Civil War Reconstruction

Through the period of Reconstruction a grassroots movement spread throughout South; a movement to rewrite history to a way that is more favorable to the Southern Cause and efforts. This movement has been called both the Lost Cause and the Reconciliationist movement, as the name simply changed over time. The Lost Cause movement began with prominent figures of the Confederacy attempting to further the ideals they fought for in the Civil War, in doing so hopefully legitimizing them. This idea was further by both women and veterans' groups throughout the South. From there it spread to magazines and journals until the concept was adopted by the Democratic Party and shifted to the Reconciliationist movement. The reason for the spread of this movement comes from many factors. The first of which is a general feeling pervading society of desiring to forget about the horrors of the war. For many Southerners the greatest lure of the Lost Cause movement was in the fact that in this movement they could transform what truly happened into an idealistic fight defending their main beliefs. It, "is that Southerners found they could transform loss on the battlefield into a reunion on terms largely of their own choosing." …