Research Catalog

Title

Baptized in blood : the religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 / Charles Reagan Wilson.

Author

Wilson, Charles Reagan

Publication

Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, 2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xx, 256 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

• "Southerners may have abandoned their dream of a political nation after Appomattox, but they preserved their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition. Out of defeat emerged a civil religion that embodied the Lost Cause."--
• Charles Reagan Wilson documents, for the first time, that for over half a century there existed not one, but two civil religions in the United States, the second not dedicated to honoring the American nation. Extensively researched in primary sources, Baptized in Blood is a significant and well-written study of the South's civil religion, one of two public faiths in America. In his comparison, Wilson finds the Lost Cause offered defeated Southerners a sense of meaning and purpose and special identity as a precarious but distinct culture. Southerners may have abandoned their dream of a separate political nation after Appomattox, but they preserved their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition.

Uniform Title

Project Muse UPCC books

Alternative Title

Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920

Subjects

• History
• 1861-1865
• American Civil War > (United States : > 1861-1865)
• Southern States > Civilization
• United States > History > Civil War, 1861-1865 > Religious aspects
• Christianity > Southern States

Genre/Form

History

Note

• Originally published: Athens : University of Georgia Press, c1980. With a new pref.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-249) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Preface to the 2009 edition: The Lost Cause and the civil religion in recent historiography -- Introduction: Origin and overview -- Sacred southern ceremonies : ritual of the Lost Cause -- Crusading Christian confederates : religious myth of the Lost Cause -- Abiding children of pride : theology of the Lost Cause -- A Southern Jeremiad : Lost Cause critique of the New South -- Morality and mysticism : race and the lost cause -- J. William Jones : evangelist of the Lost Cause -- Schooled in tradition : a Lost Cause education -- A harvest of heroes : reconciliation and vindication.

ISBN

• 9780820334257 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0820334251 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2009033718

OCLC

• 318869606
• SCSB-12622936

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library