Why Does The US Have So Many Confederate Monuments?
A Futile Effort To Preserve a Lost Cause….
Around 700 Confederate monuments dot the United States landscape. Like their Union monuments, Confederate monuments focus on soldiers, martial virtues, patriotism, and devotion to civic duty. At the same time, the Confederate States of America were fighting for a different reason: the preservation of slavery and white supremacy.
How did Confederate monuments — which honor slavery and white supremacy — become so numerous on American public spaces?
The Lost Cause: A Pseudo-Historical View
Following the civil war’s end, ex-Confederate William W. Bennett published A Narrative of the Great Revival. Filled with Romanticism, Bennett describes the Confederate rebellion as a religious one, portraying the Confederacy in a moral and divinely sanctioned view. From Bennett’s work, southern writers developed his work into the Lost Cause ideology and southern righteousness. The Lost Cause ideology would establish the following beliefs:
