In 2023, the Department of Defense removed the Confederate monument from Arlington National Cemetery. Inscribed on the monument are the words “Vitrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton.” It translates to, “The victorious cause was pleasing to the gods, but the lost cause to Cato.” Cato was the defender of the old Roman Republic against Julius Cesar and the new Empire. Cato killed himself rather than watch the Republic die. By the time the memorial went up in 1914, Confederate partisans had been pledging their allegiance to the “Lost Cause” for nearly half-a-century.
Use of the term “Lost Cause” was not invented by modern Critical Race Theory academics in elite universities. It was so common by the early 20th Century that the United Daughters of the Confederacy put the term on its most iconic monument.
I have seen the term “Lost Cause” used in newspaper articles sympathetic to the Confederacy published during the 1860s, and seen pro-Union authors denouncing white Southerners devotion to the “Lost Cause” soon thereafter. In 1866, Edward A. Pollard of the Richmond Examiner published one of the first histories of the Confederacy entitled The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates.
The widespread use of the term “Lost Cause” by the members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was commented on by the 1905 Register of Kentucky State Historical Society which said: “The silent victory of the Lost Cause-lost, though yet living in the warm hearts of the Southland…” The author does not even explain what the “Lost Cause” is, since its meaning was so well known in the South. The fact that both “Lost” and “Cause” are nearly universally capitalized tells you something about how common this phase was!
The term the “Lost Cause” was used in Southern newspapers beginning soon after the surrender of the Lee’s army. Soon thereafter it was used by newspapermen and others commenting the South. In the November 20, 1867 issue of the Evansville Journal from Indiana the paper comments on General Sherman saying that Southern gentleman should not boast of their “Lost Cause.”
In an August 16, 1868 article the Carson Daily Appeal quotes the Mobile Tribune as saying “we shall regain all that we lost in the Lost Cause.”
In September, 14, 1871 the Sweetwater Enterprise headlines an article “The Lost Cause” saying that rumors that Southerners want to set up another Confederacy are a myth.
The Mineral Point Tribune was critical of the use of the term by Confederate partisans in this May 24, 1876 article:
The Weekly Echo, a newspaper from Louisiana, said in its June 6, 1868 edition that Southerners must cherish its Lost Cause heroes:
The Anderson Intelligencer of South Carolina November 14, 1872 published:
The Tarborough Southerner from North Carolina had this praise for Jefferson Davis in its June 4, 1875 issue:
As you can see, during Reconstruction the term “Lost Cause” was frequently used both by adherents to, and critics of, the Confederacy. This was not something that was invented in the 21st Century, it was already in widespread use in the 1860s and 1870s.
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Exactly. I have seen the term ‘Lost Cause’ used to put a description of the war history of the Confederacy as early as April, 1865, in now-Canadian newspapers, and same very soon after in months to follow that same year in New Zealand and Australia.
‘The Lost Cause’ became the name of a thesis and particular historiography of the war that was popularised with the publication of the works of Edward Pollard and Jubal Early.
Hi Patrick. Another excellent article.
Pollards LOST CAUSE tome has a copyright 1867.
Alan Smolinski.