-Just as states had chosen to join the federal union, they could also choose to withdraw.
-Defense of states' rights, rather than the preservation of chattel slavery, was the primary cause that led eleven Southern states to secede from the Union, thus precipitating the War.
-Secession was a justifiable and constitutional response to Northern
cultural and economic aggression against the superior, chivalric
Southern way of life, which included slavery. The South was fighting for
its independence. Many still want it.
-The North was not attacking the South out of a pure, though
misguided motive: to end slavery. Its motives were economic and venal.
-Slavery was not only a benign institution but a "positive good". It
was not based on economic greed, and slaves were generally happy and
loyal to their kind masters (see: Heyward Shepherd). Slavery was good for blacks and whites alike, a symbiosis of races
which were inherently unequal by nature. The lives of enslaved blacks
were much better than they would be in Africa, or as free blacks in the
North, where there were numerous anti-black riots. (Blacks were
perceived as foreigners, immigrants taking jobs away from whites by
working for less, and also as dangerously sexual.) It was not
characterized by racism, rape, harsh working conditions, brutality,
whipping, forced separation of families, and humiliation.[97]
-Allgood identifies a Southern aristocratic chivalric ideal,
typically called "the Southern Cavalier ideal", in the Lost Cause. It
especially appeared in studies of Confederate partisans who fought behind Union lines, such as Nathan Bedford Forrest, Turner Ashby, John Singleton Mosby, and John Hunt Morgan. Writers stressed how they embodied courage in the face of heavy odds, as well as horsemanship, manhood, and martial spirit.[98]
-Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Stonewall Jackson
represented the virtues of Southern nobility and fought bravely and
humanely. On the other hand, most Northern generals were characterized
by brutality and bloodlust, subjecting the Southern civilian population
to depredations like Sherman's March to the Sea and Philip Sheridan's burning of the Shenandoah Valley in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Union General Ulysses S. Grant is often portrayed as an alcoholic.[99]
-Losses on the battlefield were inevitable, given the North's
superiority in resources and manpower. Battlefield losses were also
sometimes the result of betrayal and incompetence on the part of certain
subordinates of General Lee, such as General James Longstreet, who was reviled for doubting Lee at Gettysburg.
-The Lost Cause focuses mainly on Lee and the Eastern Theater of operations, in northern Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. It usually takes Gettysburg as the turning point of the war,
ignoring the Union victories in Tennessee and Mississippi, and that
nothing could stop the Union army's humiliating advance through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, ending with the Army of Northern Virginia's surrender at Appomattox.
-General Sherman destroyed property out of meanness. Burning Columbia, South Carolina, which had been a hotbed of secession, served no military purpose. It was intended only to humiliate and impoverish.
-Giving the vote to the newly freed slaves could only lead to political and social chaos. They were incapable of voting intelligently and were easily bribed or misled. Reconstruction was a disaster, only benefitting greedy Northern interlopers (scalawags). It took great effort by chivalrous Southern gentlemen to reestablish law and order through white dominance.
-The order and customs of Southern society were in accordance with
Christian virtue and God's will, given the inherent moral weakness of
mankind.