Kitts/Violence, Conspiracies, 4. Lost Cause: The Rise and Fall of a Symbolic Crusade Movement

New religious groups by their very nature pose some degree of challenge to the social order within which they emerge as they involve alternative ways of imagining and organizing. The sources of contention are some combination of movement provocation and societal control imposition. In a few cases, movement-societal conflict rises to the level of violence, in which each side concludes that peaceful coexistence is impossible. While there has been considerable research on the dynamics of such conflicts, there is less understanding of how movements that have been vanquished in battle with the forces of social control re-form, reorganize, and re-establish themselves. This chapter examines the loosely-coupled Lost Cause Movement following the end of Civil War hostilities. Three primary reconstitution tactics are identified: creation of an alternative social-cultural power base, narrative accounts challenging delegitmating depictions of slavery, and restoration of legitimacy through sacralization of southern culture. These tactics proved to be remarkably successful in repositioning the Confederate states over the next century.