The Lost Cause 2

The romanticism of the Old South, with its accompanying impulse toward national independence, had enormous power - the power to dominate a region and to move it to fight one of the great wars of history. But it also displayed great persistence. Crushed by military defeat, the romantic legend rose phoenix-like from the ashes of bitterness and despair to endure, in altered form, as a force which shaped postwar Southern society.

-from The Myth of the Lost Cause, Epilogue, Into the 20th Century