Edward A. Pollard's The Lost Cause

Edward A. Pollard from Virginia, a white supremacist and former slaveholder after the war. In 1867, he decided to write a 752 page book about The Lost Cause. On page 751 he spoke, “It would be immeasurable the worst consequence of defeat in this war that the South should lose its moral and intellectual distinctiveness as a people, and cease its well-known superiority in civilization, in political scholarship…” . Even though he is aware of the South’s defeat in the war, they will not lose their sense of superiority over the North and the African race. Towards the end of the book he remarks “...But the war did not decide, the negro equality ; it did not decide negro suffrage; it did not decide State Rights, although it might have exploded their abuse … it do not decide the right of a people to show dignity in misfortune, and to maintain self-respect in though in in the face of adversity...”. …show more content…
He also mentions that they still will make the Africans suffer even more mentally and physically as a “free man”. They also did not have the right to vote, and when the African Americans obtained the right to vote they were punished by getting a severely beaten or lynched. They are unable to carry themselves as gentlemen or carry themselves with respect. A few sentences later he finishes the last paragraph by stating “...And these things which the war did not decide, the Southern people will still cling to, still claim, and still assert in them their rights and views.” The Southerners never let go of slavery and took it off of the plantation and into the streets of the

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