In 1865, it was clear to everyone that the dream of an independent Southern nation was not to be. While the people of Dixie eventually came to accept the verdict of the war, their dream of a cohesive South with a separate cultural identity did not die, and if anything, took on even greater importance in the post-war period. And fundamental to that dream was the idea of the "Lost Cause," in which the events of the recent past became the basis for the South to take on a religious and moral identity; an identity as a chosen people.

As we saw last time, Southern clerics had preached that their cause was a holy one. They had interpreted victories in battle as signs of God's blessing, and defeats as indications of God's wrath, the price of their moral failings. A recurring phrase in the Confederate lexicon was "baptism of blood." In his sermon preached on Nov. 21, 1860, before Lincoln's inauguration, the distinguished Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell called for secession even though "our path to victory may be through a baptism of blood." In 1862, as the war was becoming increasingly costly in terms of human life, Episcopal Bishop Stephen Elliot observed, "All nations which come into existence at this late period of the world must be born amid the storm of revolution and must win their way to a place in history through the baptism of blood." "A grand responsibility rests upon our young republic," said the Episcopal rector B.T. Lacy in 1863, "and a mighty work lies before it. Baptized in its infancy in blood, may it receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and be consecrated to its high and holy mission among the nations of the earth." This evocative and powerful imagery suggested the role of the war was to bring a redemption from past sins and a sanctification for the future, and it demonstrated just how far the "affirmation of Southern perfection" could be carried by those eager to create a regional identity.

Just as Southern clerics had played a key role in the development of the pro-slavery argument, they also played a major role in keeping morale alive during the war years. During the period of hostilities, revivals spread through the ranks of the Army of Northern Virginia as well as other Southern forces in the field. Many clergy enlisted as chaplains, and often fought beside their men. One Chaplain took pride in killing a Union Colonel, a major and four privates. Their leadership in the revivals in the ranks, and their willingness to share the experiences of battle made them potent figures and gave them great influence in the post-war period. Not surprisingly, they played a key role in restoring faith of people in the Southern cause during reconstruction.

At the end of the Civil War, Southerners tried to come to terms with defeat through the development of what we now call the "Lost Cause." Having lost what they considered to be a Holy War, Southerners now had to face the attendant suffering, doubt, guilt, and death. The years 1865-1880 were ones of poverty, confusion, and disorganization in Southern life. Defeat and its consequences raised a traditional religious problem. How could the righteous man or cause be defeated when a just, omnipotent God ruled the universe? As one figure put it, "the faith of some good men in the justice of God has been shaken." Clergy now had to explain defeat in what they had claimed to be a holy war. One way they did so was to direct people's attention to what they hoped would be a joyful resurrection of Southern identity and culture.

In 1865, the mood was somber and dark. There was great fear that Southern civilization, and all its glory would be lost for all time. Mary Jones--a Presbyterian minister's wife--wrote in her Journal: "Clouds and darkness are round about us; the hand of the Almighty is laid in sore judgement upon us; we are a deserted and smitten people." A similar despondency was voiced by a religious periodical of the period. "The victory over Southern arms is to be followed by a victory over Southern opinions," wrote the Christian Index of Macon, Georgia.

The South Strikes Back

In the midst of the gloom that pervaded the South, there were those who called for resistance to what they deemed the corrupt and heathen Yankees who had triumphed over a righteous South. The more extreme proponents of resistance elected to go into exile rather than suffer the indignity of Yankee rule. In 1865, over 10,000 former Confederates left the defeated South to found colonies in Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela. But others sought to take a different strategy of resistance: they sought to win in a war of ideas the separate identity what they had failed to achieve by on the battlefield by force of arms.

Many Southerners considered their society to be God's most favored, a Southern Israel. For the South to rise again, they concluded, its citizens would have to recommit themselves to their faith, and make their churches the purest anywhere. Having fought a crusade against the atheistic North, now they must keep the faith because eventually the region would triumph as had the Israelites of long ago. Instead of giving up the struggle for an independent Southern identity, they renewed their commitment and dedication to the Cause.

One expression of this effort was the campaign by Southern churches after the war to extend a pervasive puritanical moral code throughout the region. The South's defeat was attributed to a pervasive materialism. Attacking materialism with all the fervor of the pre-war evangelicals (see Oakes), the leadership of Southern denominations agitated for moral reforms while they carefully avoiding any involvement in such social issues as the rights of labor, the poor and blacks.

And so it was that the evangelical consensus that had existed before the war continued in the years thereafter. "On such concepts as heaven and hell, God and Satan, depravity, and redemption, there was little dispute...few Southerners doubted the literal authenticity of the Scriptures or the ever presence of God in man's affairs." Almost without missing a beat, Southern Christians continued to be as supportive of the values and culture of region in the post-war period as they had been in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

The Religion of The Lost Cause

The Religion of the Lost Cause was an effort to create a Southern Zion where the true faith would be preserved. (In that, they had something in common with the Mormons.) The ministers who were practitioners of this faith saw little difference between religious and cultural values. "Southern" and "Christian" came to be seen as one and the same. The religion that resulted was interesting mixture of Southern nationalism and evangelicalism, and most resembled a revivalistic movement whose aim was to restore a golden age that was believed to have existed in the society's past. This Southern Civil Religion set out to reconstruct a society that would be virtue incarnate. While the South would ultimately fail in this effort, Southerners were more than willing to give it a try.

Few persons were willing to admit to any substantive sin on the part of Southern society. Slavery as an institution had not been a sin, they argued, rather the South had been only been guilty of not caring enough for the spiritual and physical welfare of the slave, and for not giving proper recognition to slave marriages. The South's failure--if there had been one--was not to fully realize their religious duties.

Even here, though--as Charles Regan Wilson points out--the war was not really a case of divine displeasure, rather it was a case of divine chastisement. Rather than the outcome of the war being a case of might makes right, it had been God's chastisement of those whom he loved. The idea that the outcome of the war had represented a verdict on the rightness of the respective causes was, according to Episcopal Bishop J.P.B. Wilmer, an "absurd doctrine." James McNeilly (a Presbyterian) insisted that the Old Testament is filled with accounts of God's chosen people led into captivity by heathen conquerors, "but that fact did not prove the heathen to be right in the cause, nor that the Israelites were upholding a bad cause." Confederates who had "poured their blood like festal wine, a libation to liberty," were not necessarily wrong in fighting the war since questions of right and wrong before God are not settled by success or defeat of arms." God, he allowed, was simply testing the South to see if it would forsake the truth because of its defeat. The region's suffering was simply a means to a greater faith. God was in the process of working out a plan that most could not see. Even now, the South was being led through the wilderness toward the promised land. They were marching to Zion, to the promised land of Southern perfection.

Ceremonies and Saints of the Lost Cause

In the universe of the Religion of the Lost Cause, Richmond became the Eternal City. As the Capital of the former Confederacy, it came to play host to large gatherings of Confederate Veterans. It was as Wilson puts it, a "soldier's Mecca," and it came to be filled with statues of Confederate heros. When the statue of Stonewall Jackson was dedicated in October, 1875, the dead leaves that fell were said to be "nature's tribute to the lost hero." As Civil War flags flew once again, the gospel of the Lost Cause was proclaimed: Jackson died "fighting a war for civil and religious freedom." Wilson quotes a reporter who described the statue: "It was thirty two feet high and sixteen wide...on the west side of the arch was inscribed in large letters "Warrior, Christian, Patriot." Just above this was a painting representing a stone wall upon which was resting a bare sabre, a Bible and a confederate cap, with the angel of peace ascending, pointing heavenward, and on the pinnacle of the arch, just above this was a pennant bearing the cross, as the emblem of Christianity...". This mixing of Confederate and Christian images and symbols came to be characteristic of the Religion of the Lost Cause.

The dedication of Jackson's shrine also marked the beginnings of the South's obsession with monument making. The effort to erect memorials to fallen Confederates reached its peak between the years of 1890-1910. By 1914, over a thousand such memorials had been built. Richmond was filled with these monuments, and Monument Blvd. became holy ground for the Religion of the Lost Cause. There one can find graveyards for the sainted Confederate dead, including 3,000 from Gettysburg, as well as monuments to J.E.B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, R.E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. When this shrine to the Confederacy was dedicated, 200,000 persons were in attendance.

In many ways these monuments were like idols or icons of the saints and martyrs to the Cause. Robert E. Lee was one such figure. He was seen as one of the greatest men produced by Southern civilization. Although Lee in real life was not an extremely religious man, and when he did join a church it was the Episcopal, the popular image of him was of a man who shared a deep religion faith, a high moral character, and an amazing ability to overcome adversity. Wilson quotes one writer who described him this way: "his uprightness as a boy, his purity...his large heartedness under all conditions, his sympathy and tenderness for the weak and oppressed--even dumb animals--his great feats of physical and moral courage...his ability to resist temptation, his calmness and self-possession, and his reverence for all things holy--a symbol of the highest type of manhood and womanhood to which the world has ever attained." (Doesn't this sound like a Sunday School lesson on Jesus as a boy?) One minister even allowed that Lee had been pure enough to found a religion. Nor was he alone in that sentiment. Lee's birthday, January 19, became a holiday throughout the South.

Another martyr to the Cause was Jefferson Davis who was forced--like the Apostle Paul--to set in prison in chains with his Bible before him. Davis rivaled Lee as a Christian saint, and it was said that his life was modeled after the man from Galilee. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was yet another of the saints, one portrayed in the Religion of the Lost Cause as a stern Old Testament prophet.

Part of the mythology of the Lost Cause was that these men were the highest products of the highest civilization that had ever existed. During the war they had battled the forces of Evil symbolized by the Yankees. The North was painted as a marauding monster, chaotic and unrestrained, out to destroy the pristine, orderly, godly Southern civilization. Sherman's acts in the late stages of the war were painted as deeds of darkness and damning atrocity.

Nor did the South give up the pro-slavery argument based on scripture in the post-war period. Slavery was gone, but its overthrow could not have been orchestrated by the God who ordained it in scripture. The abolition of slavery was in fact the work of Satan. He had defeated South, and his ally in this was Northern radicalism, which the South labeled a "pestilent heresy" that threatened real Christianity. The North became demonized for having replaced rule of God's Word with the rule of might. This godless enemy was contrasted with the Confederate army which had been a place where thousands had become Christian.

The myth even went so far as to re-enact the story of Christ's suffering and death, with the Confederacy playing the leading role. Wilson shares the story of Father Abraham Ryan who was said to have been standing before a portrait of the death of Christ when he asked his young niece if she knew who the evil men were who had crucified her Lord. Instantly, she replied, "O Yes I know...the Yankees." The Mississippi minister George C. Harris wrote in a sermon: that while the Confederates, like all men, had been sinners, those sins were washed away under the baptism of blood." "Greater love hath no man than this," he added, "that a man lay down his life for his friends." At veteran rallies Confederate soldiers were reminded of "your Gethsemane" and "the agonies of your Golgotha."

This iconography was also played out in the stained glass windows of churches, as Wilson points out. Trinity Church, Portsmouth Va. had a window in which the Biblical Rachel is seen weeping at a tomb on which appeared the names of the members of the congregation who died in the war. As I mentioned last time, R.E. Lee's statue stands among the saints at Duke Chapel.

Wartime artifacts took on a sacred character. The Bible that was used at Jefferson Davis' inauguration was kept under lock and key by United Daughters of the Confederacy. Museums became sanctuaries containing sacred relics. The Confederate White House became a Confederate Museum. (Today, the Museum of the Confederacy stands beside it.)

Nor was the Religion of the Lost Cause without its hymns. "How Firm a Foundation" was sung at Stonewall Jackson's funeral and every funeral of his family. It would become the official hymn of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Another hymn sung to the tune of "That Old Time Religion" was "We are Old-Time Confederates." In certain cases, new verses were added to old hymns. One such addition to "When the Roll is called up Yonder" was "on that mist-less, lonely morning when the saved of Christ shall rise/In the Father's many-mansioned home to share/Where our Lee and Jackson call us to their homes beyond the skies/When the roll is called up yonder I'll be there." Other hymns were entirely new. "Let Us Pass Over the River, and Rest Under the Shade of the Trees" became a popular hymn of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and took as its text the last words of Stonewall Jackson.

Not surprisingly, the South chose to ignore national holidays like Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and The Fourth of July. Instead, it had its own holidays such as Confederate Memorial Day, and Lee's Birthday.

Some Concluding Observations

As Southerners viewed their immediate history, the concluded that the Confederacy had been defeated just as Christ had been crucified. As a result, they also held out hope for a spiritual resurrection. The rituals of the Lost Cause were an effort to show that the sacrifices that had been made had not been in vain. Lee and his soldiers were seen as aristocrats of suffering and sorrow, an image that blends the portrait of Jesus with the old South planter.

The intimate link between the South's faith and the Lost Cause can be seen in Wilson's discussion of the 1897 reunion of Confederate veterans. They met in what would later be known as the Ryman Auditorium, the first home of Grand Ole Opry. Church pews and an altar were installed for this gathering, and the Parthenon in Nashville was dedicated. The invocations used the Trinitarian formula of "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." There was no concern about offending Jews, because there were few in the South. These gatherings became evangelistic services, and when the invitation was extended to follow Christ it was clear that it was also an invitation to follow R.E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis once again.

Perhaps one of the more surprising aspects of the Religion of the Lost Cause is the prominent role played by Episcopalians. The Confederate Army's leadership been laced with Episcopalians such as Lee, Leonidas Polk, William Hardee, John B. Hood, and Joseph E. Johnston, and many of the principle preachers of the Lost Cause also were Episcopalian.

Proponents of the Religion of the Lost Cause knew they were creating myths. They compared their heros of the Lost Cause to the heros found in the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and to the heros of ancient Greece. But such comparisons were not seen as entirely accurate. Southern heros, it was widely believed, could not be matched by the likes of Agamemnon, Achilles, Ulysses, and Ajax.

It was this emerging mythology, however, that was the most significant aspect (and the most damaging dimension) of the Religion of the Lost Cause. Like the noble knights of myth, the Confederate soldier came to be seen as fighting for the sexual purity of fair damsels. Quite often, proponents of the Religion of the Lost Cause often referred to the "virgin whiteness of South." To those who used such language, the important effect of the Southern defeat at Appomattox was the unshackling of black men to lust after "the Paradise tree of the forbidden fruit--the white women beyond their reach." Thus it is not surprising that Rebecca Felton, the first woman U.S. Senator, praised Confederates for shielding "innocence and virtue from rape and ruin." Such sentiments, while the were increasingly common in the Religion of the Lost Cause, became the "theological" justification for the orgy of lynching that would sweep the region in the last decades of the nineteenth century.