Date of Award
1-1-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in History
First Advisor
April Holm
Second Advisor
Darren Grem
Third Advisor
Robert Colby
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
While the Lost Cause of the Confederacy pervaded every aspect of white Southern social, political, cultural, and intellectual life, it did not go unchallenged, even among white Southerners. While many white Southern intellectuals, especially historians, promoted the Lost Cause and white supremacy as objective fact, there were always historians who opposed it. This thesis will trace several professional historians, and other intellectuals who went against Lost Cause orthodoxy from the turn of the century until the 1960s. The main historians to be discussed here are William Dodd, John Spencer Bassett, Enoch Banks, and James Silver. Often, Confederate heritage organizations, newspaper editors, and some in the broader public wanted these individuals fired for their anodyne views, and in some cases succeeded. All the same, a tradition of intellectual dissent always existed in the 20th century South, even in the face of Lost Cause intellectual manifestos such as I’ll Take My Stand. Both white historians and Black historians kept that tradition alive. Many of the white intellectuals to be discussed here were not racial egalitarians, and held the common racial prejudices of their contemporaries, especially on Reconstruction. But out of a desire to do justice to their profession, and out of a commitment to what they saw as the truth of history, they opposed various aspects of white Southern historical and racial orthodoxy. Some even advocated for Black history, written by Black scholars. Eventually, white Southern historians began to challenge the prevailing Lost Cause narrative of Reconstruction as Black historians had done long before and alone. These intellectual battles offer lessons for our own time in battling lingering myths and defending academic freedom.
Recommended Citation
Flesch, Julian, "Crisis of the Closed Society: The Southern Historian's Battle Against the Lost Cause, 1900-1963" (2025). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3277.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/3277