On the "Lost Cause" Mythology

On the "Lost Cause" Mythology: The North may have won the Civil War, but the South won Reconstruction. Ever since that Palm Sunday in April 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army to Ulysses S. Grant at the Old Appomattox Court House in Virginia, the South has been concerned with rewriting history while the North has been concerned with industrial/monetary gain. For many Southerners, the war was over before it even began. Yet the South fought valiantly, regardless. That is essentially the "Lost Cause" mythology in a nutshell. If you examine maps of American railroad lines in the 1860s, they illuminate the North's distinct industrial advantage over the South. The sheer capacity of the North to outproduce the South in terms of guns and ammunition was vastly superior. Nevertheless, Southerners persisted against all odds to preserve their "way of life," which included slavery and "states' rights" at its core. Perhaps one of biggest "Lost Cause" myths that emerged in the postbellum era was the idea of blacks not being suited for self-government (i.e. voting). In fact, an entire school of historiography (Dunning School) centered largely on this single myth. Historians who belonged to the Dunning School, most notably William A. Dunning, believed the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was the worst affront to Southern life than any other Reconstruction effort.

On Empathy, Social Movements, and Universalism

On Empathy, Social Movements, and Universalism: Loaned from German, "empathy" only became a word in English in 1909. As a sentimental feeling, it taps into the notion of human suffering, particularly by pushing people to become "totally immersed" in another person's perspective. It differs from sympathy in that sympathy merely reflects sorrow for another's loss (while empathy is geared toward "feeling" another's pain). Empathy also became an effective strategy for invoking social change at the turn of the 20th century, as "muckraking" photojournalists like Jacob Riis sought to elicit empathy among the upper classes regarding the wretched conditions in New York City tenements. After first eliciting empathy, a social movement can emerge. In general, social movements are informed by some sense of inequity or injustice in society at large. Key aspects of social movements include leaders that articulate ideas, followers that personally commit to those ideas, and organizations that get built from the "bottom up." Where universalism fits into this social milieu is precisely when thinking about everybody's basic nature. That is, universalists call for people to recognize a set of elemental qualities which define much of the human experience. Jane Addams was one such universalist who saw a common (moral) dignity in each person, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, language, gender, age, or religion.