MOJO Academy Book Brief

Book Title: The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won
Author: Edward H. Bonekemper III
Publishing Year: 2015
Number of Pages: 352
Audible Time: Approximately 10 hours

Brief Summary

I have been a huge Civil War fan since I went to Gettysburg in the early 2000s. Once you walk that ground, you never look at war the same way again. But even a lifelong Civil War fan gets fed a version of history that isn’t the whole truth, and that’s exactly what and why Bonekemper set out to fix it.

We just covered this exact pattern in our latest MOJO Book Academy newsletter, where we traced how America's story has been distorted over and over again by different schools of thought.

To check that out. Part one here and part two here.

The Lost Cause hid the sin to protect Southern pride. The Progressives reduced everything to money. The Consensus historians smoothed over the conflict. The New Left reduced everything to oppression. Every one of them grabbed a piece of the truth and squeezed everything else to fit it, and the Lost Cause was the first one to run that play.

For 150 years, the South ran a public relations campaign to rewrite why it lost.

It’s called The Lost Cause, and it claims the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, that Robert E. Lee was untouchable, that Ulysses S. Grant was a butcher, and that the North only won by waging total war on innocent civilians.

Bonekemper takes every one of those claims and dismantles it one chapter at a time.

In eight chapters, plus the opening and the conclusion.

Bonekemper completely dismantles every argument used to support the myth of The Lost Cause. He doesn’t just assert his case.

He builds it brick by brick, using the same primary sources The Lost Cause defenders claim to rely on.

I felt like I had found a book that explained all the nuances of the U.S. Civil War and made connecting the dots much, much easier.

If you’ve ever left a Civil War conversation feeling like something didn’t add up, this is the book that adds it up for you.

Two Important Quotes

1. “This is a book I have felt compelled to write for a number of years, as I encounter too many people with mistaken impressions about the Civil War. Their viewpoints are an outgrowth of the myth of the Lost Cause, which some Confederate leaders fostered to justify their causing and losing the Civil War. At the heart of the myth is the contention that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. It had everything to do with it.”

That last line hits like a hammer.

It had everything to do with it.

Not something to do with it, not partly to do with it, everything.

Bonekemper lists out the full myth right there in his opening: the idealization of slavery, the adoration of Lee, the denigration of Grant, the insistence the South never had a chance, the blaming of James Longstreet instead of Lee for Gettysburg, and the accusation that the North waged total war. Every single one of these is a brick in a wall built to protect the Confederacy’s reputation, and Bonekemper spends the whole book taking that wall down.

2. “The myth of the Lost Cause then is a tangle of falsehoods. It should no longer play a significant role in the historiography and Americans’ understanding of the Civil War.”

Calm words.

Final words.

Bonekemper doesn’t need to shout to make his case, because by the time you reach this line, he’s already made it.

A tangle of falsehoods is exactly right. And once you see the tangle for what it is, you can’t unsee it. That’s the whole point of this book, and it’s why it belongs on the shelf next to serious history rather than family legend.

My Nuggets of Wisdom!

One of the chapters that convinced me most was the one on total war.

Not to mention the other chapters:

• Chapter 2: What was the nature of slavery in 1861, and was it a dying institution?

• Chapter 3: Was slavery the primary cause of secession in the Civil War?

• Chapter 6: Did James Longstreet lose the Battle of Gettysburg and thus the war?

all three of these were dismantling in the argument supporting the Lost Cause!

But back to the total war chapter.

Bonekemper draws a sharp line between hard war, which is the destruction of enemy armies and enemy property, and total war, which adds the deliberate, systematic killing and rape of civilians.

Those are not the same thing, and the South has spent a century and a half pretending they are.

Total war happened before the Civil War.

It happened again in the 20th century.

The Civil War itself, despite some vicious localized guerrilla fighting, was not total war on anyone’s part, and certainly not the Union’s.

That distinction alone should end half the arguments people still have at Thanksgiving dinner.

Here’s what stood out to me most:

• The myth was never really about history. It was about protecting reputations.

• Slavery sits at the center of the myth, not the edges of it.

• Longstreet paid the price for Lee’s mistakes and was never vindicated in his own lifetime.

• Grant gets rewritten as a drunk and a butcher by people who lost to him on the battlefield.

Every Union general would recognize this book as a long-overdue correction.

And so would General Longstreet, who spent his final years defending himself against a smear campaign built by men who needed a scapegoat.

This connects directly to work we’ve already covered in MOJO Book Briefs

• Liberty and Tyranny by the great one Mark Levin makes the case that history gets rewritten when it’s inconvenient to those in power.

• Debunking Howard Zinn makes a similar case from a different angle, showing how popular history can be bent to fit an agenda.

Bonekemper’s book is the Civil War-specific version of that same fight.

Final Recommendation

This is one of the best books I have read in the last five years.

Read this book if you were ever taught that the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery.

Read it if you grew up hearing Lee’s name spoken like a saint’s. Read it if you want the receipts before you have another argument about Confederate monuments.

Bonekemper gives you calm, confident, fact-based ammunition, and he never has to raise his voice to win the argument.

Then read Longstreet by Elizabeth Varon, and you’ll have a much more complete picture of the U.S. Civil War and how history has gotten that story wrong.

If You Liked This Book, You Might Like These

• Debunking Howard Zinn – A different era of American history, but the same fight against a popular myth that never held up under scrutiny.

• Liberty and Tyranny by the great one Mark Levin – A broader case for why history and liberty both get rewritten by whoever holds the pen, and why we can’t let that stand.

• Longstreet by Elizabeth Varon – Takes the general Bonekemper defends and gives him the full biography he deserves, showing exactly how the Lost Cause turned him into its scapegoat.

Keep fighting the good fight.