The US Civil War has long attracted the notice of many historians. It is also still one of the most politically volatile topics. This is due in part to the prevalence of the concept of the “Lost Cause.” The name comes from the book The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, written by the journalist Edward Pollard and published in 1866.

Pollard established many of the common claims repeated by Lost Cause writers. These claims include that the horrors of enslavement were exaggerated and that enslavement as an institution would have died out anyway; that the Civil War was actually fought over the political issue of states’ rights; that the Union was the true aggressor; and that the sole reason the Confederacy lost was because of the superior economic power of the North. These claims are rejected by mainstream historians and were contested from the beginning. Nevertheless, the Lost Cause has been bolstered by the writings of former Confederates like Jefferson Davis and by later scholars and political activists.

The historical work of Charles A. and Mary Beard in the early 20th century seemed to support the Lost Cause thesis, at least to an extent.