General Robert Elie's
Speaker 1: farewell address, also called General Order Number nine, delivered the
Speaker 1: day before he surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, and that
Speaker 1: began quote, after four years of arduous service, marked by
Speaker 1: unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has
Speaker 1: been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I
Speaker 1: need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard
Speaker 1: fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that
Speaker 1: I have consented to this result from no distrust of them,
Speaker 1: but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that
Speaker 1: would compensate for the loss that would have attended the
Speaker 1: continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless
Speaker 1: sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to
Speaker 1: their countrymen. After the war was over. White Southern women's
Speaker 1: groups that had been focused on providing aid during the
Speaker 1: war started instead focusing on memorializing the fallen and honoring
Speaker 1: returning soldiers. And some of this certainly included absolutely legitimate
Speaker 1: work like burying the dead and holding funerals and helping
Speaker 1: to care for women and children who had lost their
Speaker 1: husbands and fathers. But running alongside all of that work
Speaker 1: were efforts to reinforce the idea of the Southern War
Speaker 1: Effort as this noble, doomed endeavor that was not about slavery.
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen sixties, men's veterans groups became part
Speaker 1: of this effort as well. The Southern Historical Society was
Speaker 1: established in April of eighteen sixty nine to ensure that
Speaker 1: this version of Civil War history would be remembered. Former
Speaker 1: Confederate General Jubil A. Early was the Southern Historical Society's
Speaker 1: first president and was a major proponent of the Lost Cause.
Speaker 1: Although many Confederate memorials were built much later, which we
Speaker 1: will talk about, some were raised in the years immediately
Speaker 1: after the war was over. In April of eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: Jefferson Davis, who had been president of the Confederate States
Speaker 1: went on a tour to dedicate memorials and multiple cities,
Speaker 1: including Montgomery, Alabama, in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia. Prominent Confederate
Speaker 1: years were also lionized after their death, depicted as noble,
Speaker 1: nearly flawless heroes and eulogies and early biographies. This included
Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee, who died on October twelfth, eighteen seventy.
Speaker 1: Biographies written shortly after his death characterized him as a
Speaker 1: devout Christian who hated slavery, even though his cruelty to
Speaker 1: his own enslaved workforce, including breaking up their families in
Speaker 1: either ordering or carrying out the whipping of people who escaped,
Speaker 1: was documented. His opinions on the supremacy of the white
Speaker 1: race were also very well documented. Yeah, he was definitely
Speaker 1: a Christian, but that did not somehow undo the other part.
Speaker 1: Jefferson Davis was similarly eulogized after his death on December
Speaker 1: six nine. More than a hundred thousand mourners paid their
Speaker 1: respects as his body lay in state in New Orleans, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and then from there his remains were taken by train
Speaker 1: to their final resting place in Richmond, Virginia, and in
Speaker 1: the train made stops along the way, with the crowds
Speaker 1: honoring his passing by laying magnolia blossoms on the tracks
Speaker 1: and firing their guns into the air. At Sometimes these
Speaker 1: crowds were so large the train had to stop so
Speaker 1: they could be cleared away. Not every former Confederate figure
Speaker 1: was similarly treated, though. For example, after the war, former
Speaker 1: Confederate General William Mahone became one of the leaders of
Speaker 1: the Readjuster Party in Virginia. This party was a coalition
Speaker 1: of black and white political leaders that dominated Virginia politics
Speaker 1: from eighteen seventy nine to eighty three, with many black
Speaker 1: members of the coalition being elected into state and federal office.
Speaker 1: Mahones presence at Confederate reunions had to be sort of
Speaker 1: explained away, with organizers stressing that everyone should remember his
Speaker 1: wartime service rather than focusing on his political career. By
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties, the Lost Cause ideology was immensely popular
Speaker 1: in the South, and it was gaining traction else are.
Speaker 1: The magazine Confederate Veteran was launched in eighteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen hundred it had more than twenty thousand subscribers,
Speaker 1: and it was by far the most popular and widely
Speaker 1: read journal in the South. The United Daughters of the
Speaker 1: Confederacy was established in eighteen ninety four and was heavily
Speaker 1: involved in promoting the Lost Cause myth. In eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: the Confederate Museum, which was initially focused on a Lost
Speaker 1: Cause interpretation of the war, was opened in Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 1: Historians and commentators criticized the Lost Cause ideology. Throughout all
Speaker 1: of this, there were grains of truth to it, such
Speaker 1: as that there were white women who had made huge
Speaker 1: sacrifices during the war and soldiers who had volunteered out
Speaker 1: of a sense of patriotic duty, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it was just flatly false. Critics pointed out that the
Speaker 1: Lost Cause narrative tried to erase all kinds of horrors,
Speaker 1: including the existence of the Ku Klux Klan and the
Speaker 1: practice of lynching, while also leaning on racist depictions of
Speaker 1: black people that allowed the clan and lynching to flourish.
Speaker 1: Black leaders and their white allies also noted that accepting
Speaker 1: the false tenets of the Lost Cause meant abandoning Black
Speaker 1: Americans in the work of reconstruction and erasing the horrors
Speaker 1: and ongoing destructive legacy of slavery. Abolitionists and other reformers
Speaker 1: called for the rejection of this entire narrative. At the
Speaker 1: same time, though in a lot of the North and
Speaker 1: at the federal level, there was also this sense that
Speaker 1: accepting the Lost Cause narrative, or at least not pushing
Speaker 1: back against it too hard, might help unify the nation
Speaker 1: and allow it to heal from the war. However, this
Speaker 1: purported reunification but the emotional healing of white people ahead
Speaker 1: of everyone else, particularly black Americans. So in terms of
Speaker 1: national politics, the Northern States were complicit and allowing this
Speaker 1: fiction to stand for the sake of the Union at
Speaker 1: the expense of some of the Union's most marginalized citizens.
Speaker 1: I see this as a continuation of all those earlier
Speaker 1: concessions and appeasements that go all the way back to
Speaker 1: the drafting of the Constitution, and the Lost Cause was
Speaker 1: still being reinforced well into the twentieth century. And we're
Speaker 1: going to get into that after a sponsor break. Much
Speaker 1: of the national dialogue following the US Civil War had
Speaker 1: been about reunification and reconciliation and coming together, and eventually
Speaker 1: this included soldiers who had been on opposite sides of
Speaker 1: the war. Although there had been smaller events earlier on,
Speaker 1: the first major Civil War reunion involving soldiers from both
Speaker 1: sides was the Manassas Piece Jubilee in July of nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: This happened at the start of a series of fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary remembrances that would go on until nineteen fifteen. About
Speaker 1: ten thousand people attended this event, including about three hundred
Speaker 1: Confederate and about a hundred and twenty five United States veterans.
Speaker 1: A much larger event took place in nineteen thirteen, with
Speaker 1: more than fifty three thousand veterans assembling at Gettysburg. This
Speaker 1: was a massive event, with states in the federal government
Speaker 1: providing funding for everything from getting veterans to Gettysburg to
Speaker 1: feeding them and providing emergency medical care while they were there.
Speaker 1: Most of the veterans attending this were very elderly, and
Speaker 1: the weather was brutally hot, so that medical care was
Speaker 1: a vital part of the plan. Yeah, and even with it,
Speaker 1: there were there were people who died on the scene
Speaker 1: at the reunion because they were in their advanced years
Speaker 1: and the weather was just punishing again. The theme with
Speaker 1: all this was reconciliation and healing, but again for white
Speaker 1: people at the expense of black people who had been
Speaker 1: harmed by slavery in the war and their descendants who
Speaker 1: were still being harmed by ongoing racism and violence. And
Speaker 1: the words of the Washington b which is a newspaper
Speaker 1: with a pre dominantly black readership based in Washington, d c. Quote,
Speaker 1: the occasion is to be called a reunion, a reunion
Speaker 1: of whom only those who fought for the preservation of
Speaker 1: the Union and the extinction of human slavery. Is it
Speaker 1: to be an assemblage of those who fought to destroy
Speaker 1: the Union and perpetuate slavery, and who are now employing
Speaker 1: every artifice and argument known to deceit and sophistry to
Speaker 1: propagate a national sentiment in favor of their nefarious contention
Speaker 1: that emancipation, reconstruction, and enfranchisement are dismal failures. Some of
Speaker 1: the most visible remnants of the Lost Cause ideology came
Speaker 1: about during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. He came into
Speaker 1: office in n The first film screening at the White
Speaker 1: House happened during his presidency. It was the film Birth
Speaker 1: of a Nation, originally known as The Klansman, which included
Speaker 1: quotes from one of Wilson's history books, A History of
Speaker 1: the American People. Wilson was a proponent of the Lost
Speaker 1: Cause and the Dunning School, named for historian William A. Dunning,
Speaker 1: who interpreted reconstruction as a failure. Birth of a Nation
Speaker 1: embraced the Lost Cause ideology, using racist depictions of black
Speaker 1: Americans to frame reconstruction as deeply damaging to white people.
Speaker 1: It is also credited with a resurgence in the Ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan, which is depicted in the film, saving the
Speaker 1: South from the horrors of reconstruction. By the time Wilson
Speaker 1: became president, Reconstruction was long over and many of the
Speaker 1: gains and civil rights for black Americans that had been
Speaker 1: implemented during that time had already been lost. Wilson was
Speaker 1: the first Southern president elected since Reconstruction, and he continued
Speaker 1: that trend of rolling back civil rights, including segregating or
Speaker 1: allowing his cabinet to segregate a number of federal bureaus
Speaker 1: and offices, as well as the U. S. Navy. Wilson
Speaker 1: ran for a second term as president on a platform
Speaker 1: that included keeping the United States out of World War One,
Speaker 1: but after he was elected, he began preparing to go
Speaker 1: to war, including constructing new camps for training newly recruited
Speaker 1: military personnel. This is when U. S. Military bases started
Speaker 1: to be named after Confederate leaders, even though those leaders
Speaker 1: fought against the U. S. Military during the Civil War.
Speaker 1: So after the end of the Civil War, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army had occupied eleven Southern states, with troops being removed
Speaker 1: after the state had met with requirements to rejoin the Union.
Speaker 1: The last of these troops were removed after the eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six presidential election, and that was one of the
Speaker 1: disputed elections that we nodded to at the start of
Speaker 1: the show. The candidates in this election were Democrat Samuel
Speaker 1: Tilden and Republican Rutherford be Hayes. Tilden had won the
Speaker 1: popular vote, but didn't have enough votes to be declared
Speaker 1: the winner, and the Electoral College and then the electoral
Speaker 1: College votes from three states were disputed. There were result
Speaker 1: was the Compromise of eighteen seventy seven. Hayes would become president,
Speaker 1: and in exchange, among other concessions, he agreed to place
Speaker 1: a Democrat in his cabinet and to withdraw the federal
Speaker 1: troops that were still occupying parts of the South. This
Speaker 1: is generally seen as the end of Reconstruction, and for
Speaker 1: decades there wasn't a large military presence in the South.
Speaker 1: Because of the legacy of Reconstruction, the idea of sending
Speaker 1: troops to the South had become something of a taboo.
Speaker 1: But less than forty years later, the expansion of the
Speaker 1: military and preparation for World War One meant that camps
Speaker 1: had to be built in the South. We needed a
Speaker 1: lot of camps. We had to put them somewhere. So
Speaker 1: as part of the effort to make these encampments more
Speaker 1: palatable in the places where they were being built, they
Speaker 1: were named for former Confederate generals and other Confederate military figures,
Speaker 1: including camps named for Robert E. Lee and Pierre G. T. Beauregard, which,
Speaker 1: along with others, were built in nineteen seventeen. Encampment's name
Speaker 1: for General Braxton Bragg and General Henry Lewis Benning followed
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighteen. It really became a standard practice for
Speaker 1: new encampments and forts built in the South to be
Speaker 1: named after Confederate military leaders, even though again these were
Speaker 1: the enemy of the U. S. Army during the Civil War.
Speaker 1: As these bases were being built, another trend was developing,
Speaker 1: that of erecting statues to honor Confederate soldiers, many of
Speaker 1: which were arranged and funded by the United Daughters of
Speaker 1: the Confederacy. Although as we said earlier, some memorials were
Speaker 1: built just after the Civil War, their number really started
Speaker 1: to grow after about eighteen ninety, with the first Surgeon
Speaker 1: statues peaking between nineteen ten and nineteen thirty. As we've
Speaker 1: talked about in our previous episodes on the Harlem hell
Speaker 1: Fighters and read Summer, there was an intense backlash against
Speaker 1: the great migration of Black Americans to more northern states
Speaker 1: and against Black Americans advocacy for equal rights. These newly
Speaker 1: erected statues were part of that backlash by the white majority,
Speaker 1: and another smaller surge in their installations happened during the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. YEA,
Speaker 1: they were sort of part reminder of who's in charge
Speaker 1: here and part ongoing whitewashing of the Civil War. Although
Speaker 1: some cities could afford to hire a professional sculptor to
Speaker 1: create the monument. A lot of these were mass produced
Speaker 1: and ordered through the mail. One major supplier was Monumental
Speaker 1: Bronze Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, whose US and Confederate soldier
Speaker 1: statues were almost identical except for whether they had a
Speaker 1: US or a CS on the belt buckle. Meanwhile, one
Speaker 1: of the most widely popular pieces of Lost Cause fiction
Speaker 1: came into print, and then to the screen, Gone with
Speaker 1: the Wind, which debuted in nineteenth d nine and was
Speaker 1: based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell that came out
Speaker 1: three years earlier. So, as we have alluded to, we
Speaker 1: still see glimpses of the city. But in the post
Speaker 1: World War two era, more historians started returning to the
Speaker 1: subject of the Civil War and the Lost Cause, which
Speaker 1: by this point had made its way into history textbooks
Speaker 1: all over the country. Historical sites and museums also started
Speaker 1: re examining their collections and their missions after the war,
Speaker 1: as these institutions started trying to more accurately represent the
Speaker 1: war and its repercussions. This has really been an ongoing,
Speaker 1: many year effort. The Museum of the Confederacy, which we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, merged with the American Civil War Center in
Speaker 1: twent thirteen to form the American Civil War Museum, and
Speaker 1: that's a museum that tries to give a more honest
Speaker 1: look at the Civil War. But you can still see
Speaker 1: glimpses of the Lost Cause narrative all over the place,
Speaker 1: And this decade's long failure to honestly reckon with the
Speaker 1: Civil War has done so much damage. Polls about how
Speaker 1: many Americans know or don't know that the Civil War
Speaker 1: was about slavery or regular occurrence. But it's not just
Speaker 1: whether people know a particular fact about history. The lost
Speaker 1: Cause ideology contributed to racist violence and discrimination all over
Speaker 1: the United States, and as we've already mentioned, it put
Speaker 1: the emotional healing of the idea of the nation and
Speaker 1: of white people in the South ahead of justice for
Speaker 1: formerly enslaved people and their descendants. So this is a
Speaker 1: great example about how this kind of false narrative is
Speaker 1: not just about whether people know a particular intangible truth.
Speaker 1: It also has real and ongoing consequences that we still
Speaker 1: feel today. Yeah, we still see them in our inbox
Speaker 1: in response to episodes. From time to time, I have
Speaker 1: gotten in arguments with friends about that whole state's rights
Speaker 1: business and I'm like to own slaves, That's what I can't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're so we weard to me, I will say, it
Speaker 1: is weird. The romanticism of that is strange to me
Speaker 1: because I don't as much as I love history, I
Speaker 1: don't tend to romanticize it in that way. Um, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like, it's not part of my
Speaker 1: cultural identity that I am from lines of this or that,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I don't have that investment, So
Speaker 1: it's a little hard sometimes for me to understand the
Speaker 1: attachment to it. Yeah, I am pretty sure, Like I
Speaker 1: have not looked at every single person in the entire
Speaker 1: family tree, but pretty sure on both sides of my
Speaker 1: family in the eighteen sixties, everyone in the family tree
Speaker 1: was living in North Carolina. There are definitely people in
Speaker 1: my family tree and direct ancestors of mine who served
Speaker 1: for the Confederacy. And like, I totally understand, as I
Speaker 1: said earlier that like people don't want to imagine bad
Speaker 1: things about their ancestors. But to me, regardless of any
Speaker 1: of those in the visual people's reasons for serving, they
Speaker 1: were still serving as part of, you know, a group
Speaker 1: of states that had established themselves as a slave nation
Speaker 1: in an army that was fighting a lord to extend
Speaker 1: and protect slavery. Like, whatever your personal reasons for that,
Speaker 1: that's still a side that you were on. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh well, and it's one of those things I don't
Speaker 1: know if it will help people reconcile it. Right, the
Speaker 1: the nuance of the individual versus the individual's part in
Speaker 1: a larger group, how much they're influenced by what they
Speaker 1: grew up with, and how that has probably you know,
Speaker 1: had probably warped their perception of right and wrong, particularly
Speaker 1: in regard to this issue. I mean, it's still as
Speaker 1: you said, it comes down to that is the side
Speaker 1: you were on. Um, yeah, I don't it's a little
Speaker 1: it's it's hard for people to to accept even now. Um,
Speaker 1: And I don't know the way through that. I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of groups doing a lot of
Speaker 1: good effort, and some of the stuff that we talked
Speaker 1: about right there at the end of like trying to
Speaker 1: really take an honest look at things and and reckon
Speaker 1: with it is a big part of that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a weird it's a weird thing. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of psychology to it to be unraveled. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: and I were talking about something totally different earlier this week,
Speaker 1: and I was saying, how a lot of times when
Speaker 1: we look at things, we have to sort of hold
Speaker 1: multiple contradictory truths about things in our heads at the
Speaker 1: same time. Uh. And I think that's the case for
Speaker 1: a lot of folks here. Yeah, And it's it's difficult
Speaker 1: but doable and important to It's an important skill to
Speaker 1: learn to be able to see multiple facets that are
Speaker 1: not always comfortable. I mean, it's kind of what we're
Speaker 1: working on all the time, right, Like, no one person
Speaker 1: is simple and easily summated. They all had problems. We
Speaker 1: all do. They're all humans and fallible. Yeah. So, uh,
Speaker 1: before I read listener mail, I just want to shout
Speaker 1: out to all of the people that have sent really,
Speaker 1: really lovely emails after our episodes on Vivian Thomas and
Speaker 1: Helen tausig Um. I did those episodes in part because
Speaker 1: I just needed an episode about saving babies. We have
Speaker 1: talked before about how a lot of times I'll they'll
Speaker 1: have a point in working on the show where I'm like,
Speaker 1: time to save some babies. So I kind of forgot
Speaker 1: that every time we do that. We then hear from
Speaker 1: people who either they were saved or their babies were saved,
Speaker 1: and I just kind of, uh, I forgot about that pattern.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we got a ton of really lovely emails
Speaker 1: from heart moms and other parents, and then people who
Speaker 1: were born with a congenital heart condition who had one
Speaker 1: of these procedures, or who had other relatives who were
Speaker 1: affected and whose lives were saved or extended thanks to
Speaker 1: surgeries that were We're pioneered by by Thomas and tausigin Blaylocks.
Speaker 1: So I need to send thank you notes and replies
Speaker 1: to all these folks I think still so thank you
Speaker 1: so much to Jen, Kelsey, Kyle, Timmy, Sarah Asaki, a
Speaker 1: different Sarah, and Nicole. Jen also asked us to remember
Speaker 1: her aunt, Barbara Linda, who died from a congenital heart
Speaker 1: condition as a baby in the nineteen fifties. Um, thank
Speaker 1: you so much to everybody who has sent all those
Speaker 1: email letters. I had. I had a hard time figuring
Speaker 1: out which of them to read, and so I just
Speaker 1: wanted to thank everyone for sending them. And then I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read an episode on a related topic but slightly
Speaker 1: different because it's about the listener mail that was on
Speaker 1: our Vivian Thomas episode. This is from Carrie, and Carrie says,
Speaker 1: I have a possible solution to what your listener sean
Speaker 1: Or was referring to at the end of your eleven
Speaker 1: eighteen episode on Vivian Thomas concerning how she had heard
Speaker 1: of incubator babies but couldn't find anything in your archive.
Speaker 1: In your fort show Indian School Basketball Champions Part two
Speaker 1: podcast from eleven fifteen seventeen, you gave a description of
Speaker 1: the St. Louis World's Fair in which you mentioned that
Speaker 1: babies and incubators were on display there. In response, I
Speaker 1: wrote to you on eleven seventeen with information from an
Speaker 1: article I had written about the incubator baby custody case
Speaker 1: that made national news on and off for ten years
Speaker 1: beginning in nineteen o four. You read my email at
Speaker 1: the end of your twelve eleven podcast. Perhaps your reference
Speaker 1: to the St. Louis World's Fair and my email are
Speaker 1: at least part of what Seanna remembered. In addition, you
Speaker 1: had mistakenly referred to me as she. I wrote to
Speaker 1: you on twelve twelve seventeen pointing this out. You wrote
Speaker 1: back and apologized, but the show's production had already wrapped
Speaker 1: until mid January, and you were not able to make
Speaker 1: a public correction anyway. I thought this might help clear
Speaker 1: things up. Keep up the good work, Mr Carrie. I'll
Speaker 1: leave out the last name for privacy. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about mistakes I made three years ago and still remember. Uh,
Speaker 1: that is exactly what happened. Um. We had gotten this
Speaker 1: email from Carrie immediately after we did our last recording
Speaker 1: session for and because of the way our time off
Speaker 1: schedule was following, and then immediately after I came back
Speaker 1: from being away, you Holly were going to be away
Speaker 1: recording drawn and so we had something like a month
Speaker 1: of episodes already in the can and we were not
Speaker 1: going to be in this studio again for three or
Speaker 1: four weeks. UM. And I was very embarrassed and felt
Speaker 1: very bad about it, and also it was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to fix this. So I'm glad Carrie
Speaker 1: that you sent this email. UM. Carrie had even noted
Speaker 1: that he was a Mr. In the email that he
Speaker 1: originally sent him. I just overlooked it. So I am
Speaker 1: sorry for that. I am sorry that three years ago
Speaker 1: I did not find a way to publicly correct that
Speaker 1: and thank you again for sending this note. UM, we
Speaker 1: have gotten a few hypotheses about what folks might be remembering. UM.
Speaker 1: Some of them are related to different podcasts, and some
Speaker 1: of them are related to things that were on the
Speaker 1: radio or on television theories. I'm not really sure if
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us about this any
Speaker 1: other podcast or history podcast. At i heart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also all over social media ad missed in History
Speaker 1: and that's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Speaker 1: And you can subscribe to our show on the I
Speaker 1: heart radio app and Apple podcasts and anywhere else you
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Speaker 1: a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.