1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910793804403321

Autore

Domby Adam H. <1983->

Titolo

The false cause : fraud, fabrication, and white supremacy in Confederate memory / / Adam H. Domby

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Charlottesville : , : The University of Virginia Press, , [2020]

Baltimore, Md. : , : Project MUSE, , [2020]

©2020

ISBN

0-8139-4377-9

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource

Disciplina

320.56/909

Soggetti

White supremacy movements - United States - History

Soldiers' monuments - Moral and ethical aspects - Southern States

United States Historiography

United States Race relations History 20th century

United States Race relations History 19th century

United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Monuments Moral and ethical aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Rewriting the past in stone: monuments, North Carolina politics, and Jim Crow, 1890-1929 -- Inventing Confederates: creating heroes to maintain white supremacy, 1900-1951 -- The loyal deserters: Confederate pension fraud in Civil War memory, 1901-1940 -- Playing the faithful slave: pensions for ex-slaves and free people of color, 1905-1951 -- The soldiers who weren't: how loyal slaves became "black Confederates," 1910-2017 -- The lost cause in the age of Trump.

Sommario/riassunto

This book focuses on North Carolina to examine the role of lies and exaggerations in the creation of the Lost Cause narrative. In the process, the book shows how these lies have long obscured the past and been used to buttress white supremacy in ways that resonate to this day. The author explores how fabricated narratives about the war's cause, Reconstruction, and slavery--as expounded at monument dedications and political rallies--were crucial to Jim Crow. He questions



the persistent myth of the Confederacy as one of history's greatest armies, revealing a convenient disregard of deserters, dissent, and Unionism, and exposes how pension fraud facilitated a myth of unwavering support of the Confederacy among nearly all white Southerners. In addition, the author shows how the dubious concept of "black Confederates" was spun from a small number of elderly and indigent African American North Carolinians who got pensions by presenting themselves as "loyal slaves." The book concludes with a penetrating examination of how the Lost Cause narrative and the lies on which it is based continue to haunt the country today and still work to maintain racial inequality.--Provided by publisher.