Talk:Lost Cause of the Confederacy

Frederick the Great

I saw a US Army declassified ad publicly available for free work which implied that had Lee led like Frederick and not like Napoleon the South may have won. It can be found through a Google search but can take awhile to find. 86.41.75.52 (talk) 20:06, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Jefferson Davis quotation

"[The] servile instincts [of slaves] rendered them contented with their lot, and their patient toil blessed the land of their abode with unmeasured riches. Their strong local and personal attachment secured faithful service ... never was there happier dependence of labor and capital on each other. The tempter came, like the serpent of Eden, and decoyed them with the majic word of 'freedom' ... He put arms in their hands, and trained their humble but emotional natures to deeds of violence and bloodshed, and sent them out to devastate their benefactors." – Jefferson Davis

The quotation appears under the Tenets section, cited from David Blight's Race and Reunion, and attributed to Davis' book, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. However, this quotation is does not appear in The Rise and Fall. The book is available from Project Gutenberg. A quick search will easily verify that this quotation is not present. (For example, search for the word "Eden", which appears only twice in the text; the quotation isn't there.)

I'm not sure if Bright got it wrong or if a Wikipedia editor simply added the attribution carelessly, but it seems obvious that the reference to The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government should be removed, so I'm going to do so. --darolew (talk) 11:40, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

The Project Gutenberg text, for whatever reason, only has volume 1. Blight's footnote references it to volume 2 pp. 161-162 of the Da Capo edition. You can check this out at [1] and then using the search function available there at "search inside another edition of this book". I am restoring the original footnote with a fuller reference. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 12:23, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I apologize for the mistake, thanks for correcting me. --darolew (talk) 14:18, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Testing Talk

Blah blah blah blah --Maxedison9 (talk) 14:47, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Balance

This articles seems to have a distinct lean against those who hold to the Lost Cause. I could understand that if the Lost Cause ideology were as monolithic as it is presented. However, this is far from a united movement. There are pro-South movements which are for slavery, and those which are completely against, and those which find some middle ground. Additionally, many who would consider themselves supporters of the Lost Cause would disagree on what exactly that means, and how it applies both to the causes of the War and the discussion of states rights, not to mention racism. This is not my article, and I don't have the time to collaborate, so I'm not taking any steps personally to address this issue. I'm only asking that those responsible for this article consider taking a few pro-Southern editors and having them look over it.

Sincerely,

GTN —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.193.37.191 (talk) 02:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Having looked back over a few things, I would like to clarify that I do not take issue so much with the northern slant, which is understandable considering they won the war, as much as I take issue with the presentation of pro-Southern views as being essentially the same. I myself am pro-CSA, but would have vehemently oppossed some of the statements of Davis, and would certainly have been against slavery. Such actions as presenting Davis as evidence of a coherent Southern view of the Lost Cause do not adecquately portray the diversity among those who hold to it.

GTN —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.193.37.191 (talk) 02:33, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the "slant" is such that the article should be rewritten to bring it up to Wikipedia's ideal standard of objective neutrality. Even the act of calling it a "myth" rather than "belief" is subjective and a sign of bias. Do we refer to the belief that the United States could have won in Vietnam a "myth" or simply as a perspective on the conflict and its outcome?

Getting back to the (American) Civil War, is it a myth that the Union had a larger population than the Confederacy? Is it a myth that the Union had a larger industrial base? Is it a myth that the question of whether and how individual states could leave the Union was the immediate cause of the war? Is it a myth that judged in terms of the outcome of the battles fought in the north-eastern front, General Lee was more energetic and able than his Union counterparts -- at least until Gettysberg? If one believes that the CSA lost because the Union had substantially more manpower and a significantly larger industrial base I don't think an objective student of history can say that that person is believing in a myth. (71.22.47.232 (talk) 07:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC))