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mattleesharp's review against another edition
3.0
Trying to understand the political decisions and cultural ethos of The South, you will always come up short without the dimension this book explores - the unique "civil religion" of The South. A racial or political history is only part of the story.
The Lost Cause is and always has been a movement preoccupied with mythologizing and absolving the fighting men of the Confederacy. It attempts to imbue their struggle with meaning and contradict the dominant narrative that these soldiers were traitors and complicit in systemic evil.
But The Lost Cause can also be understood in more explicitly religious terms. It's a cult. It's as interested in providing easy balms for wounded egos (how could the Civil War have been an evil war to preserve slavery when my grandaddy fought in it and he was a Good Christian Man?) as it is in deifying Confederate heroes. Its pettiness and insecurities are wrapped up in a mythology that sees losing the Civil War as a unique trial from God meant to forge a grand southern destiny. A Southern Identity separate from the American Identity.
It's total garbage. It's stubborn. And its tendrils have wrapped themselves around the modern Evangelical community. This book gives great commentaries and examples of how this civil religion (or... real talk... weaponized political religion) sought to undermine the Reconstruction process and promoted toxic feel-good political racism instead of creating a new more integrated stronger economy.
This book is about a necessary topic. And Wilson is an important scholar. But I don't think this is the book on the subject. Some of the evidence is thin. Some of the writing is a little too dense. I think the right book is soon to be written, but in the meantime, these ideas are at least worth getting acquainted with.
The Lost Cause is and always has been a movement preoccupied with mythologizing and absolving the fighting men of the Confederacy. It attempts to imbue their struggle with meaning and contradict the dominant narrative that these soldiers were traitors and complicit in systemic evil.
But The Lost Cause can also be understood in more explicitly religious terms. It's a cult. It's as interested in providing easy balms for wounded egos (how could the Civil War have been an evil war to preserve slavery when my grandaddy fought in it and he was a Good Christian Man?) as it is in deifying Confederate heroes. Its pettiness and insecurities are wrapped up in a mythology that sees losing the Civil War as a unique trial from God meant to forge a grand southern destiny. A Southern Identity separate from the American Identity.
It's total garbage. It's stubborn. And its tendrils have wrapped themselves around the modern Evangelical community. This book gives great commentaries and examples of how this civil religion (or... real talk... weaponized political religion) sought to undermine the Reconstruction process and promoted toxic feel-good political racism instead of creating a new more integrated stronger economy.
This book is about a necessary topic. And Wilson is an important scholar. But I don't think this is the book on the subject. Some of the evidence is thin. Some of the writing is a little too dense. I think the right book is soon to be written, but in the meantime, these ideas are at least worth getting acquainted with.
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