These drawings with watercolor wash were made after I learned more about the controversial Confederate monuments that were recently removed and the ideology behind them. Caroline E. Janney helps us understand the "Lost Cause" movement: "The Lost Cause is an interpretation of the American Civil War (1861–1865) that seeks to present the war, from the perspective of Confederates, in the best possible terms. Developed by white Southerners, many of them former Confederate generals, in a postwar climate of economic, racial, and social uncertainty, the Lost Cause created and romanticized the "Old South" and the Confederate war effort, often distorting history in the process. For this reason, many historians have labeled the Lost Cause a myth or a legend. It is certainly an important example of public memory, one in which nostalgia for the Confederate past is accompanied by a collective forgetting of the horrors of slavery..." The UDC (United Daughters of the Confederacy) were instrumental in the perpetuation of the "Lost Cause" interpretation of history and were often behind the erection of monuments to Generals of the South. We see the daughters below, as well as some of their statues.
0 Comments
|