(Frederick Douglass, “Speech delivered in Madison Square, New York, Decoration Day.” 1877. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division)
Abolitionists and some Northerners were quick to denounce the new stance of the Southern leadership. The clear contradictions in what they were saying drew immediate and heated responses. Here, Douglass makes it extremely clear that the reason behind the Civil War was slavery. He challenges the legitimacy of the Confederacy in declaring their own government, the idea that the war had anything other than slavery, and the ethics behind the views of the South. In doing so, Douglass is directly addressing the points within the Lost Cause story. He was not alone either. Institutions such as the Grand Army of the Republic in Massachusetts sponsored publications aimed directly at countering the growing proliferation of the Lost Cause narrative in text books and the general public. By referencing the Civil War as the “Great Pro Slavery Rebellion” they put their argument in direct contention with the Southerners and made pointed rebuttals to the new ideals of the post-war South (Gallagher and Nolan, The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, 8-10).