Tonight I received an angry email from a rather disturbed reader, who took offense to my recent posting about the widening gap between academic and amateur historians. After calling me a bible-thumping hack (thank you by the way), he also accused me of being a “Lost Causer.” I have always been a little confused about people’s interpretations of that term so I did a quick Google search and came up with Wikipedia’s definition which is as follows:

The “Lost Cause” is the name commonly given to a literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditional white society of the Southern United States to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the Civil War of 1861–1865. Those who contributed to the movement tended to portray the Confederacy's cause as noble and most of the Confederacy's leaders as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry, defeated by the Union armies not through superior military skill, but by overwhelming force, and tended to condemn Reconstruction. Some of the main tenets of the Lost Cause movement were that:

1. Confederate generals such as Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson represented the virtues of Southern nobility, as opposed to most Northern generals, who were characterized as possessing low moral standards, and who subjected the Southern civilian population to such indignities as Sherman's March to the Sea and Philip Sheridan's burning of the Shenandoah Valley in the Valley Campaigns of 1864.

2. Losses on the battlefield were inevitable due to Northern superiority in resources and manpower. Losses were also the result of betrayal and incompetence on the part of certain subordinates of General Lee. (The Lost Cause focused mainly on Lee and the eastern theater of operations.)

3. Defense of states' rights, rather than preservation of chattel slavery, was the primary cause that led eleven Southern states to secede from the Union, thus precipitating the war. Secession was a justifiable constitutional response to Northern cultural and economic aggressions against the Southern way of life.

After reading these qualifications I must say that I am apparently guilty as charged. BTW: None of these tenets are necessarily bad things and the majority of these beliefs albeit bias, are not that far off base. It also does not mean that one cannot have a strong affection for the Southern Confederacy’s perspective and still respect their northern counterparts. I do.

This reminds me that April is Confederate History Month. Don’t forget to acknowledge the courage and sacrifice of the boys in gray. They deserve to be remembered too. And to the gentleman that took the time to email me with his displeasure. Thank you Sir. I value your patronage of my blog and I hope that you will come again. I may be, as you say a Lost Causer, but I am also appreciative of your opinion and feedback.