Lost Cause
Dixie's noble fiction
Lost Cause refers to something or someone beyond hope of success or redemption: Trying to teach him manners is a lost cause.
The phrase implies effort would be wasted.
Capitalized, the Lost Cause is the post–Civil War ideology romanticizing the Confederacy and reframing secession as noble rather than about slavery.
- Jefferson DavisConfederacy's only president
- ConfederacySecessionist Southern government
- futilityLack of purpose
- Southern heritageCultural traditions of Dixie
- Old SouthPre-Civil War Southern states
Robert E. Lee · denial · quixotic · whitewash · Civil War · Reconstruction · cognitive dissonance · rationalization · tragic hero · states' rights · fatalism · Jim Crow · nostalgia · mythos · idealism · redemption arc · nationalism · Southern pride
- Southern HistoryDeep South, Antebellum, Old South, Dixie, Confederate
- Southern PoliticsDixiecrats, Jim Crow, poll tax, poll taxes, one-party rule
- Civil War aftermath13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, freedmen, Reconstruction, sharecropping
- ConfederacyConfederate States, Jefferson Davis, Confederate flag, Confederate Congress, Confederate Army
- Gilded AgeGilded Age, robber baron, robber barons, Carnegie, Rockefeller
- Confederate symbolsConfederate flag, rebel flag, stars and bars, Dixie flag, battle flag
Lost Causesure thing
Guaranteed outcome or agreement
safe bet · slam dunk · done deal · foregone conclusion · going concern
Lost Causejust cause
Valid grounds for action
noble cause · abolitionism · emancipation · liberation movement · civil rights movement
lost, cause, losing, caused, loses, causes, causing, causeless, causal