History isn't always written by the winners...
Twenty-first-century controversies over Confederate monuments attest to
the enduring significance of our nineteenth-century Civil War. As
Lincoln knew, the meaning of America itself depends on how we understand
that fratricidal struggle.
As soon as the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms at
Appomattox, a group of Confederate officers took up their pens to
refight the war for the history books. They composed a new
narrative--the Myth of the Lost Cause--seeking to ennoble the sacrifice
and defeat of the South, which popular historians in the twentieth
century would perpetuate. Unfortunately, that myth would distort the
historical imagination of Americans, north and south, for 150 years.
In this balanced and compelling correction of the historical record,
Edward Bonekemper helps us understand the Myth of the Lost Cause and its
effect on the social and political controversies that are still
important to all Americans.