The Lost Cause

The Lost Cause was instrumental in memorializing and preserving the honor of the South. Many Southern women such as Kate Mason Rowland had taken the initiative after the war to rebuild the South’s image after its defeat and the reconstruction that followed. To sell this image to both old and new generations alike, the creation of the Lost Cause was put forth. Caroline Elizabeth Janney-Lucas expertly describes the Lost Cause and how women were involved in If Not for the Ladies: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Making of the Lost Cause. The Lost Cause was a way for the South to remember their justifications for war in a fond and romanticized light, “Rather than forsaking the defeated Confederacy, they created and romanticized the "Old South" and the Confederate war effort, often factually and chronologically distorting the way in which the past would be remembered. This nostalgia for the past accompanied a collective forgetting of slavery while defining Reconstruction as a period of "Yankee aggression" and black "betrayal." The Lost Cause provided a sense of relief to white southerners who feared being dishonored by defeat, while its rituals and rhetoric celebrated the memory of personal sacrifice in a region rapidly experiencing change and disorder.”[1] It was on these ideas that the United Daughters of the Confederacy, known as the UDC, was created. Kate Mason Rowland subscribed to these ideas and being a member of the UDC meant that she contributed in her own way through writing and publishing works that were sympathetic to the Southern cause. This was most likely to help educate younger audiences and reaffirm what she thought was the truth. The UDC, according to Karen L. Cox, aimed to, “educate coming generations of white southerners about an idyllic Old South and a just cause—states’ rights. They did so not simply to pay homage to the Confederate dead. Rather, UDC members aspired to transform military defeat into a political and cultural victory, where states’ rights and white supremacy remained intact.”[2] Rowland, akin to many women in the UDC, was not silent by any means. She made sure that everyone would know about the Lost Cause and her tenacity in enforcing this line of thinking has certainly revealed her biases which are oftentimes, inappropriately placed within her works.

[1] Caroline Elizabeth Janney-Lucas, “If Not for the Ladies: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Making of the Lost Cause.” (Dissertation, 2005), 2.

[2] Karen L. Cox, Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2019), 1.