Birth of a Nation

“Only at the moment when Lee handed Grant his sword was the Confederacy born; or to state matters another way, in the moment of death the Confederacy entered upon it immortality.”
- Robert Penn Warren "The Legacy of the Civil War, 1961
The “Lost Cause” religion was a movement, aspiring to re-establish a period that existed in the past. This was the period of chivalry, of gentlemen and ladies. This was the South, which slavery supported. The Lost Cause religion remembered this Old South through sermons, ceremonies such as monument dedications, veterans' reunions, and special holidays and days of prayer and fasting. Wilson contends that this Southern cultural identity replaced the separate political nation of the South as its Cause. The Lost Cause movement insisted God’s amalgamation with Confederate cause. Supporters of the Lost Cause movement wanted to show that the sacrifices of the South had not been worthless (Wilson 237- 238).
D.W. Griffith’s, Birth of a Nation, ex...