The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the Nor Hardcover – 5 October 2015

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These are dark days indeed for adherents of the old Confederacy’s legacy: Their flag is denigrated and banned from display, their monuments defiled, even the relics of their heroes are disinterred and removed from public grounds. This timely new book from noted historian and lecturer Ed Bonekemper will only add to their plight. 'The Myth Of The Lost Cause' strikes directly at the deeply flawed arguments advancing noble motives for the Civil War south and the Confederacy.A casual student of American history has always been perplexed by the seeming imperishability of patently fallacious arguments defending the south and its defeat. Encountering these landmines time after time in otherwise academically rigorous works, one is left with the impression that there has been, for over a century, an alternate history conspiracy along the lines of Turtledove’s 'Guns Of The South'.Well, it turns out that there really is an alternate history, albeit without AK-47 rifles. In a carefully researched, persuasively written and thoroughly documented narrative, Mr. Bonekemper outlines creation of the lost cause myth, from the writings of actual participants in the war, through early and mid 20th Century authors such as biographer Douglas Southall Freeman, to works as recent as the massive three volume history by Shelby Foote.Mr. Bonekemper takes on directly the several fallacies of the Lost Cause arguments. The first third of the book is devoted to an unassailable refutation of the most heinous of these, the argument for some cause other than slavery for the Civil War. These ninety or so pages are alone worth the price of the book. The first six pages of Bonekemper’s concluding chapter wrap up the slavery subject as neatly as has ever been done. Not since James McPherson’s article on the same topic in the now-defunct North and South Magazine has there been a summary of this issue as succinct and concise.Countering the myth's supporting dogmas, Mr. Bonekemper develops themes first advanced in his several previous books. He asserts convincingly once again that Robert E. Lee really did lose the Civil War for the Confederacy by wasting precious manpower on an offensive strategy and aggressive tactics, and by appropriating Confederate resources for his own operations at the expense of other theaters. And Grant was no butcher, says Bonekemper, because, among other reasons, he had fifty thousand fewer casualties than Lee despite having twice Lee’s total numbers. Longstreet likewise was no traitor, because it was he, after all, who wanted to make the flanking maneuver at Gettysburg where Lee insisted on a fatal direct assault. Finally, after dismissing several other arguments, Mr. Bonekemper hypothesizes that a Confederate defensive strategy might have resulted in at least a stalemate, thus achieving secession states’ objectives – territorial integrity, independence and foreign recognition. In this realm of “what ifs” it's a valid proposition, but good faith opinion might differ.Having a handsome dust jacket, beautifully bound and printed, extensively footnoted and with full bibliography, this book belongs on every Civil War student’s bookshelf.

It seems inconceivable that the Civil War, after extracting an unimaginable toll of suffering and death, did not at least exorcise the original sin of slavery and prejudice that still undermines American democracy. But after the war, the South continued its abuse of black citizens with renewed vigor, for example, inventing a new, industrial version of slavery by entrapping thousands of blacks accused of petty crimes into servitude in mines and factories. It’s chillingly documented by Douglas A. Blackmon, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Slavery by Another Name.” And of course, the postwar South engineered an apartheid society, enforced by a warped legal system, as well as by lynchings and other terror tactics used by the Ku Klux Klan and others. For a taste of the century of violence and cruelty that followed General Lee’s surrender to General Grant at Appomattox, read Gilbert King’s “Devil in the Grove,” about four black men persecuted by a murderous Florida sheriff for a rape that never happened. Now, historian Edward H. Bonekemper III chronicles another perverse response to the end of the war that’s perhaps more subtle than segregation, but still was crucial to its establishment and to the legacy of racial divide that confounds us today. In “The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won,” Bonekemper describes how southern apologists concocted a distorted version of history that ennobled the Confederacy and hid the war’s ugly origins. Notably, the myth worked to extinguish slavery as the core motive, replacing it with a seemingly higher-minded cause – a crusade to preserve states’ rights. It’s a fabrication that Bonekemper dismantles with convincing, sometimes disturbing, evidence.* * * Still, the whitewash has been remarkably successful in softening our collective memory. Consider, as Bonekemper suggests, “Gone With the Wind,” one of America’s enduring classic movies, with its sympathetic portrayal of the Confederacy. One of the ironies of this mythmaking is its upending of the cliché that says that a war's victors get to tell its history. “To the contrary,” Bonekemper writes, “a coterie of disappointed Southerners, aided by many other ‘conveniently forgetful’ and ‘purposely misleading’ comrades, spent three decades after the Civil War recreating the Myth of the Lost Cause.” The results, Bonekemper says, “is a collection of fictions, lies and component myths that purport to explain why much of the South seceded from the Union and why the Confederacy lost the Civil War.” This is Bonekemper’s sixth book about the Civil War. The first five also are myth-busters, dispelling common impressions of the war and its leaders with contrarian titles like “How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War,” and “A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant’s Overlooked Military Genius.” The earlier books plunge deeply into the weeds of Civil War battles and strategy, details vigorously debated by Civil War buffs and academicians. Bonekemper himself is the book review editor of “Civil War News,” a monthly newspaper. But in the prologue to this latest book, Bonekemper widens the scope: “This is a book I have felt compelled to write for a number of years as I encountered too many people with mistaken impressions about the Civil War.”* * * He marshals the case against the myths with the zeal of prosecutor, who seems personally and professionally offended by the suspect historians, methodically listing a seven-count indictment, then laying out the overwhelming evidence for each charge. In truth, Bonekemper is a lawyer by trade. After graduating from Yale law school, he represented federal agencies that regulated strip mining of coal and transportation of hazardous materials. The myths of the book’s title include the assertion that slavery was a benevolent “institution” benefiting both blacks and whites, but which nevertheless was on the wane. A related myth portrayed the Confederacy as a victim of the North’s superior numbers, so that the valiant losers shouldn’t be faulted for the outcome. Other myths complained about the Union’s “total war” tactics; another venerated General Robert E. Lee as a military wizard, in contrast to the Union’s thuggish general, Ulysses S. Grant, whose success depended on the North’s superior resources. But the compelling centerpiece of the book is its focus on the Confederacy’s motive for secession. Bonekemper first deals the fairy tale that slavery was a benefit to oppressor and oppressed alike. Here’s how Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate states, described slavery’s paradise: Slaves “were trained in the gentle arts of peace and order and civilization; they increased from a few unprofitable savages to millions of efficient Christian laborers. Their servile instincts rendered them contented with their lot.” Bonekemper counters by describing the brutal reality: slaves working 18 hours every day of the week, with minimal food and poor housing. Slaves were governed by state codes that required obedience to their masters, forbade reading and writing and limited church-going. Rules were enforced by whips and other instruments of torture. One owner slashed the feet of disobedient slaves with a knife; another hitched a man to a plow, which the slave pulled until he dropped dead. Black women were raped. Families were dispersed when their members were sold at slaves markets like one in New Orleans, where prices for a “prime field hand” ranged from $600 to $1,800. A “virtual police state” headed off slave revolts.* * * The most convincing testimony dispelling the postwar myth that defense of states’ rights, not slavery, drove the secession movement comes from the speeches and documents from the time that advocates were making their case. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world,” Mississippi officials wrote, saying that cotton and other slave-generated “products” were key to a world economy. “These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions,” the declaration said. “And by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear the exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.” As for states’ rights, what actually bothered the South were laws passed by northern states to impede return of escaped slaves. The complaint was that the United States federal government failed to override the actions of northern states. What’s more, when the Confederacy created its own constitution, one provision decreed that no law “impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.” As you can see by now, among the most shocking elements of the book is the blatantly racist language used by advocates of secession A Mississippi judge, William L. Harris, dispatched to persuade the Georgia legislature to join the movement, argued that the North was now rejecting the endorsement of slavery by the founding leaders of the United States. “Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.” Henry Lewis Benning of Georgia, in recruiting Virginians, predicted dire results if slavery were abolished: “By the time the North shall have attained the power [to end slavery], the black race will be in a large majority and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything.” The North would invade the South to end slavery, Benning warned: “We will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth, and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination.” Bonekemper marshals many other arguments against the myth, including data that show a correlation between the percentage of slaves in a state’s population and the likelihood the state would secede. For example, the first state to leave the Union was South Carolina, whose 402,406 slaves made up 57 percent of its population.* * * If I have any criticism with Bonekemper’s arguments that southern mythmakers were chiefly responsible for confusing our later views about the origins of the war, it’s that he leaves out the role of President Abraham Lincoln. As the war began, Lincoln said his goal was to preserve the Union, thereby making slavery a secondary issue. The president’s approach may have been politically astute in taking the nation into what would be a terrifying conflict. But he nonetheless helped cloud history’s appreciation for the central role that Bonekemper convincingly argues was played by slavery. Still, “The Myth of the Lost Cause” is a masterful, if disturbing foundation for understanding how racial issues are deeply embedded in our history, enduring to distort and impair the politics and culture of present day America.

A well written and well-researched book that effectively debunks many of the 'Lost Cause' legends that surround the Civil War. Bonekemper is especially effective at revealing the true cause of Succession - undeniably, slavery - using extensive quotes taken from emissaries, ambassadors, and even Succession document themselves. Allowing the actors to speak for themselves through these quotes is devastating to the legend of State's Rights as the primary motivator of the conflict. The book loses focus as it transitions to some of the secondary arguments. The author presents solid evidence of Grant as a skilled and determined leader, but his efforts to discredit Lee come off as forced. He relies heavily on casualty tables and differentials to bolster his arguments, but the numbers are often dubious and their interpretation disingenuous. Curiously, his own narrative sometimes fails to synch with these data tables. The criticism of Lee's tactics draws heavily from McWhitney & Jamison's Attack and Die, a statistical analysis of casualty rates that argued that the South's best and only chance was to fight a purely defensive war. Bonekemper falls into the same trap of breaking down battles and casualties in the manner that one would the play-calling in a football game, ignoring entirely the immense pressure and stress that affect military decision-making. Lee's successes in the first half of the war are due more to his moral domination of his opponents than to his handling of troops, a fact that cannot be reflected on a table or graph. It wasn't statistics that froze Hooker when he emerged from the Wilderness - it was the fear of Lee's aggressiveness. Grant had this same mastery over the Confederate generals in the West, as the Vicksburg campaign clearly illustrated. Bonekemper even engages in second-guessing basic tactical moves, such as the decision to attack 'en echelon' on the second day at Gettysburg. Bonekemper correctly points out some of the other flaws in Lee's leadership - most notably his inadequate staff and his troubling habit of launching frontal attacks on prepared positions. Gettysburg was certainly Lee's worst battle, and the book rightly holds him accountable for his failure there, but the portrayal of Lee as ineffective rings false. Overall, it's a good thesis and a good read.

The author presents a strong case, based on other sources, that the ideas contained in what is generally referred to as the "Lost Cause" are largely a myth - ones that have been propagated for more than 100 years and are in great need of being challenged. About 30% of the book is devoted to countering the myth that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War. This myth is perhaps the most important and most clearly refuted. The author, Edward Bonekemper, challenges it on several grounds. He presents the documents written by 6 of the initial 7 states that seceded, which clearly explain that their need to defend the idea of slavery was the reason why they seceded. The seventh state, Louisiana, did not state any reason for secession. These seven states sent representatives to the other slave states urging them to secede in order to defend slavery. Bonekmeper cites newspaper editorials, speeches and a huge amount of other material in defense of the idea that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, and that the idea that it was due to a southern defense of States Rights is meant to obfuscate the fact that the right in question was the right to own slaves. One new wrinkle, and something I learned from the book, is that while the southern states were defending the idea of States Rights, they were also arguing that the federal government was not doing enough to enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws, in opposition to the northern states that were not complying with them, i.e., employing their own versions of States Rights.The book also deals with other myths, such as the fact that Lee was the greatest Civil War general, whereas Grant was a "butcher", who only won because of the north's greater population and industrialization. Bonekemper cites the British military historians, who had no "skin in the game" so to speak, and who cite Grant's western campaigns as being on the caliber of Napoleon's, with Grant being the finest Civil War general - also citing many of Lee's deficiencies.If I had the ability to do so, I would have given the book 4.5-stars as Bonekemper is repetitive and often "beats a dead horse", belaboring his arguments. The book has extensive notes and an index, but no maps or photographs.