The Lost Cause Ideology and its impact on Civil War history

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin (John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien), language: English, abstract: The paper will briefly outline the origin and ensuing development of the Lost Cause, its content, and its impact on America's collective memory. Subsequently, I will analyze the blockbuster “Cold Mountain” (2003) in search of remnants of this presumed discarded ideology – a movie based on the bestselling novel by Charles Frazier of the same title (which I will not neglect entirely) that drew considerable numbers of moviegoers into the theaters. Although at first view a love movie and thus designed for a particular audience, the Civil War nonetheless serves as the story's setting. Therefore, it is interesting to speculate what lessons this and other audiences – in terms of Civil War history and remembrance – might draw from “Cold Mountain”.

Over the previous decades, Civil War history came under scrutiny. Concurrently, revisionist historians and cultural scientists have hinted at the inherently problematic nature of the films in question and many more following over the first decades of the 20th century: These movies depict a blatantly distorted picture of that pivotal moment in American history; distorted by an incredibly tenacious and moreover distinctively racist Southern interpretation of the Civil War and its underlying reasons that emerged during the Reconstruction era and is commonly referred to as the Lost Cause.