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The Civil War was catastrophic for Virginians. The only solace that many could take was in the bravery of Virginia's
fighting men and the greatness of her leaders.
The war spurred even greater allegiance to the idea and ideals of "Old Virginia," which after Appomattox seemed
in danger of being lost. The immediate, incredibly painful past was quickly glorified. The many catastrophic episodes
of the Civil War that were fought on the soil of the Old Dominion demanded remembrance, and the attempted restructuring
of the society by outsiders warranted resistance. The old ways were thus kept in the minds and hearts of postwar Virginians.
Their loyalty to their fallen brethren, and their pride in their own survival, built an imaginative Elysium from the ashes of the
Confederacy.
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Robert E. Lee
Julian Vannerson
1864
Cartes de visite by Selden & Co., Richmond
Virginia Historical Society
This image by the Richmond photographer Julian Vannerson transformed the Confederate general into a southern
King Arthur. This is a saintly champion, every bit as heroic as the Virginians who had won the Revolutionary War
against long odds. As the Civil War was drawing to a close, Lee was also seen as the man who might be capable
of restoring glory to Old Virginia, if not on the battlefield, then in the collective consciousness of its people. In 1866
John Esten Cooke wrote that "In every movement of his person . . . [Lee] was . . . the sweet yet stately courtesy
of the old Virginia gentleman." Lee came to symbolize not only the best that the Confederacy had to offer, but also
the best of the Virginia society from which he had emerged.
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Traditionalists obsessed about what they called the "Lost Cause," their valiant stand as Confederates against an
unjust invader. Those writers and artists who became apologists for the old ways felt compelled to proclaim that
the antebellum South had been the last bastion of honor and virtue. To these defenders, far more than a war had
been lost. A genteel way of life had passed away as well.
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Autumn
Charles Hoffbauer
c. 1919–21
From the Four Seasons of the Confederacy murals
Virginia Historical Society
An interest in things Gothic, which had been in vogue in antebellum Virginia, became intertwined with ideas about the chivalry
of the soldiers of the Confederacy. In particular, the dashing Confederate cavalrymen were easily reimagined as modern knights
who could be venerated as heroes of the Lost Cause.
Both during the war and even more so afterwards, the gallant General J. E. B. Stuart, called "The Last Cavalier," epitomized
the chivalric ideal as it was manifested in the Confederate officer. In 1866 John Esten Cooke wrote that Stuart had "the appearance
of a mediaeval knight": "Upon that proud head, indeed, a helmet, with its flowing plume, seemed the fittest covering."
The Autumn scene from The Four Seasons of the Confederacy is a tribute to J. E. B. Stuart and his cavalry.
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Two prints, The Burial of Latané and Lee and His Generals, came to epitomize the greatness of the Confederacy's
leaders, the poignancy of the state's losses, and the bravery and courage of its citizens. Versions of these prints could
be found in many Virginia parlors well into the 20th century.
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Burial of Latané
A. G. Campbell after William D. Washington
After 1868
Engraving after the 1864 painting
Virginia Historical Society
The lone Confederate casualty of Stuart's famous ride around General George McClellan's forces in
1862 was Captain William Latané, a young doctor and officer whose death and dramatic burial were
adopted as a symbol of the losses suffered in Virginia. Several Virginia women, isolated by the position
of the Union army during the Peninsula Campaign, were forced to conduct Latané's burial alone, with
help only from slaves. Through the story of the burial of Latané, the Lost Cause found additional heroes in
the virtuous and capable women of Old Virginia.
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Lee and His Generals
George Bagby Matthews
1907
Lithograph
Virginia Historical Society
Lee and His Generals was issued in a number of versions in the decades following Appomattox. Many
of the figures portrayed had never gathered together during the war, and a number of the generals were
dead by its end, but it mattered little that such groupings were imaginary. More relevant was that such
fanciful imagery presented the hierarchy of the Confederate military as akin to King Arthur's Knights
of the Round Table, fighters for justice and freedom from oppression.
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The Plantation Society Defended
Interest in the rural lifestyle of antebellum Virginia intensified after Appomattox. Despite the problems
with the old plantation society that had been evident well before the start of the war—the economic and
social deterioration, the exhaustion of the soil, and the injustice of slavery and the perceived indolence
of many slaveholders—the way of life during the prewar period came to be seen as superior to the conditions
experienced by many postwar Virginians. Equally important to the emerging cult of Old Virginia was the fact
that many postbellum northerners also chose to recall that past with fondness. The bucolic world of Old
Virginia, which was but a memory after 1865, would soon rise again in the popular imagination.
Those writers and artists who apologized for the old ways reimagined Old Virginia as having been an arcadia,
a rural society governed by gentlemen, graced by the most virtuous of ladies, and characterized by a refined and
lavish lifestyle. This consciously constructed society of the past proved to be a powerful tool in attempts to maintain
the social status quo.
"God Bless My Old Virginia Home"
It was the land, above all else, that set Virginia apart from the urban North. Thus the apologists paid particular
attention to the supposedly arcadian rural environment of Old Virginia. Such descriptions always included the home,
whose inhabitants were imagined to enjoy the bounty of a healthy farm economy.
The effort to avoid invoking the traditional image of the region as a land of slave masters, who were as cold
and remote as their stony mansions, led apologists for Old Virginia to remember as well the picturesque cottage
(as celebrated in the 1877 song "God Bless My Old Virginia Home") and the rambling house with wings. Such
simple homes, however, lacked a strong philosophical basis. The standards of virtue and gentility that had formed
the bedrock of the imaginative "Old Virginia" society were lost in such unambitious models. Georgian mansions,
by contrast, were clear, well-devised expressions of the humanism that was meant to accompany the pastoral
life. The great houses were themselves great ideas, and it was thought that they allowed for great ideas to be
conceived within them.
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Mount Vernon, West Front, 1858
C. B. Graham, lithographer, and J. Crutchett, publisher
1858
Lithograph
Virginia Historical Society
With the advent of the Colonial Revival, the apologists turned their gaze toward the stately mansions of early Virginia.
Mount Vernon was the best-known Virginia house; no structure in America had been more frequently depicted in
prints. Because of the adoration of Washington, however, this stately mansion was often excused from carrying the
burden attached to other classically inspired houses, the association with slavery.
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Grand National
Hoen & Company, Richmond, lithographers
c. 1875?
Tobacco label
Virginia Historical Society
One component of antebellum social life that was recreated after the war was the sport of fox hunting, which carried associations
with both colonial Virginia and aristocratic England. This defining pastime helped to set Virginians apart from the nouveau riche
of the North. Thomas Nelson Page sketched a nostalgic scene of this sport:
The chief sport [in Old Virginia]. . . was fox-hunting. It was, in season, almost universal. . . .
Who does not recall the excitement at the house; the arrival in the yard, with horns blowing, hounds baying, horses
prancing, and girls laughing.
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The Apologists for Old Virginia
The three arch-apologists—John Esten Cooke, George Bagby, and Thomas Nelson Page, all of whom were
Virginians—set out to defend the antebellum society of their state from the attacks of others. They were quick
to master the techniques of exaggeration and revision of historical fact. With ingenious, but, from our perspective,
at times muddled logic, they attempted to justify antebellum life, even going so far as to defend slavery, which
most Americans by the 1870s considered to have been a deplorable institution.
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Tall lilies, white as angels' wings and stately as the maidens that walked among them
Maude Alice Cowles
Frontispiece to Thomas Nelson Page, Social Life in Old Virginia before the War, 1897
Facsimile of the lost original
Virginia Historical Society
At the pinnacle of George Bagby's idealized picture of Old Virginia society was the virtuous plantation mistress, who
had a "delicacy, tenderness, freshness, gentleness; [and] absolute purity of . . . life and thought, typified in the
spotless neatness of her apparel and her every surrounding" that was "quite impossible to convey." Thomas
Nelson Page added, "What she really was, was known only to God. Her life was one long act of devotion,—
devotion to God, devotion to her husband, devotion to her children, devotion to her servants, to her friends,
to the poor, to humanity." Page would have his readers understand that in her "devotion to her servants"
the mistress made slavery an institution that should have been admired rather than condemned.
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His thoughts dwelt upon serious things
The Misses Cowles
Illustration in Thomas Nelson Page, Social Life in Old Virginia before the War, 1897
Facsimile of the lost original
Virginia Historical Society
According to Thomas Nelson Page, the Virginia gentleman epitomized the most important of the chivalric
ideals, piety, which engendered a Christian morality that guided his philosophy. He was a profoundly serious
individual: "Responsibilities made him grave. . . . The greatness of the past, the time when Virginia had been
the mighty power of the New World, loomed ever above him. . . . He saw the change that was steadily
creeping on. . . . His thoughts dwelt upon serious things; he pondered causes and consequences."
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The apologists portrayed slaves as contented. Thomas Nelson Page imagined a fantastical past, distinguished by the
happiness, mutual love, and respect enjoyed by both master and servant. One of his most powerful pro-slavery
creations was Marse Chan, an emotional tale that tells of the devotion between Sam and his master in a story
of pathos that is carried through the duration of the latter's life, from his birth, when a slave is assigned to care
for him, through the upheaval of the Civil War that brings the master's premature death. The old
society emerges as having been a grand achievement of American civilization, the loss of which is to be mourned
by the reader as fervently as the demise of Channing is by faithful Sam.
The apologists were doomed from the start to fail in their revisionary endeavors. They were faced with the
unenviable task of trying to convince a war-torn nation that more had been lost than was gained in the conflict.
Also, by the late 19th century, slavery, no matter how benevolently it was imagined, could not be redeemed.
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A Magnificent Production of . . . Uncle Tom's Cabin
c. 1890s
Broadside
Virginia Historical Society
In reinventing Old Virginia, southerners refuted what they deemed to be misinformation about antebellum society.
Thomas Nelson Page complained that the wrong impression about the South had been put forward in Harriet
Beecher Stowe's fantastically popular Uncle Tom's Cabin and in the "large crop of so-called Southern plays" that ridiculed
the southerner. This broadside for one of those postwar plays suggests that Stowe's novel was to be taken as historical fact.
Such presentations perpetuated many stereotypes, including the musical slave and the cruel slave driver. Page tried to convince
his readers that slavery was in fact a commendable institution that established positive relationships between whites and blacks.
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Reimagining the African American
In late 19th-century images by white artists, black Virginians rarely appeared with much dignity. In the most
popular of two stereotypes, the subjects are ridiculed as comical figures from the world of minstrelsy. In the other,
they are shown to be picturesque characters in scenes of simple, often destitute, peasant life. This second stereotype
was developed after American artists in Europe saw paintings that celebrated a contented Old World peasantry. They
understood that sentimental images of black Americans might in the same way evoke thoughts of a rural innocence.
This was because the African American, whether he was a slave or freeman, seemed to fit well with standard notions
of the picturesque: he worked in a rural setting; he often resided in a dilapidated cabin that could be reimagined as
a rustic cottage; he wore tattered clothing; he took delight in the simple power of music; he spoke in a dialect; and
he retained seemingly peculiar customs from his African past.
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Our Jolly Cook, from Campaign Sketches
Winslow Homer
1863
Lithograph
Virginia Historical Society, bequest of Paul Mellon
During the Civil War years the stereotype of the comical black figure was carried to northern troops by the young
Winslow Homer. Sent to Virginia as an illustrator by the magazine Harper's Weekly, Homer depicted camp life. Although
after the war he would paint highly sympathetic images of African Americans, this depiction of a "jolly" cook is a grotesque
caricature. The Union soldiers who observe this dancing figure seem to expect their cook to perform for them as part
of his duty. The African American cook was a common image of the era, a stereotype that linked blacks with bountiful
food, good-humored nurture, and nonthreatening service.
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The Scarecrow
Allen Christian Redwood
c. 1890s
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society, Lora Robins Collection of Virginia Art
In this image we see anonymous black figures who use primitive hoes and plows in an age that knew mechanized
farm machinery, and who toil in rows just as they had done under slavery. While the dead crow that is serving as
the "scarecrow" of the title may actually have protected the produce of the fields from living birds, it also served to
remind white viewers of the Jim Crow laws that would keep many of the liberated African Americans in their menial
position as field workers. This painting looks back fondly to antebellum Virginia life in its suggestion that the roles
assigned under slavery were appropriate, and that blacks would continue to provide the manpower that would
sustain Virginia's agricultural economy.
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However, a number of black artists and a few sympathetic white painters looked beyond stereotypes to celebrate
the new status of the liberated African American.
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Contentment
John Adams Elder
c. 1880s
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society
Before the war, white Virginians of almost any class could aspire to achieve the pastoral ideal.
Although it would have been impossible before Appomattox, after the war a black man could be pictured similarly, as
John Adams Elder illustrates in this painting entitled Contentment. This Virginia artist had studied abroad; on his return,
predictably, Elder painted the African American in the guise of the peasant. However, he altered the stereotype.
This property owner, who is generally well-dressed despite the tear in his trousers, is shown to be as contented
as any white squire. He takes pride in his material achievements, and, perhaps because he is old enough to have
been a slave, he is philosophical. Elder acknowledges his humanity and points to the potentially new status of
the black Virginian.
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"Happy and Free from All Sorrow"
As the apologists reimagined the slave past, black writers and artists were also beginning to look at the
nation's history to try to make sense of the legacy of slavery and the experiences of those who had been freed.
Eventually, as the generation born after emancipation grew to maturity, blacks began to articulate their views
of past events, which were necessarily quite different from the accounts of most southern white chroniclers.
Many blacks struggled to come to terms with the idea that generations of their families had been enslaved,
and some were saddened by the inequities left by Reconstruction and its backlash. Freedom had been
accomplished; thoughts now turned to equality.
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Up From Slavery, An Autobiography
Booker T. Washington
New York, 1901
Virginia Historical Society
Booker T. Washington, a shrewd observer of national and regional opinion, determined that blacks would best
hold on to their newly won ground by conceding, temporarily, their ideas about real equality and by working
cooperatively with the ruling white majority. Having concluded that southern whites had effectively barred
political and civil rights from the grasp of the freedman, Washington opted to accept near total segregation
as a fact of postwar life and encouraged his people to move forward in those few areas where progress
was possible: industrial education and employment in the trades. As to the past, Washington reasoned in
Up From Slavery that nothing would be gained by bitterness, and that as slaves African Americans had
at least been introduced to Christianity.
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The Souls of Black Folk, Essays and Sketches
W. E. B. Du Bois
Chicago, 1911 (first published in 1903)
Virginia Historical Society
The movement to abandon Booker T. Washington's conciliatory course for a more aggressive path was led by W. E. B. Du
Bois, who would explore the black experience in a nation that was blind to the contributions of a population that had
helped to shape its very identity. By recounting history from a black man's perspective, by recording the joys of
freedom and the pain of Reconstruction, and by pointing to the tragedies and contributions of a people who were
rejected solely on racial grounds, Du Bois provided his readers a clear alternative to the white supremacist thinkers
of this era. The Souls of Black Folk was an electrifying manifesto that mobilized a people for a bitter, prolonged
struggle to win their rightful place in American society.
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Introduction
I. Origins of the Pastoral
II. Pursuit of Gentility
III. Decline and Resistance
IV. Resurgence of the Old Order
V. Triumph of the Colonial Past
Exhibit Catalog
Acknowledgements
Comments
Image rights owned by the Virginia Historical Society. Do not use without permission.
Rights and reproductions
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