The Richmond mansion that was Jefferson Davis’s residence when he was President of the Confederacy was a sacred shrine after the war to the “Lost Cause.” The Confederate Literary Society assembled the sacred relics of the Confederacy there in the 1890s and made it into a place of pilgrimage for the adults children of the veterans. Now, as part of the American Civil War Museum, it is sting an exhibition on the same ‘Lost Cause” that it was once a symbol of. According to Virginia Public Radio:
The new exhibit is in the basement of the White House of the Confederacy. It’s a building with a long history. Home to Jefferson Davis, then headquarters for Union forces after the War.
Beginning in the 1890’s the city gave the building to the women of the Confederate Literary Memorial Society. For a century, they used the space as a shrine.
Then, in the 1970’s a slow transition began – from shrine to museum. Stephanie Arduini is with the American Civil War Museum. They’ve operated the space since 2013.
“It really is a place where you can explore the Civil War in microcosm,” Arduini said during a recent press preview of the new exhibit.
Arduini adds that part their goal with the new exhibit is to help reach people whose lives were shaped by the Lost Cause.
“If your grandfather or a beloved teacher taught you a story that was shaped by the Lost Cause, intentionally or not, and now suddenly you’re finding out that that’s not the case…. that’s a scary thing,” Arduini said.
The exhibit and White House of the Confederacy, along with its sister site at the American Civil War Museum, aims to help people rebuild their framework. And that work is needed.
A PEW study from 2011 found that 48-percent of Americans still believe the Civil War was about state’s rights, despite broad consensus from historians to the contrary.
That misunderstanding is, in large part, because of the Lost Cause.
“Former Confederates shaped a narrative of the Civil War and their experiences and even though they lost the war in many ways they won — because they shaped the narrative,” explained Arduini.
That narrative is rooted in racial superiority. It argues the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, that Confederate soldiers were saintly, and that Emancipation was a mistake.
“That is not an accurate reading of history, and our understanding of the past is so much broader,” said curator Chris Graham. “Including the fact that understanding the Lost Cause is not just a set of claims about the past but an aspiration for the present and the future.”
In other words the Lost Cause not only propagated false history, it also laid the groundwork for the racial violence and suppression that dominated the American South in the early 20th century.
Under the Lost Cause narrative, the Ku Klux Klan are the good guys and society is better off when black people and white people lead separate lives.
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