Jubal Early, the Lost Cause, and the Shaping of The Modern Historical Profession

O' Be Joyful

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5fish

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here are some thoughts...


The term “Lost Cause” is not a product of today’s historians; rather, it appears to have been coined by Edward A. Pollard, an influential wartime editor of the Richmond Examiner. In 1866 Pollard published The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, a justification of the Confederate war effort, prompting the popular use of the term.

snip...

In 1867, one of the first Lost Cause periodicals emerged, a new weekly Richmond newspaper called the Southern Opinion. Established only three months after the federal Reconstruction Act by the avowed secessionist H. Rives Pollard, brother of Edward A. Pollard and also a wartime editor of the Richmond Examiner, the paper’s expressed purpose was to foster a distinctive Southern culture.

snip...

In 1865 and 1866, Confederate women transformed their wartime soldiers’ aid associations into organizations bent on memorializing their Lost Cause. Claiming to be wives, mothers, and daughters in mourning, Southern white women of the Ladies’ Memorial Associations (LMAs) organized cemeteries for the more than 200,000 Confederate soldiers that remained in unidentified graves on the battlefields and established the annual tradition of Memorial Days—occasions on which thousands of ex-Confederates would gather publicly to eulogize their fallen soldiers and celebrate their failed cause. Relying on the mid-nineteenth-century assumption that women were naturally non-political, ex-Confederate men recognized that women might be best suited to take the lead in memorializing the Confederate cause.


AS we know it is now considered that it was Lee's General order No#9 that began the lost cause myth...

 

5fish

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Here is this... It seems he was first to market...


As long as Early was alive, one of his former soldiers wrote, “no man ever took up his pen to write a line about the great conflict without the fear of Jubal Early before his eyes.

snip...

Early advanced his view of the war in A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence (1866), the first such book by a leading general on either side; and Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War between the States, which was published posthumously in 1912.

snip...

"The Army of Northern Virginia was never defeated. It merely wore itself out whipping the enemy."
-
Jubal Early
 

jgoodguy

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Here is this... It seems he was first to market...


As long as Early was alive, one of his former soldiers wrote, “no man ever took up his pen to write a line about the great conflict without the fear of Jubal Early before his eyes.

snip...

Early advanced his view of the war in A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence (1866), the first such book by a leading general on either side; and Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War between the States, which was published posthumously in 1912.

snip...

"The Army of Northern Virginia was never defeated. It merely wore itself out whipping the enemy."
-
Jubal Early
Jubal was early.
 

5fish

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Here is the first Lost Cause novel. In 1869, Ives published The Princess of the Moon: A Confederate Fairy Story under the pen name "A Lady of Warrenton, Va". The person who wrote this novel was Cora Semmes Ives, the daughter of Raphael Semmes, famous for the CSS Alabama. @rittmeister , @jgoodguy , @O' Be Joyful , @Bilbobaggins

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The Book...

In 1869, Ives published The Princess of the Moon: A Confederate Fairy Story under the pen name "A Lady of Warrenton, Va". The novel tells the story of Randolph, a former Confederate soldier who is visited by the Fairy of the Moon. The Fairy provides Randolph a winged horse named Hope which transports him to the moon, a beautiful utopian society. Randolph undergoes a series of challenges to win the hand of the Princess of the Moon, but their wedding is interrupted by the appearance of Yankee carpetbaggers, invading the moon in hot air balloons, accompanied by Randolph's former slave.[5] The Fairy of the Moon summons dragons to drive off the Yankee balloonists, who drop the silverware they looted from Randolph's plantation as they flee. The Fairy bestows on Randolph a new Confederate uniform complete with a sword and he lives happily ever after with the Princess, while the carpetbaggers must resort to selling Central Park balloon rides to newlyweds

Wetta and Novelli write that "the story... is imperfectly imagined; the writing is awkward" but is "revealing" as a demonstration of the Lost Cause narrative: "The fairy tale as metaphor reveals the magic thinking that turned Southern military defeat into a moral victory – shifting the burden of history from the shoulders of the Southerners to the Northerners and the newly freed slaves".[5] In The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, John Clute notes the "equipoisal" nature of the novel freely mixing fantasy and science fiction elements and describes the moon utopia as "a purified vision of the antebellum South.


Here is the link to the Book.... You can read it....

 

LJMYERS

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Something Pittsburgh Movie Producer David O Selznick would know all about. He was an expert on Lourdes. ,
 

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5fish

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Here is an actual piece of work...


Edward Alfred Pollard (February 27, 1831 – December 17, 1872) was an American author, journalist, and Confederate sympathizer during the American Civil War who wrote several books on the causes and events of the war, notably The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (1866) and The Lost Cause Regained (1868),[1] wherein Pollard originated the long-standing pseudo-historical ideology of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.

Written after the war, these works advocated white supremacy, supported the relegation of blacks to second-class status, and accused the U.S. government of alleged excesses committed both during and after the war.[2] The books gave two different descriptions of the causes of the war and the nature of Southern society: The Lost Cause claimed the main reason for the war was the two opposing ways (largely slavery) of organizing society, and viewed slavery as key to the nobility of the South, while The Lost Cause Regained argued that the primary reason for secession was not slavery, but the preservation of state sovereignty.[3] The latter viewpoint reflects much of Pollard's post-1867 attempts to reconcile former pro-Confederacy ideas with new realities, patriotism, and free-labor unionism.


Here is a review of the book... The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (1866)


Pollard wrote that the North believed that “slavery [was] the leading cause of the distinctive civilization of the South, its higher sentimentalism, and its superior refinements of scholarship and manners.” The North, he argued, was jealous of the superior civilization of the South and so “revenged itself on the cause, diverted its envy in an attack upon slavery, and defamed the institution as the relic of barbarism and the sum of all villainies.” While Northerners defamed the “institution of slavery, no man can write its history without recognizing contributions and naming prominent results beyond the domain of controversy. It bestowed on the world’s commerce in a half-century a single product whose annual value was two hundred millions of dollars. It founded a system of industry by which labour and capital were identified in interest, and capital therefore [49] protected labour. It exhibited the picture of a land crowned with abundance, where starvation was unknown, where order was preserved by an unpaid police; and where many fertile regions accessible only to the labour of the African were brought into usefulness, and blessed the world with their productions.” Or so Pollard said.

The book is useful, however, in seeing how the Confederate pantheon was being constructed. The four best Confederate generals were Johnston, Forrest, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. All four are both brilliant and men of great character, in Pollard’s telling of the story. The Confederate soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia is also a collective genius. The Army of Tennessee, on the other hand, was a mess, largely because of Jeff Davis and his meddling, which both encouraged dissention and maintained incompetent officers in command. The one exception in the Army of Tennessee, according to Pollard, was Pat Cleburne whom he refers to as “The Stonewall of the West.” Apparently that sobriquet was well known enough that even a Richmonder knew it.


Here you can read the truth of the Lost Cause... slavery

 

LJMYERS

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Now here is a guy the Richmond Myers family was related to. This is the book on top of my book shelf. My great grandfather was Pittsburgh Riverboat Captain Daniel Pollard McIntyre of the McKeesport 63rd. The Pollards were said to be related to Meriwether Lewis. Just about everyone on the Lewis and Clark boat's family were Confederate. When you look at this stuff you must remember Richmond was the Capital of Pittsburgh at the time both Christopher Gist and The Widow Myers keep saving the life of George Washington in the greater Pittsburgh area. General Lafayette was close friends with Prince Father Demetrius Augustines Gallitzin 1770 to 1840 who was said to be the grandson of Catherine the Great of Russia. Maybe I will post pictures later. Although I will post this. Relatives meet here every year. I sat next to Mary O'Hara. It's well known Scarlett O'Hara lived here for a time.
 

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LJMYERS

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I have two books. One is the Silversmith Myer Myers book and his works. Then I have a book of artist Gilbert Stuart's notes on his subjects which include the overall Myers family of Silversmith Myer Myers. It seems everyone within 300 miles of NYC wanted nice silver including the Catholic Cardinals and Bishops. One of the Myers members was a secret British Ambassador to the US under Queen Victoria. Mostly because he was Jewish. I guess you might call him a British Spy during the Trent Affair.
 

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