Analysis: The Lost Cause Movement

The Lost Cause is the name given to the reconciliation of the Southern white society in Confederate states after the Civil War. The Lost Cause was a movement led by White Southerners in an attempt to restore their society in the harsh Reconstruction era. The movement affected America not only emotionally, but politically as well. Limitations and challenges that the Lost Cause movement faced were numerous and overpowering, which tell people why the Reconstruction era was so difficult. Some Lost Cause advocates argue that the Lost Cause was not political at all, which is not entirely true. The Lost Cause was more political than anything else. The fact that the “lost causers” desired a white supremacist hierarchy was political. Susie King Taylor,
However, it seems that the UDC did not fairly recognize each veteran. According to an anonymous veteran that attended a veteran’s reunion, the former officers were recognized for their duties in war but the privates, the veterans who did the real fighting, were made to “stand around on the street, or sit on the curbstone”. This was not fair to veterans who deserved a tribute just as much if not more than the other,higher ranked veterans. It’s clear that status was a big controversy and status determined the treatment the person received. If the person is of a lower class that works hard to earn a living and support a family, they receive poor treatment from the supremacists. If a person is a high ranked official, they are going to be treated highly. The fact that a monument of Robert E. Lee was put on a stamp shows just how highly southerners put their beloved officials, but not any others.
All of the challenged that arose during the Reconstruction period tell us that the Reconstruction era was anything but easy. Freedmen and freedwomen were still living in poverty and their rights were diminishing. Southerners had only won over the nation because of violence, such as the Ku Klux Klan and other intimidating white supremacy groups. The legacies of Reconstruction are just as they seem and these challenges prove the hardships people faced even when it was supposed to be a period of fixing what was