Lost Cause of The Confederacy - New South

New South

Historians have emphasized how the "Lost Cause" theme helped white Southerners adjust to their new status and move forward into what was called "the New South." Hillyer argues that the Confederate Memorial Literary Society (CMLS), founded by elite white women in Richmond, Virginia, in the 1890s, exemplifies this solution. The CMLS founded the Confederate Museum to document and defend the Confederate cause and to recall the antebellum mores that the new South's business ethos was displacing. By focusing on military sacrifice, rather than grievances regarding the North, the Confederate Museum aided the process of sectional reconciliation according to Hillyer. By depicting slavery as benevolent, the museum's exhibits reinforced the notion that Jim Crow was a proper solution to racial tensions that had escalated during Reconstruction. Lastly by glorifying the common soldier and portraying the South as "solid," the museum promoted acceptance of industrial capitalism. Thus, the Confederate Museum both critiqued and eased the economic transformations of the New South, and enabled Richmond to reconcile its memory of the past with its hopes for the future, leaving the past behind as it developed new industrial and financial roles.