Confronting Legacies of The Lost Cause: The Unacknowledged Success of Lost Cause Rhetoric
“Sunday Morning at the Great House” by Alice Smith, circa 1935, from her series, “A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties.”
Introduction
Living in a post-Charlottesville world, studies relating to collective memory and spatial, racial projects abound. Discussions of the next Confederate monument to be removed are never absent from the headlines for too long, and institutions across the board are rethinking the way they present historical figures and events, in hopes of creating a more accurate depiction of history. The riot that ignited this robust discussion and action occurred on August 12, 2017.
Self-proclaimed white nationalists and supremacists gathered in the unsuspecting town of Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, August 12, for a “Unite the Right” rally. Their intentions were clear, as the night before, many of the same individuals took to the streets marching and yelling racial and ethnic slurs and proclaiming, “White Lives Matter.”[1] According to the organizers, they gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, as removing the statue was seen as an infringement on their freedom of expression and speech. However, their vitriol expressed otherwise. These individuals gathered to protest the removal of a statue, but only because that statue stood for a long-established myth. The Myth lies on a foundation of notions such as honor, loyalty, and justice, but these are merely superficial. This monument and the Mythwhich built it, were themselves constructed on the fragile notion of white supremacy and the oppression of minorities. This Myth is known to scholars as “The Lost Cause.”[2]
As Gary W Gallagher explains in the introduction to The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, the majority of ex-confederates did not believe they had fought for an unjust or unworthy cause. They believed they fought for Southern honor and economic security, cultivated in the back of African Americas. Thus, “during the decades following the surrender at Appomattox, they nurtured a public memory of the confederacy and the Civil War that placed wartime sacrifice and shattering defeat in the best possible light.”[3] Their new interpretation addressed everything from the gentle and romantic nature of antebellum southern society to the constitutionality of secession and the causes of war. While the Lost Cause claimed session and war were prompted by northern aggression and infringement on states’ rights, the sole cause had always been based on economic production via enslaved bodies and southern anxieties of racial superiority. However, through crafting heroic figures in the men such as Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, couching the war in religious metaphors, and constructing a picturesque vision of southern society pre-war, ex-confederates justified their actions and defeat, while providing the future generations of white southerners with a “correct” narrative of the war.[4]
This fictionalized and romanticized vision of the Confederacy and Civil War enabled southerners to deny and obliterate the African American side to this history. Whereas the African American population would have seen the Civil War as the event marking their rise out of bondage, and enslavement and violence as the central issue through which the saga should be told, the Lost Cause shifts the focus of the narrative. It instead obscures the centrality of African Americans in the event. In a way, the Lost Cause replaces “Black Lives Matter,” with “White Lives Matter,” much like the white supremacist had on August 12 in Charlottesville, VA.
In order to disseminate such rhetoric, many men, and women, of the former confederacy took it upon themselves to create public images and writings to engrain the counterfactual Myth. Through the erection of monuments and the writing of poems and history books, those sympathetic to the confederate cause cultivated a physical and intellectual landscape that stripped away slavery, its brutality and the heartbreak it wrought, and replaced it instead with visions of admirable men, whose leadership and nobility obscure their roles as enslavers. This is the context in which many of the monuments now under scrutiny were created, including the Robert E Lee statue in Charlottesville, VA.[5]
The arguments around the destruction or preservation of such monuments continue to emerge. While we are three years out from the Charlottesville riot, the topic still elicits quite a response. Within the last week, the New York Times covered two stories related to the removal of controversial monuments, and one discussing the erection of a monument to black activists in Seneca Village. If anything, it seems the discussion is extending beyond that of confederate monuments to encompass other revisionist history markers and those seeking to rewrite the marginalized and oppressed communities back into the landscape.[6]
However, the discussion has yet to fully consider the pervasiveness of the Lost Cause Mythology and its success in promoting its revision of history. I was struck by this realization a few weeks ago as I drove home from attending a conference. While the hues of red, yellow, and orange peppering the mountainsides of North Carolina and Virginia were stunning, they only engage the mind for so long. To break up the monotonous seven-hour car drive, I hit play on my podcast playlist and tuned into an episode of Dan Pasham’s food podcast The Sporkful.
With the intriguing title of “When White People Say Plantation,” I was excited for the conversation that lay ahead. I immediately thought of Michael Twitty and the discussions he has opened with his recent publication, The Cooking Gene, assuming the topic might brooch a similar subject.
The podcast opens with food writer Osayi Endolyn describing an uncomfortable experience in a Nashville cocktail bar. When Endolyn asked the bartender the brand of the pineapple rum on the menu, she hesitated, and meekly admitted, “It’s Plantation. Plantation Rum.”[7] It was an uncomfortable experience because Osayi Endolyn is a black woman and the white bartender had to admit that this bottle of rum was named after an institution historically tied to the inhumane treatment and enslavement of people just like her. It was this interaction that sent Endolyn on a journey to find out what exactly people were trying to evoke when using the word plantation.[8] This would be the topic of discussion for the remaining half-hour, and immediately the Lost Cause Myth came to mind.
Throughout the episode, host Dan Pashman tried to help answer this question by interviewing individuals who themselves had used the word plantation as either a title or descriptor in food writing. As he makes clear in the podcast, not everyone agreed. The large corporation Bigelow Tea declined the interview, as well as notable TV chefs Andrew Zimmern and Rachael Ray. However, the team at The Sporkful was able to coax eight people into interviewing. During these interviews, Pashman asked them each the same question, “what are you trying to communicate with the word plantation?” The conversations that followed are the focus of this article.
“When White People Say Plantation”
“I want people to see a recipe on my site and instantly have a strong reaction. If I had just named this post spoon bread, to me it doesn’t have nearly the appeal as if I attach ‘Old Virginia Plantation Spoon Bread’ to the post, because that automatically conjures an image in the reader’s mind as to what I would think might be a comforting, cozy dish that goes back generations, that might remind someone of the meals that they ate at their grandmother’s table.”
The quotation above is from Dan Pashman’s interview with Blair Lonergan. Blair produces a food blog called “The Seasoned Mom.” On this blog, she has a recipe for “Old Virginia Plantation Spoon Bread,” and it is this recipe that Pashman asked her about. Almost immediately, he pressed Blair to explain the name of the dish and why she chose to use the term plantation. Her answer is revealing.
Comfort. Cozy. Generational. Family. These are all terms used by Blair to explain the images and emotions the title of her recipe is meant to evoke. “Plantation” for Blair conjures such images. This is not surprising, as the podcast points as, as this romanticized view of plantations and plantation life has existed for quite some time. Gone with the Wind and Aunt Jemima are mentioned to illustrate such nostalgic images in popular culture, but the extent of such thinking is much, much deeper. The rose-colored glasses that typically paint 19th-century southern culture and society as warm, gentle, and honorable are heirlooms, passed down through the proverbial familial line, from those ex-confederates discussed earlier. White people think of the antebellum South in this way because of the unrecognized success of the Lost Cause. For them the term is innocuous, and they do not have to reckon with the reality, but, for people of color, it evokes the memory of bondage and monstrous masters.
Invoking the word plantation in this way should be seen as a fruit of the ex-confederates’ labor. They erected monuments, published books and poems, and carefully crafted rhetoric to create a view of the South that endures to this day. As this podcast brings to light, proponents of the Lost Cause used rhetoric as an instrument to corrupt the mind and distort history. Professor emeritus W. Stuart Towns addresses this in his book, Enduring Legacy: Rhetoric and Ritual of the Lost Cause. He states, “After the Civil War, southern orators established a rhetoric narrative of their view of the region’s past, present and future that conformed to how white southerners wanted to see their world. In hundreds of speeches presented at ceremonial and ritualistic events occurring all over the region, these speakers built a public memory of the Old South and the Confederacy.”[9] Essentially, Towns is describing how Lost Cause orators imbued our language with meaning to reinforce a notion that suited their purposes.
Thus, by continuing to use the term plantation, and others like it, in this way we reinforce the ahistorical. It can be likened to the monuments left standing. They allow the Myth to live on by evoking an image of life crafted by those who sought to define collective memory and space as belonging only to those of Anglo-Saxon stock. They were meant to whitewash intellectual and physical space, and in doing so, the African American community has been destroyed. By obliterating their understanding of their history, by erasing them from the narrative, Lost Cause rhetoric and imagery prevents the African American community from defining themselves historically and contemporarily.
Professor of History, Karen Cox, touched on this in her interview with Pashman. As he confessed his romantic view of plantations, Dr. Cox points out the absence of African Americans in these descriptions. There it is — the realization of Lost Cause mythologists’ dreams. African Americans have been erased from a history they are very much a part of. A simple word has corrupted the history of an entire people and now expresses only one side of the story. Language is power, and it would seem the Lost Cause Mythologists understood that.
Later in the podcast interviewee, Vinnie Carbone made a comment that “it [slavery] was part of our history and can’t be swept under the rug….that’s not saying what happened was right but let’s just move on. My God, let’s just move on.” Another interviewee, Annie Butler offered her opinion explaining, “history is history, and you don’t erase it, and you don’t take down all of the monuments to it….there needs to be a balance of how much of our history we’re willing to erase and rewrite because I don’t think that that is going to solve any problems.”[10] These responses are interesting for two reasons.
First, both assume that by merely acknowledging slavery existed in history, the issue is addressed, but this is not the case. We must acknowledge the legacies of slavery and its proponents to fully capture a complete understanding of the past. If we simply acknowledge plantation meant a place where slaves lived and worked, we deny those same enslaved people a role in the historical narrative. Just as our physical spaces are being revised, we must revise the rhetoric that conjures similar ahistorical imagery and provide a narrative opportunity for their representation. When terms such as “plantation” or “the old south” or “master” are used, especially to evoke notions of gentility and respectability, they mask the insidious truth. As public historians, continually interacting with our communities, we have a higher chance of correcting this problem. While public history sites such as Monticello in Charlottesville, VA, have made changes through their close attention to the language used on public tours, our field must promote new ways of describing and discussing the topics of the institution of slavery, the enslaved, and their enslavers across the board. Scholars have already taken up the torch. For example, Edward Baptist, in his work The Half Has Never Been Told, is extremely conscious in the language he uses to describe the institution of slavery. Most vividly, rather than using the term plantation he used the term “slave labor camp.” Public historians must follow suit. And while such a shift may produce embarrassment or anger in white audiences, we may help them to understand that those feelings are what African Americans have had to deal with for centuries. In doing so, we remove the rose-colored glasses, promote a more accurate understanding of history, and enable the African American community to reclaim a significant part of their history and themselves.
Second, Butler herself connects this conversation with the public debate over monuments and their history. It would seem that on some subconscious level, people understand that the Lost Cause Myth stems much further than the physical space those monuments inhabit. While the opinions of what must be done with those monuments vary, promoting discussion has permitted the public to consider what they actually stand for and how they affect others around them.
Conclusion
My point is this: just as violence and spatial projects have helped to further such thinking, so too does the continual use of specific imagery and language. It all maintains a system of dispossession, oppression, and exploitation.[11] It is clear that many of the individuals who used the term “plantation” to evoke such emotion did not identify the damage being done, and I would not expect them to. This is a myth that has been inculcated for a century and a half. I do not believe these individuals knowingly participate in the destruction of history, and the destruction of lives, but that is why I write this article and why I appeal to my comrades in the field of public history. We have yet to fully acknowledge the extent to which the Lost Cause has been successful, and the myriad ways it exists within our culture. In acknowledging the vast reaches of Lost Cause Mythology, in replacing it with a more accurate picture of history and more accurate rhetoric, we enable the oppressed and the obscured to write themselves back into history and reclaim a piece of themselves.
A conversation between Professor of History Pysche Williams Forson and Dan Pashman during the podcast illustrates my point well.
Pashman: So professor, as I said, up until recently, the word plantation would have evoked that happy, idyllic image for me. How is it possible that I would have gone 40-ish years living in America without having any… without having that image challenge or questioned?
Professor Williams Forson: Now that’s a very interesting question. Who’s going to challenge it? What spaces were in you that that question, that image would have been a challenge? Did you grow up in African American communities? Did you grow up in African American communities of people who know these historical trends? Where would you have met that challenge? Would it have been in your primary or secondary school system where our textbooks tell us that slavery was really about workers?[12]
Thus, it is up to us to challenge the image and the legacy of the Lost Cause Mythology. To do so, it requires us first to acknowledge the many ways the Myth informs and dictates our present.
[1] Joel Heim, “Recounting a day of rage, hate, violence, and death.” The Washington Post, August 14, 2017. Accessed 10/20/2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/local/charlottesville-timeline/
[2] The Lost Cause has received a great deal of scholarly discussion. Entire volumes have been dedicated to the topic, and while I do not proclaim to be an expert in the field, there are several authors in which I point to that can be considered as such. They are; Rollin G. Osterweis, The Myth of the Lost Cause, 1865–1900 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1973); Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865–1913 (New York: Oxford, 1987); Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980); Thomas L. Connelly, The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society (New York: Knopf, 1977); Alan T. Nolan, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Richard D. Starnes, “Forever Faithful: The Southern Historical Society and Confederate Historical Memory,” Southern Cultures 2 (Winter 1996): 177–94; John A. Simpson, S. A. Cunningham and the Confederate Heritage (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994); Mark E. Neely Jr., Harold Holzer, and Gabor S. Boritt, The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); Jim Cullen, The Civil War in Popular Culture: A Reusable Past (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1995); Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Pantheon, 1998). For photographs of several hundred Confederate monuments, see Ralph W. Widener Jr., Confederate Monuments: Enduring Symbols of the South and the War between the States (Washington, D.C.: Andromeda Associates, 1982).
[3] Gray W Gallagher, The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, (Indiana University Press, 2000.), pg. 1.
[4] Gray W Gallagher, The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, (Indiana University Press, 2000.), pg 3.
[5] Abbey Clukey, “Facing the legacy of Paul Goodloe McIntire,” The Cavalier Daily, November 16, 2017. Accessed October 20, 2019, https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2017/11/facing-the-legacy-of-paul-goodloe-mcintire
[6] The Associated Press “Columbus Statues Vandalized on US Holiday Named for Him” The New York Times, October 14, 2019; The Associated Press, “Sons of Confederate Veterans Can’t Appeal Statues Removal,” The New York Times, October 16, 2019; Julia Jacobs, “Their Land Became Part of Central Park. They’re Coming Back in a Monument,” The New York Times, October 21, 2019.
[7] Ngofeen Mputubwele, “When White People Say Plantation,” transcript, The Sporkful with Dan Pashman, October 14, 2019, accessed October 29, 2019. http://www.sporkful.com/when-white-people-say-plantation-pt-1/
[8] Ibid.
[9] W. Stuart Towns, Enduring Legacy: Rhetoric and Ritual of the Lost Cause, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012), pg. xi.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Stephen McFarland et al. “Take Em Down Hillsborough!: Race, Space, and the 2017 Struggle Over Confederate Iconography in Neoliberal Tampa,” Southern Geographer, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 172–195.
[12] Ngofeen Mputubwele, “When White People Say Plantation,” transcript, The Sporkful with Dan Pashman, October 14, 2019, accessed October 29, 2019. http://www.sporkful.com/when-white-people-say-plantation-pt-1/
