For some white Southerners, however, the adjustment was more difficult and the language of the "lost cause" came to glorify the war as one fought to preserve slavery and the Old South. For instance, extralegal organizations like the Ku Klux Klan worked through intimidation and violence to restore the Old South's racial order. After Reconstruction, the old slave codes were replaced by Jim Crow legislation which became a system of legal segregation of races throughout the South. Therefore blacks found themselves at the bottom of the social hierarchy once again. Despite the fact that commemoration of the war helped to encourage white supremacy, racism was not necessarily a central theme of the Confederate celebration. For example, as Foster contends, the Klan "did very little during the early postwar period to shape the Confederate tradition." While the founders of the Klan were former soldiers, the organization did not make use of the "lost cause" ideas. Consequently the Klan focused on asserting white supremacy and "left the job of interpreting the war to others." (Foster, pp. 48, 194)
As time passed, veterans when recollecting about the war tended to focus more on courage and friendship rather than the violence or political repercussion of battles. As this happened, soldiers of the North and the South came to an understanding that they had much in common, especially since both had experienced great battles and the rigors of camp life. Out of this understanding Foster explains that a mutual respect emerged between the soldiers of the blue and the gray. (Foster, p. 67) Gradually more emphasis was placed on heroism and sacrifice rather than on slavery and secession. For instance, by holding up virtuous Southerners like Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson the honor of the South was justified. Neither men were champions of slavery and secession. Moreover, Jackson died in defense of his homeland while Lee in the post-war period promoted sectional reconciliation. The rituals of the Confederate celebration helped heal the wounds of defeat, but it seemed Southerners still needed Northern respect. The Spanish-American war did much to meet this need and led to sectional reconciliation. (Foster, p. 145)
The New South, as Foster argues, "remained a land haunted by the ghosts of the Confederacy." Overall they helped to form a conservative Southern society and had a role in shaping post-war Southern life. John B. Gordon, former Confederate General, maintained that the ghosts of the Confederacy should be employed as "living inspirations for future service to the living republic." (Foster, 125) Southerners concluded that their cause had been just and their failure the result only of overwhelming numbers. The Confederate celebration served to sanitize and minimize issues of the war. Gaines Foster's Ghosts of the Confederacy limited the "lost cause" movement to a period from about 1880 to the beginning of World War I. The movement as he stresses had no real link to the Old South and died out with the Confederate veterans. By the 20th century the ghosts surfaced in the form of "cartoons of old veterans, Confederate monuments, and rebel flags" but such images had little to do with the Confederate tradition and had become "too elusive" to define the identity of the South. (Foster, 198)
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