Thomas Wolfe and the Lost Cause
It is a primary goal of the Memorial to keep Wolfe’s writings alive. We are actively working to tackle many topics, including those of a sensitive nature, to help fulfill this goal. Our newest blog post, “Thomas Wolfe and the Lost Cause,” highlights portions of Wolfe’s writings that show an overall rejection of this myth. Throughout, we have quoted various sources and worked to retain the authenticity of Wolfe’s writings, even when sensitive language is used. Because we cater to a wide audience, and in an effort to give these words less agency, we have replaced select words with [redacted]. We believe readers will still understand the full context without the inclusion of these words. We will continue to help bridge the gap between Wolfe and modern audiences.
Background:
Throughout Thomas Wolfe’s novel Look Homeward Angel, Wolfe uses the Civil War and turbulent Reconstruction years to tell parts of his family’s story and as a cultural touchstone for Southerners of his time. This Era of American history shaped both of Wolfe’s parents. W.O. Wolfe grew up near Gettysburg and, as a little boy, watched the Rebels march by his house to battle (Wolfe, I). Julia Westall grew up in poverty in Reconstruction North Carolina, a place his Northern father found full of “folk still raw with defeat and hostility” (Wolfe, I). Yet, Wolfe’s references to the War are not confined to the story of his parents. While a teenager on a trip to Charleston, Wolfe sarcastically thinks, “by heaven, so long as one true Southern heart is left alive to remember Appomattox, Reconstruction, and the Black parliaments, we will defend with our dearest blood our menaced, but sacred, traditions” (Wolfe, XXVI). This is because immediately after the War, White Southerners began to create and defend a historical myth that would be known as The Lost Cause. And Thomas Wolfe was not a fan of that myth.
The Lost Cause gained its name from an 1866 book published by the Richmond Examiner’s wartime editor, Edward A. Pollard (Janney, 2025). However, the foundations for the Southern justification of the War and secession began even before the War ended (American Battlefield Trust, 2023). The attempt to “romanticize the antebellum South” and recast secession as the “Confederacy’s righteous struggle against oppression” (Ruth, 2023) was a coping mechanism for the beaten survivors and witnesses of the War to rationalize the 18% of white Southern military-aged men dead from fighting in a dishonorable, crushed rebellion to keep a brutal, backward institution (Hunter, 2023). Confederate General and promoter of the Lost Cause, Clement Evans, phrased the above sentiment more charitably, saying, “If we cannot justify the South in the act of Secession, we will go down in History solely as a brave, impulsive but rash people who attempted in an illegal manner to overthrow the Union of our Country” (Williams, 2005). The myth of the Lost Cause was subsequently pushed on future generations, giving them a framework to justify the hard past and react to the unsure futures they faced (The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook, 2020).
To understand how Wolfe rejects and mocks the Lost Cause in Look Homeward Angel, it is necessary to lay out the six commonly identified aspects/tenets scholars identify as the Lost Cause:
- Secession, not slavery, caused the Civil War
- African Americans were “faithful slaves,” loyal to their masters and the Confederate cause and unprepared for the responsibilities of freedom
- The Confederacy was defeated militarily only because of the Union’s overwhelming advantages in men and resources
- Confederate soldiers were heroic and saintly
- The most heroic and saintly of all Confederates, perhaps of all Americans, was Robert E. Lee
- Southern women were loyal to the Confederate cause and sanctified by the sacrifice of their loved ones
(Janney, 2025).
General Indictment
Wolfe makes a general indictment of the Lost Cause and its transmission to the youth when he talks about how “their [Southerner’s] cheap mythology” was passed to him as a boy. He describes the “romantic halo that his school history cast over the section, by the whole fantastic distortion of that period” (Wolfe, XIII). Even writing in 1929, Wolfe saw that he had been indoctrinated into believing falsified history as a child. He resents that fact, declaring, “their legend of the charm of their manner, the aristocratic culture of their lives, the quaint sweetness of their drawl, made him writhe” (Wolfe, XIII). Beyond this general indictment of twisted history, Wolfe explicitly addresses the second, third, fourth, and sixth tenets in his writing.
Tenent #2: Faithful Slaves Who Can’t Handle Freedom
Despite holding some problematic racial views, Wolfe mocks the notion that slavery was a benevolent institution venomously, using both a monologue and a scene in Charleston. Starting with the monologue, Wolfe (Eugene Gant) recalls the falsehoods he was taught in school, saying, “people were said to live in ‘mansions,’ and slavery was a benevolent institution, conducted to a constant banjo-strumming, the strewn largesses of the colonel and the shuffle-dance of his happy dependents” (Wolfe, XIII). The disgust he shows, talking about ‘shuddering’ at and ‘hating’ the people who believe and perpetrate such nonsense, is immense and well warranted for someone like him who values truth. The scene Wolfe evokes through his description is comical and almost grotesque compared to reality. He continues to twist the knife after seeing an old Charleston lady and her Black servant on a porch. Wolfe (Gant) describes, “An old negro came by, fringed benevolently by white whiskers. A good old man — an ante-bellum [redacted]. Dear Lord, their number was few in these unhappy days. Eugene thought of the beautiful institution of human slavery, which his slaveless maternal ancestry had fought so valiantly to preserve. Bress de Lawd, Marse! Ole Mose doan’ wan’ to be free [redacted]. How he goan’ lib widout marse? He doan’ wan’ stahve wid free [redacted]. Har, har, har! Philanthropy. Pure philanthropy. He brushed a tear from his een” (Wolfe, XXVI). This quote, more directly, takes shots at the Lost Cause narrative by mocking three highlighted points: 1) slavery was a wonderful institution that led to the flourishing of slavers and enslaved; 2) the absurdity that many Southerners (like Wolfe’s ancestors) would fight and die to preserve an institution that did not directly benefit them; and 3) that the faithful enslaved people not only did not want to be freed but could not handle freedom and would degenerate without the ‘pure philanthropy’ of slavery. As stated above, one of the primary reasons the Lost Cause was created in the first place was to obscure the ignoble and ultimately vain reason for secession and the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Through Wolfe’s over-wrought, ridiculous defense of the ‘benevolent institution’ and nasty imitation of the Charleston Lady’s servant, he lays bare how ridiculous the excuses are.
Tenent #3: The Union Only Won Because They Had More Men
The most direct rebuttal of tenet three comes from a conversation between Wolfe (Gant) and his friends while riding a boat in Charleston Harbor, where the War began. It is related as follows:
“Malvin Bowden said: ‘They had the most men. If things had been even, we’d have beaten them.’
‘They didn’t beat us,’ said Max Isaacs. ‘We wore ourselves out beating them.’
‘We were defeated,’ said Eugene, quietly, ‘not beaten’” (Wolfe, XXVI).
His friends claim that the valiant rebels did not lose because of any military missteps, supply flaws, or inadequacy compared to the Union but instead were crushed by pure, brute numbers. Only Eugene Gant, Wolfe’s self-insert, seems to recognize both the gravity of the Confederacy’s defeat and how stupid it is to blame it on factors other than the Confederacy. Since Eugene speaks as the voice of serious reason here, it is clear that Wolfe thought the Union did not win by population alone.
Tenent #4: Heroic Confederate Soldiers
If the Confederacy had the best cause, best generals, and best plans, all that would be missing are the best men, which the Lost Cause purports them to have as well. Wolfe, in his monologue, explains that he was taught “When knighthood was in its flower” (Wolfe, XXVI) that in the Confederacy, “all men chivalrous and brave, and the Rebel horde a company of swagger, death-mocking cavaliers” (Wolfe, XIII). The claim that Confederate chivalry and gallantry alone persuaded men to fight for the love of country and duty permeates the Lost Cause, leaving no room for reality. The distortion removes the ten percent of soldiers, often poor and resentful of their lot, who were forced into the Rebel army through the first American draft (National Park Service) and the ten to fifteen percent of Confederate soldiers that would eventually desert their gallant crew (Janney, 2025). Like all of the Lost Cause, this distortion takes a messy, unpleasant reality and paints a saccharine, romantic picture over it.
Tenent #6: Saintly, Devoted Women
Last and least intense, Wolfe takes on the idea that all Confederate “women were pure, gentle, and beautiful” and very dedicated to the cause, even into Wolfe’s day (Wolfe, XIII). Many Southern White women were interested in the Confederacy and preserving its memory, such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy (who ironically sponsored a statue in Wolfe’s honor) or the old Charleston Lady. Wolfe describes her as being kept blissfully ignorant of Confederate defeat by her children as she lives in decaying luxury. However, not every woman had similar dedication to the antebellum period. Some scholars have argued that support amongst working and poor women was more tenuous than that among their wealthy counterparts; often, there would be violent economic upheavals and bread riots, but that does not necessarily mean they were rooting against the Confederates while withholding active support (Janney, 2025). However, beyond guessing at the motives of historical women, Wolfe’s novel provides a counter view to that of the Charleston Lady from “an old family” (Wolfe, XXVI). Wolfe’s mother Julia also lived through the War and experienced great poverty because of Reconstruction. If anyone should be a fanatic for the Lost Cause, it should be someone like her who suffered because of the loss, but though she distrusts the North to a certain extent, Wolfe states that she held “no deep animosity because of an old war” (Wolfe, XIII). The statement is brisk, almost dismissive, and it shows that many women who actually suffered and sacrificed were able to somewhat move on and did not dedicate themselves to being living martyrs and monuments to the past.
Conclusion
Despite his problems and prejudices, Wolfe refused to capitulate to the Lost Cause and perpetrate it through his novels. This marks him out from other writers of the time like Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, whose work Wolfe considered “an immortal piece of bilge” (Mitchell, 73). If Thomas Wolfe wanted to do one thing in his writing, it was capture the truth, even the unpleasant truth, no matter what it cost him or who it alienated.
About the Author:
Abrielle Anderson is a second-year honors History and English student at Clemson University. She was born and raised in Asheville (like Thomas Wolfe), and is a summer intern at the Memorial. She is interested in 18th-20th century American History.
Bibliography
Graham, Christopher A. “Lost Cause Myth.” The Inclusive Historians Handbook, 2020, inclusivehistorian.pressbooks.sunycreate.cloud/chapter/lost-cause-myth/.
Janney, Caroline E. “The Lost Cause.” Encyclopedia Virginia, 18 Feb. 2025, encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lost-cause-the/.
Mitchell, Ted. Thomas Wolfe: A Writer’s Life. Appalachian State University, 2017.
Ruth, Michael. “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” EBSCO Information Services, Inc. | WWW.Ebsco.Com, 2023, www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/lost-cause-confederacy.
“The Lost Cause: Definition and Origins.” American Battlefield Trust, 2023, www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/lost-cause-definition-and-origins.
“Why Confederate Soldiers Fought.” Appomattox Court House- Why Confederates Fought, National Park Service, www.nps.gov/apco/planyourvisit/upload/Why-Confederates-Fought-Final.pdf. Accessed 18 June 2025.
Williams, David S. “Lost Cause Religion .” New Georgia Encyclopedia, 2017, www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/lost-cause-religion/.
Wolfe, Thomas. Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life. Dover Publications, 2025.
