title: Gran Torino

text: "Gran Torino" opened in a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 12, 2008, before expanding wide on January 9, 2009. It grossed $270 million worldwide, making it Eastwood's second highest-grossing film to-date. The film received positive reviews from critics for Eastwood's direction and performance; within the Hmong community in the United States, the film was generally praised but also received criticism for its cultural inaccuracies.


title: Gran Torino

text: Cantankerous, bigoted Korean War veteran and retired Ford factory worker Walt Kowalski is widowed after 50 years of marriage. His aging neighborhood in Highland Park in Metro Detroit was formerly populated by working-class white families but has become filled with gang violence and poor southeast Asian immigrants, including Walt's next-door neighbors, the Vang Lor family. Adding to his isolation, Walt is emotionally detached from his family; he angrily rejects his son's suggestion he move to a retirement community and lives alone with his elderly labrador, Daisy. A chronic tobacco user, Walt suffers from coughing fits, occasionally with blood, which he conceals from his family. Walt's late wife's priest, Father Janovich, tries to comfort Walt, who dismisses him as young and inexperienced.


title: Gran Torino

text: Walt catches Thao Vang Lor attempting to steal his Ford Torino as a coerced initiation into a Hmong gang run by Thao's cousin, "Spider." Even after this failed attempt the gang nonetheless wants to take Thao with them, but Walt drives them off with his M1 Garand, earning the Hmong community's respect. As penance, Thao's mother makes him work for Walt, who has him do different jobs in the neighborhood. The two soon form a grudging mutual respect, and Walt mentors Thao, helping him obtain a construction job and giving him social and dating advice. Walt rescues Thao's sister, Sue, from the unwanted advances of three rough youth and bonds with her as well. Walt consults his doctor, who gives him a gloomy prognosis that he conceals from his family.


title: Gran Torino

text: Spider's gang continues to pressure Thao and assaults him on his way home from work. Walt visits the gang's house and attacks a member as a warning. In retaliation, the gang rapes Sue and injures Thao in a drive-by shooting. The members of the community, including Sue, refuse to report the crimes out of fear. The following day, an enraged Thao seeks Walt's help to exact revenge; Walt convinces him to return later that day. Walt makes personal preparations: He mows his lawn, buys a suit, gets a haircut and finally makes his confession to Father Janovich.


title: Gran Torino

text: Walt takes Thao to his basement and gives him his Silver Star, then tells him that he is still haunted by the memory of killing an enemy soldier who was ready to surrender and that he wants to spare Thao from becoming a murderer. He locks Thao in the basement and heads to the gang's residence. The gang members point their guns at Walt, who loudly berates them for their crimes, drawing the attention of the neighbors. Walt puts a cigarette in his mouth, slowly reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls his hand out quickly, as if he were drawing a gun. Thinking he is about to fire, the gang members shoot and kill him. Walt's hand opens to reveal his Zippo lighter with First Cavalry insignia — he was unarmed and sacrificed himself to save the Vang Lor family. Sue, following Walt's directions, frees Thao, and they drive to the scene in Walt's Gran Torino.


title: Gran Torino

text: A police officer tells Thao and Sue that the gang members have been arrested for murder and the surrounding neighbors have all come forward as witnesses. Father Janovich conducts Walt's funeral, which is attended by his family and many of the Hmong community, puzzling his family. Afterward, Walt's last will and testament is read. Much to the surprise of Walt's family, Walt leaves his house to the church and his cherished Gran Torino to Thao, on the condition that Thao does not modify the car in any way. Sometime later, Thao drives the car along Detroit's Jefferson Avenue with Daisy at his side.


title: Gran Torino

text: After holding casting calls in Fresno, California, Detroit, Michigan, and Saint Paul, Minnesota, Eastwood selected ten Hmong lead actors and supporting actors. Of them, only one was not a first time actor. Of the Hmong cast, five, including Bee Vang, one of the principal actors, were from the state of Minnesota. Ahney Her comes from Lansing, Michigan. The casting agency Pound & Mooney recruited thirty actors and over 500 extras. The firm recruited many Hmong actors from a Hmong soccer tournament in Macomb County, Michigan. Sandy Ci Moua, a Hmong actress based in the Twin Cities, assisted with the film's casting of Hmong actors.


title: Gran Torino

text: "Gran Torino" was written by Nick Schenk and directed by Clint Eastwood. It was produced by Village Roadshow Pictures, Media Magik Entertainment and Malpaso Productions for film distributor Warner Bros. Eastwood co-produced with his Malpaso partners Robert Lorenz and Bill Gerber. Eastwood has stated he enjoyed the idea "that it dealt with prejudice, that it was about never being too old to learn".


title: Gran Torino

text: Shooting began in July 2008. Hmong crew, production assistants, consultants, and extras were used. The film was shot over five weeks. Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach, the editors, cut the film so it was under two hours long. The crew spent over $10 million while shooting the film in Detroit.


title: Gran Torino

text: In the early 1990s, Schenk became acquainted with the history and culture of the Hmong while working in a factory in Minnesota. He also learned how they had sided with the South Vietnamese forces and its US allies during the Vietnam War, only to wind up in refugee camps, at the mercy of North Vietnamese Communist forces, when US troops pulled out and the government forces were defeated. Years later, he was deciding how to develop a story involving a widowed Korean War veteran trying to handle the changes in his neighborhood when he decided to place a Hmong family next door and create a culture clash. He and Dave Johannson, Schenk's brother's roommate, created an outline for the story. According to Schenk, each night he used a pen and paper to write the script while in Grumpy's, a bar in Northeast Minneapolis, while not working at his day jobs. He recalled writing 25 pages within a single night in the bar. He recalled asking the bartender, who was his friend, questions about the story's progress. Some industry insiders told Schenk that a film starring an elderly main character could not be produced, as the story could not be sold, especially with an elderly main character who used language suggesting that he held racist views. Through a friend, Schenk sent the screenplay to Warner Bros. producer Bill Gerber. Eastwood was able to direct and star on the project as filming for "Invictus" was delayed to early 2009, leaving sufficient time for filming "Gran Torino" during the previous summer. Eastwood said that he had a "fun and challenging role, and it's an oddball story."


title: Gran Torino

text: According to Schenk, aside from changing Minneapolis references to Detroit references, the production headed by Eastwood "didn't change a single syllable" in the script. Schenk added that the concept of the producers not making any substantial revisions to a submitted script "never happens." Eastwood said that he stopped making significant revisions after attempting to change the script of "Unforgiven" and later deciding to return to the original revision, believing that his changes were "emasculating" the product.


title: Gran Torino

text: The original script was inspired by the Northeast community of Minneapolis, Minnesota, but filmmakers chose to shoot in Michigan, becoming one of the first productions to take advantage of the state's new law that provided lucrative incentive packages to film productions. Bill Huizenga, from Zeeland, Michigan, who once served in the Michigan House of Representatives, helped write and coordinate the State of Michigan's incentive package to the film creators. The film ultimately received a 42% tax credit. Bruce Headlam of "The New York Times" said "That helped make it easy for Warner Bros. to sign off on bankrolling the movie, something that hasn’t always been a given in the studio’s relationship with the director."


title: Gran Torino

text: Producer Robert Lorenz said that while the script was originally set in Minnesota, he chose Michigan as the actual setting as Kowalski is a retired car plant worker. Metro Detroit was the point of origin of the Ford Motor Company. Schenk said that sometimes the lines in the movie feel out of place with the Detroit setting; for instance a line about one of Walt's sons asks if Walt still knows a person who has season tickets for Minnesota Vikings games was changed to being about a person with Detroit Lions tickets. Schenk said "They don't sell out in Detroit. And so that bothered me. It seemed really untrue to me."


title: Gran Torino

text: Locations, all within Metro Detroit, included Highland Park, Center Line, Warren, Royal Oak, and Grosse Pointe Park. The house depicting Walt Kowalski's house is on Rhode Island Street in Highland Park. The Hmong gang house is located on Pilgrim Street in Highland Park. The house depicting the residence of one of Walt's sons is on Ballantyne Road in Grosse Pointe Shores. The church used in the film, Saint Ambrose Roman Catholic Church, is in Grosse Pointe Park. The hardware store, Pointe Hardware, is also in Grosse Pointe Park. VFW Post 6756, used as the location where Walt meets friends to drink alcohol, is in Center Line.


title: Gran Torino

text: The barber shop, Widgren's Barber Shop, is along 11 Mile Road, near Center Street, in Royal Oak. The shop, founded in 1938, in a space now occupied by another business, moved to its current location, west of its original location, in 1970. The film producers selected that shop out of 60 candidates in Metro Detroit. According to Frank Mills, the son-in-law of owner Ted Widgren, the producers selected it because they liked "the antique look inside." Eastwood asked Widgren to act as an extra in the barber shop scene. In the area around the barbershop, vehicle traffic had to be stopped for three to five minutes at a time, so traffic in the area slowed down.


title: Gran Torino

text: Of the entire cast, only a few were established actors; the Hmong actors had relatively little experience, and some were not proficient in English. Jeff Baenen said that Eastwood used a "low-key approach to directing." Eastwood said that "I’d give them little pointers along the way, Acting 101. And I move along at a rate that doesn’t give them too much of a chance to think." Bee Vang said that he originally felt fright, but was able to ease into the acting. Baenen said that Eastwood was a "patient teacher" of the first-time actors. According to Vang, Eastwood did not say "action" whenever filming a particular shoot began.


title: Gran Torino

text: Vang said that he had studied the script as if it were a textbook. According to Vang, after the first film cut ended, Vang did not hear a response from Eastwood. When Vang asked if something was wrong, other people told Vang that if Eastwood did not make a comment, then his performance was satisfactory. Vang added that Eastwood encouraged ad-libbing with the Hmong actors. Ahney Her said that she liked the improvisation work, even when she was required to translate between the English and Hmong languages. When asked if the in-character racial slurs offended the actors in real life, Ahney said that she did not feel offense. Vang said, "I was called so many names that I can’t say here because of how vulgar they were. It disturbed me quite a lot, but at the end of the day it was just a script."


title: Gran Torino

text: Vang said in a 2011 program that Eastwood did not allow the Hmong actors to change their lines, despite what he said in the earlier interviews.


title: Gran Torino

text: Nick Schenk said that he became friends with many Hmong coworkers while employed at a VHS factory in Bloomington, Minnesota. In regards to Schenk's stories of his interactions with the Hmong people, Laura Yuen of Minnesota Public Radio said "That sense of humor and curiosity permeate the script, even though the "Gran Torino" trailers make the movie look like, by all measures, a drama."


title: Gran Torino

text: Eastwood wanted Hmong as cast members, so casting director Ellen Chenoweth enlisted Hmong organizations and set up calls in Detroit, Fresno and Saint Paul; Fresno and Saint Paul have the two largest Hmong communities in the United States, while Detroit also has an appreciable population of Hmong. Chenoweth recruited Bee Vang in St. Paul and Ahney Her in Detroit.


title: Gran Torino

text: The screenplay was written entirely in English. Therefore, the actors of "Gran Torino" improvised the Hmong used in the film. Louisa Schein, author of "Hmong Actors Making History Part 2: Meet the Gran Torino Family", said before the end of production that "some of the lines actors ad-libbed in Hmong on camera will be tricky to translate back for subtitles." Schenk had input from Hmong people when writing the script. Dyane Hang Garvey served as a cultural consultant, giving advice on names, traditions, and translations.


title: Gran Torino

text: Vang later argued that the use of the Hmong people did not seem relevant to the overall plot. He said "there is no real reason for us to be Hmong in the script" and that even though Walt Kowalski had fought in Korea, he had still confused the Hmong with Koreans and other Asian ethnic groups. In a 2011 program Vang said that Hmong actors were treated unfairly on the set, and that Eastwood did not give tips on how to build the characters. Vang also claimed other white cast members made Hmong actors feel excluded by assuming the Hmong speakers did not understand English. Vang said that some important lines that the Hmong characters said in the Hmong language were not subtitled, so audiences developed a skewed perception of the Hmong people.


title: Gran Torino

text: Bee Vang, as paraphrased by Jeff Baenen of the Associated Press, said in 2009 that the film's portrayal of the Hmong is "generally accurate." Regarding the result, Vang said "[t]his film is not a documentary. We can't expect 101 percent correctness."


title: Gran Torino

text: During the filming, Hmong cast members addressed what they believed to be cultural inaccuracies that were being introduced. Cedric Lee, a half-Hmong who worked as a production assistant and a cultural consultant, said that "Some things were over-exaggerated for dramatic purposes. Whether it was our job or not, I still felt some responsibility to speak our mind and say something, but at the same time, the script was what it was. We didn’t make the final decision."


title: Gran Torino

text: In 2011, Vang said while many Hmong had objected to some elements, the producers selected the viewpoints of the Hmong cultural consultants which "had the most amenable take on the matter and would lend credence to whatever Hollywood stereotypes the film wanted to convey." Vang further said that "this was a white production, that our presence as actors did not amount to control of our images."


title: Gran Torino

text: Louisa Schein and Va-Megn Thoj, authors of ""Gran Torino"’s Boys and Men with Guns: Hmong Perspectives," said "Perhaps the most commonly voiced Hmong objections to the film concern its myriad cultural inaccuracies, exaggerations and distortion." Schein also said that "[t]he [Hmong] actors struggle, too, with their culture being made into spectacle." Even though a real Hmong shaman acts as a Hmong shaman in the film, Schein said that "his expertise was overridden by the screenplay and the filming, which distorted the ceremonial scenes by making them inaccurately exotic." Vang said that the tea ceremonies depicted in the film were not correctly performed. Even though, in the film, Hmong characters feel offense when Walt touches a girl on the head, Schein said that in real life in Hmong culture it is okay to touch a person on the head. In other segments of the film, the Hmong shaman touches a baby's head without any negative criticism. Schein adds that Spider touches Thao Vang Lor's head "without consequence." Christine Wilson Owens, author of "Hmong Cultural Profile," said "Most traditional Hmong elders, especially men, do not want strangers to touch their heads, or those of their children, due to their religious beliefs and personal values."


title: Gran Torino

text: Thao and Sue Lor wear Hmong clothing to Walt Kowalski's funeral. Hmong do not ordinarily wear traditional Hmong clothing to funerals. Grandma Lor spits a betel nut she had been chewing to show contempt for Walt Kowalski, even though the Hmong do not chew betel nuts. The Hmong shaman reads Walt's personal character, when in real life he would communicate with the spirit world. In the film the shaman himself does a sacrifice of a chicken in a manner that Schein and Thoj say is "in dramatic ceremonial fashion," when in real life an assistant would do this "perfunctorily." The authors said that the "hu plis" ceremony done in honor of the baby has an incorrect spatial layout, that the clothing and grooming of the Hmong gangs is not correct, and "the obsequious making of offerings on doorstep" are not accurate. While Thao himself cleans dishes, Schein and Thoj add that he would not do this alone because he is in a house with other female family members. Schein and Thoj also add that there is "inconsistent use of the two Hmong dialects within one family." They also argue that members of a Hmong clan would not show aggression towards a member of a fellow clan and that they would not rape a member of their own clan, like the gang in the film rapes Sue. Sharon Her, a Hmong writer from New York, argued that the film had "confusion of Asian customs" and that "Hmong people do not use favors as a method of atonement nor do they endlessly shower individuals with gifts out of gratitude." Her added, "An early draft of the script even had names misspelled and referenced Chinese surnames, a sloppy mistake that was easily corrected."


title: Gran Torino

text: In the film's opening weekend of wide release in the US, it grossed $29.5 million. As of 2021, it has taken in $269,958,228 worldwide.


title: Gran Torino

text: The film was released on June 9, 2009, in the United States in both standard DVD format and Blu-ray. The disc includes bonus materials and extra features. A featurette is included and a documentary about the correlation of manhood and the automobile. The Blu-ray version presents the film in 2.40:1 ratio format, a digital copy, and the audio in multiple languages.


title: Gran Torino

text: About 4 million DVD units have been sold as of 2012, generating $67.4 million in revenue. Another 332,000 Blu-rays were sold, for $4.9 million, bringing the total to $72.3 million in home video sales.


title: Gran Torino

text: Rotten Tomatoes reports that 81% of 237 surveyed critics gave the film positive write-ups; the average score is 7.10/10. The site's consensus states: "Though a minor entry in Eastwood's body of work, "Gran Torino" is nevertheless a humorous, touching, and intriguing old-school parable." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 72 based on 34 reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Gran Torino

text: After seeing the film, "The New York Times" described the requiem tone captured by the film, calling it as "a sleek, muscle car of a movie made in the USA, in that industrial graveyard called Detroit". Manohla Dargis compared Eastwood's presence on film to "Dirty Harry" and the "Man with No Name", stating: "Dirty Harry is back, in a way, in "Gran Torino", not as a character, but as a ghostly presence. He hovers in the film, in its themes and high-caliber imagery, and of course, most obviously, in Mr. Eastwood's face. It is a monumental face now, so puckered and pleated that it no longer looks merely weathered, as it has for decades, but seems closer to petrified wood."


title: Gran Torino

text: The "Los Angeles Times" also praised Eastwood's performance and credibility as an action hero at the age of 78. Kenneth Turan said of Eastwood's performance, "It is a film that is impossible to imagine without the actor in the title role. The notion of a 78-year-old action hero may sound like a contradiction in terms, but Eastwood brings it off, even if his toughness is as much verbal as physical. Even at 78, Eastwood can make 'Get off my lawn' sound as menacing as 'Make my day', and when he says 'I blow a hole in your face and sleep like a baby', he sounds as if he means it".


title: Gran Torino

text: Roger Ebert wrote that the film is "about the belated flowering of a man's better nature. And it's about Americans of different races growing more open to one another in the new century." Sang Chi and Emily Moberg Robinson, editors of "Voices of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander Experience: Volume 1", said that within the mainstream media, the film received "critical acclaim" "for its nuanced portrayal of Asian Americans." Louisa Schein and Va-Megn Thoj, authors of ""Gran Torino"s Boys and Men with Guns: Hmong Perspective," said that the mainstream critical response was "centered on Eastwood's character and viewed the film mainly as a vision of multicultural inclusion and understanding."


title: Gran Torino

text: Nicole Sperling, columnist for "Entertainment Weekly", called it a drama with "the commercial hook of a genre film" and described it further as "a meditation on tolerance wrapped in the disguise of a movie with a gun-toting Clint Eastwood and a cool car". Chi and Robinson said that within the Asian-American community, some criticized "depictions of Hmong men" and "the archetypical white savior trope that permeated the film".


title: Gran Torino

text: Clint Eastwood's decision to cast Hmong actors, including amateur actors, received a positive reception in Hmong communities. Tou Ger Xiong, a Hmong storyteller and performance artist from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area who had auditioned for a role in the film, said that he had respect for the film because the producers actually cast Hmong instead of asking other Asian-Americans to mimic Hmong. Xiong also argued "First things first, let's get our foot in the door. Complain later." Dyane Hang Garvey, who served as a cultural consultant for the film production, said that the film was not intended to be a documentary on the Hmong people and that it positively highlights, as paraphrased by Laura Yuen of Minnesota Public Radio, "the close-knit nature of the Hmong community in Detroit". Doua Moua, a Hmong actor in the film, said that he had no regrets in playing a gang member, because, in Yuen's words, "gangs consumed his brother's life while they were growing up in Saint Paul". Moua added that many first generation Hmong are affected by gangs and drift into gangs due to a lack of father figures.


title: Gran Torino

text: Louisa Schein, a Rutgers University anthropologist who is an expert on the Hmong culture, approved the concept of Hmong achieving visibility in the popular culture of the United States, but believed that the film may be promoting out of date stereotypes of the Hmong. Schein said that her Hmong friends were "touched" by the film's portrayal of Hmong culture redeeming and reaching out to Walt Kowalski.


title: Gran Torino

text: Schein further added that the film seemed to give little prominence to the history of the Hmong, and that only two male Hmong, Thao and a gang member, were given depth in the story. Schein said "I feel a lot of the plot about the Eastwood character is driven by the fact that he is a veteran. Yet there is no possibility for representing the fact that the Hmong were veterans too." An individual established a blog, eastwoodmovie-hmong.com, documenting what the author believed to be cultural inaccuracies of the film's depiction of the Hmong.


title: Gran Torino

text: David Brauer of "MinnPost" said that some Hmong liked "Gran Torino" and that many believed that the film was offensive. In 2009, actor Bee Vang said that he was satisfied with the outcome of the film. Brauer said that in an opinion editorial released in 2011, Vang "isn't kind to the Clint Eastwood film". Krissy Reyes-Ortiz of "The Bottom Line" of the University of California Santa Barbara said, based on Vang's testimony in a 2011 program, that "Though many of the people who have seen the film may have gotten a sense of satisfaction and joy from seeing that Walt overcame his racism, the people who acted as the Hmong members in the movie did not" and that "They were offended by the traces of racism that were included in the movie and that they experienced themselves on set". Some Hmong on internet message boards had posted criticisms of the film. In 2020, Vang said, "Hmong around the country were furious about its negative stereotypes and cultural distortions" and that they confronted him when he spoke at events. Vang added that he engaged in "explaining my obligation as an actor while also recognizing that, as a Hmong-American, I didn't feel that I could own the lines I was uttering." Vang has stated that he was uncomfortable with the reaction of white audiences to the film, finding their laughter at the playing off of racial slurs as humor "unnerving" and "one more excuse for ignoring white supremacy and racism."


title: Gran Torino

text: Philip W. Chung of "AsianWeek" said that Eastwood, portraying a white man, was the "main weapon" of the film even though screenwriter Nick Schenk "does his best to portray Hmong culture and the main Hmong characters with both depth and cultural sensitivity". Chung argued that ""Gran Torino" might have been another "'white man saves the day' story" but that "What Eastwood has really created is not a story about the white man saving the minority (though it can be read on that level and I'm sure some will) but a critical examination of an iconic brand of white macho maleness that he played a significant part in creating."


title: Gran Torino

text: "Gran Torino" was recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the Ten Best Films of 2008. Clint Eastwood's performance has also garnered recognition. He won an award for Best Actor from the National Board of Review, he was nominated for the Broadcast Film Critics Association (Critics' Choice Awards) and by the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards for Best Actor. An original song from the film, "Gran Torino" (performed by Jamie Cullum), was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. The Art Directors Guild nominated "Gran Torino" in the contemporary film category.


title: Gran Torino

text: The film, however, was ignored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the 81st Academy Awards when it was not nominated for a single Oscar, which led to heated criticism from many who felt that the Academy had also deliberately snubbed "Revolutionary Road" and "Changeling" (which Eastwood also directed) from the five major categories.


title: Gran Torino

text: Mark D. Lee and Cedric N. Lee, two Hmong filmmakers from Detroit, directed a documentary called "Gran Torino: Next Door," about how Bee Vang and Ahney Her were chosen for their roles in the film and the Hmong actors' off-set activities. It was released on Blu-ray. Vang acted in a YouTube parody of one scene in "Gran Torino", titled "Thao Does Walt: Lost Scenes from Gran Torino." The YouTube parody addresses a scene involving a barbershop, and the views of masculinity in the original scene.


title: Gran Torino

text: As of 2019, Gran Torino is part of the focus topic "The Ambiguity of Belonging" in the German Abitur in Baden-Württemberg in the subject English.


title: Gypsum

text: Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. Alabaster, a fine-grained white or lightly tinted variety of gypsum, has been used for sculpture by many cultures including Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient Rome, the Byzantine Empire, and the Nottingham alabasters of Medieval England. Gypsum also crystallizes as translucent crystals of selenite. It forms as an evaporite mineral and as a hydration product of anhydrite.


title: Gypsum

text: The Mohs scale of mineral hardness defines gypsum as hardness value 2 based on scratch hardness comparison.


title: Gypsum

text: The word "gypsum" is derived from the Greek word (), "plaster". Because the quarries of the Montmartre district of Paris have long furnished burnt gypsum (calcined gypsum) used for various purposes, this dehydrated gypsum became known as plaster of Paris. Upon adding water, after a few dozen minutes, plaster of Paris becomes regular gypsum (dihydrate) again, causing the material to harden or "set" in ways that are useful for casting and construction.


title: Gypsum

text: Gypsum was known in Old English as , "spear stone", referring to its crystalline projections. (Thus, the word spar in mineralogy is by way of comparison to gypsum, referring to any non-ore mineral or crystal that forms in spearlike projections). In the mid-18th century, the German clergyman and agriculturalist Johann Friderich Mayer investigated and publicized gypsum's use as a fertilizer. Gypsum may act as a source of sulfur for plant growth, and in the early 19th century, it was regarded as an almost miraculous fertilizer. American farmers were so anxious to acquire it that a lively smuggling trade with Nova Scotia evolved, resulting in the so-called "Plaster War" of 1820.


title: Gypsum

text: Gypsum is moderately water-soluble (~2.0–2.5 g/L at 25 °C) and, in contrast to most other salts, it exhibits retrograde solubility, becoming less soluble at higher temperatures. When gypsum is heated in air it loses water and converts first to calcium sulfate hemihydrate, (bassanite, often simply called "plaster") and, if heated further, to anhydrous calcium sulfate (anhydrite). As with anhydrite, the solubility of gypsum in saline solutions and in brines is also strongly dependent on NaCl (common table salt) concentration.


title: Gypsum

text: The structure of gypsum consists of layers of calcium (Ca) and sulfate () ions tightly bound together. These layers are bonded by sheets of anion water molecules via weaker hydrogen bonding, which gives the crystal perfect cleavage along the sheets (in the {010} plane).


title: Gypsum

text: Gypsum occurs in nature as flattened and often twinned crystals, and transparent, cleavable masses called selenite. Selenite contains no significant selenium; rather, both substances were named for the ancient Greek word for the Moon.


title: Gypsum

text: Selenite may also occur in a silky, fibrous form, in which case it is commonly called "satin spar". Finally, it may also be granular or quite compact. In hand-sized samples, it can be anywhere from transparent to opaque. A very fine-grained white or lightly tinted variety of gypsum, called alabaster, is prized for ornamental work of various sorts. In arid areas, gypsum can occur in a flower-like form, typically opaque, with embedded sand grains called desert rose. It also forms some of the largest crystals found in nature, up to long, in the form of selenite.


title: Gypsum

text: Gypsum is a common mineral, with thick and extensive evaporite beds in association with sedimentary rocks. Deposits are known to occur in strata from as far back as the Archaean eon. Gypsum is deposited from lake and sea water, as well as in hot springs, from volcanic vapors, and sulfate solutions in veins. Hydrothermal anhydrite in veins is commonly hydrated to gypsum by groundwater in near-surface exposures. It is often associated with the minerals halite and sulfur. Gypsum is the most common sulfate mineral. Pure gypsum is white, but other substances found as impurities may give a wide range of colors to local deposits.


title: Gypsum

text: Because gypsum dissolves over time in water, gypsum is rarely found in the form of sand. However, the unique conditions of the White Sands National Park in the US state of New Mexico have created a expanse of white gypsum sand, enough to supply the US construction industry with drywall for 1,000 years.


title: Gypsum

text: Commercial exploitation of the area, strongly opposed by area residents, was permanently prevented in 1933 when President Herbert Hoover declared the gypsum dunes a protected national monument.


title: Gypsum

text: Gypsum is also formed as a by-product of sulfide oxidation, amongst others by pyrite oxidation, when the sulfuric acid generated reacts with calcium carbonate. Its presence indicates oxidizing conditions. Under reducing conditions, the sulfates it contains can be reduced back to sulfide by sulfate-reducing bacteria. This can lead to accumulation of elemental sulfur in oil-bearing formations, such as salt domes, where it can be mined using the Frasch process Electric power stations burning coal with flue gas desulfurization produce large quantities of gypsum as a byproduct from the scrubbers.


title: Gypsum

text: Orbital pictures from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have indicated the existence of gypsum dunes in the northern polar region of Mars, which were later confirmed at ground level by the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) "Opportunity".


title: Gypsum

text: Commercial quantities of gypsum are found in the cities of Araripina and Grajaú in Brazil; in Pakistan, Jamaica, Iran (world's second largest producer), Thailand, Spain (the main producer in Europe), Germany, Italy, England, Ireland, Canada and the United States. Large open pit quarries are located in many places including Fort Dodge, Iowa, which sits on one of the largest deposits of gypsum in the world, and Plaster City, California, United States, and East Kutai, Kalimantan, Indonesia. Several small mines also exist in places such as Kalannie in Western Australia, where gypsum is sold to private buyers for additions of calcium and sulfur as well as reduction of aluminum toxicities on soil for agricultural purposes.


title: Gypsum

text: Crystals of gypsum up to long have been found in the caves of the Naica Mine of Chihuahua, Mexico. The crystals thrived in the cave's extremely rare and stable natural environment. Temperatures stayed at , and the cave was filled with mineral-rich water that drove the crystals' growth. The largest of those crystals weighs and is around 500,000 years old.


title: Gypsum

text: Flue gas desulfurization gypsum (FGDG) is recovered at some coal-fired power plants. The main contaminants are Mg, K, Cl, F, B, Al, Fe, Si, and Se. They come both from the limestone used in desulfurization and from the coal burned. This product is pure enough to replace natural gypsum in a wide variety of fields including drywalls, water treatment, and cement set retarder. Improvements in flue gas desulfurization have greatly reduced the amount of toxic elements present.


title: Gypsum

text: Gypsum precipitates onto brackish water membranes, a phenomenon known as mineral salt scaling, such as during brackish water desalination of water with high concentrations of calcium and sulfate. Scaling decreases membrane life and productivity. This is one of the main obstacles in brackish water membrane desalination processes, such as reverse osmosis or nanofiltration. Other forms of scaling, such as calcite scaling, depending on the water source, can also be important considerations in distillation, as well as in heat exchangers, where either the salt solubility or concentration can change rapidly.


title: Gypsum

text: A new study has suggested that the formation of gypsum starts as tiny crystals of a mineral called bassanite (). This process occurs via a three-stage pathway:


title: Gypsum

text: The production of phosphate fertilizers requires breaking down calcium-containing phosphate rock with acid, producing calcium sulfate waste known as phosphogypsum (PG). This form of gypsum is contaminated by impurities found in the rock, namely fluoride, silica, radioactive elements such as radium, and heavy metal elements such as cadmium. Similarly, production of titanium dioxide produces titanium gypsum (TG) due to neutralization of excess acid with lime. The product is contaminated with silica, fluorides, organic matters, and alkalis.


title: Gypsum

text: Impurities in refinery gypsum waste have, in many cases, prevented them from being used as normal gypsum in fields such as construction. As a result, waste gypsum is stored in stacks indefinitely, with significant risk of leaching their contaminants into water and soil. To reduce the accumulation and ultimately clear out these stacks, research is underway to find more applications for such waste products.


title: Gypsum

text: People can be exposed to gypsum in the workplace by breathing it in, skin contact, and eye contact. Calcium sulfate "per se" is nontoxic and is even approved as a food additive, but as powdered gypsum, it can irritate skin and mucous membranes.


title: Gypsum

text: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the legal limit (permissible exposure limit) for gypsum exposure in the workplace as TWA 15 mg/m for total exposure and TWA 5 mg/m for respiratory exposure over an 8-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of TWA 10 mg/m for total exposure and TWA 5 mg/m for respiratory exposure over an 8-hour workday.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: Adidas Yeezy was a fashion collaboration between American rapper, designer and entrepreneur Kanye West and German sportswear company Adidas. It offered high-end limited edition colorways and Yeezy Boost sneakers, along with shirts, jackets, track pants, socks, slides, women's shoes, lingerie and slippers. The first shoe model ("Boost 750") was released in February 2015. In 2020 "Forbes" described Yeezy's rise as "one of the great retail stories of the century". Yeezy influenced and inspired a multitude of other fashion brands.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: In October 2022, the collaboration between Adidas and West ended abruptly after West made antisemitic remarks through various media.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: Kanye West originally designed a shoe for Adidas in 2006, but it was never released. The first brand to officially collaborate with him was Bape. Together, West and Bape released a pair of Bapesta "College Dropout" shoes, which are now quite rare and garner high resell prices. He has also designed shoes for Louis Vuitton and Giuseppe Zanotti, and (most notably) Nike. His collaboration with Nike lasted for five years and led to the release of a total of three (two silhouettes, the Air Yeezy 1 and the Air Yeezy 2) sneaker styles.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: In 2013, after the release of the "Red October" Air Yeezy 2s, West officially left Nike. Although West described this break as "heartbreaking", he claimed that Nike would not pay him royalties for his shoe designs, instead offering to pay some of the proceeds to a charity of West's choice. This ultimately led West to reach out to Adidas for a deal. Adidas agreed to give him royalties, and West described the CEO of Adidas as "someone who allowed me to build something". Under the partnership with Adidas, West retains 100% ownership of his brand while having full creative control over the products released.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: In February 2015, a year and three months after the confirmation of the Adidas and West collaboration, the collaboration officially debuted. "Yeezy Season 1" was highly anticipated and celebrities such as Rihanna, Diddy, and West's then-wife Kim Kardashian were at the showing. "Yeezy Season 2" and "Yeezy Season 3" also saw notable amounts of success upon their releases. In June 2016, West and Adidas announced an extension of the deal and the launch of a new Yeezy category. West claimed that Yeezy was selling out surprise 40,000-pair drops within minutes.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: In 2018, West enlisted the help of Matt George, co-owner of Stussy Canada, to become a strategic advisor for the brand. During this time the annual sales for Adidas Yeezy grew from $15 million to $1.2 billion. George officially became the CEO of Yeezy in September 2018. By 2019, sales for Yeezy’s Adidas sneakers generated $1.3 billion in annual revenue. In 2019, "Forbes" compared Yeezy to Air Jordan in terms of cultural clout and commercial prowess. In 2020, "Forbes" described Yeezy's ability to rival Air Jordan for "sneaker world supremacy" within just a short period of time as "one of the great retail stories of the century". West was receiving an 11% royalty cut. That year, sales for the sneakers reached nearly $1.7 billion in annual revenue, netting Yeezy $191 million in just royalties.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: In June 2022, West criticized Adidas CEO Kasper Rørsted, accusing the brand of copying his designs and promoting a "Yeezy Day" sales event without his permission. In August 2022, West continued his criticisms, stating that Adidas failed to open Yeezy retail stores as promised. In September 2022, West stated that he would not renew his contract with Adidas once their partnership expires in 2026.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: On October 7, 2022, Adidas placed its partnership with Ye under review after he made several antisemitic remarks and wore a "White Lives Matter" T-shirt at a Paris Fashion Week show a few days earlier. A social media campaign demanding that Adidas cut ties with West began. West continued to make antisemitic remarks through Instagram, Twitter, interviews, and podcasts, stating "I can say antisemitic shit and Adidas cannot drop me". In response to this behavior, Balenciaga, "Vogue", Creative Artists Agency and MRC cut ties with West. Pressure on Adidas grew after the Goyim Defense League, an antisemitic hate group, endorsed West.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: On October 25, Adidas announced an immediate end to the line, writing: "Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness." The production of Yeezy-branded products and payments to West ended upon announcement. Yeezy generated $2 billion in annual sales for Adidas, making up around 10% of the brand's total revenue. Adidas said the termination was expected to "have a short-term negative impact of up to $250 million". According to "Forbes", West's net worth dropped from $2 billion to $400 million because of the deal's end.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: "Yeezy Season 1" was released on October 29, 2015, and was the first apparel collection to release from this collaboration. This collection was noted for its stripped-down, ready-to-wear style, which drew on military clothing and flesh-toned colors. The prices ranged from $600 for sweatpants to $3,000 for jackets. Although the footwear sold out quickly, the apparel collection did not. West revealed in a 2018 interview that he was in talks with Louis Vuitton for a $30 million apparel deal. The deal was not approved by the LVMH board and West was left with no clothing partners. After the "Yeezy Season 1" show, Adidas announced it would no longer be a part of Yeezy apparel, instead focusing on the footwear collection with West.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: With Yeezy Season 4 Adidas and West re-introduced several articles of clothing with Adidas branding. Season 6 premiered in January 2018, with an ad campaign featuring porn star Lela Star (noted for her resemblance to Kim Kardashian), as well as Paris Hilton and other models. The participants were made up to look like Kardashian. West would later use Star again as a model for a June 2018 shoe campaign.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: Adidas Yeezy sneakers were popularized by celebrities. Most of the shoes utilize Adidas's Boost material.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: On December 3, 2013, Adidas confirmed a new shoe collaboration deal with West. The initial release of the Adidas Yeezy Boost 750 "Light Brown" was limited to only 9000 pairs and sold out within 10 minutes. Between February 21 and February 28, the Yeezy Boost 750 "Light Brown" was available through a wider range of retailers and boutiques.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: On June 27, 2015, the second shoe from the collaboration, the Yeezy Boost 350 was made available through a worldwide release. The Yeezy Boost 350 marked an entry into primeknit technology, utilizing flat knitting machinery amalgamated with synthetic yarns. A preliminary version was made of a combination of petroleum-based ethylene-vinyl acetate and foam generated from algae. In October 2015, Footwear News recognized the Yeezy Boost 350 with their Shoe of the Year award. In August 2016, GQ recognized Yeezy Boost 350 as the most influential shoe of the year.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: On September 24, 2016, a second version of the shoe, known as Yeezy Boost 350 V2, debuted in a colorway called “Beluga.”


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Yeezy 950 was first released on October 29, 2015 at select retail stores and online. It was part of the Yeezy season 1 collection and came in four different colorways: Peyote, Moonrock, Chocolate, and Pirate black. Each shoe was retailed at $399. "The Adidas Yeezy 950 extended the partnership outside of the sneaker space with its military duckboot inspired design. There are more releases of more Yeezy shoes than have been successful (2015- past 2021) that show Yeezy brand as more prudent for consumers."


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Adidas Yeezy 350 Football Boost cleat was for football and it had made its first appearance in a 2016 NFL kickoff game. Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins was fined $6,000 for wearing the cleats because they broke the NFL uniform policy by not having a solid base color.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Adidas Powerphase Calabasas was released on March 28, 2017. "The retro sneakers are an update of an Adidas trainer from the ’80s. They feature a premium white leather upper with perforated stripes, green Adidas branding, and a red Trefoil logo." A tonal grey colorway released globally on December 9, 2017 for a retail price of $120; a "Core Black" colorway released shortly after on March 17, 2018. After the initial three colorways of the Yeezy Powerphase Calabasas, Adidas continued releasing several Powerphase models without the Yeezy Calabasas branding. Adidas then brought back the '80s Adidas Trainer model that is the "YEEZY-Inspired Powerphase Model."


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Adidas Yeezy Boost 700 debuted during the Yeezy Season 5 fashion show in 2017. The shoe was released on August 12, 2017, for $300, exclusively via Yeezy Supply. At the time, two colorways of white/gum and black were also expected to release in 2018.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: On March 23, 2019, the 700 V2 “Geode” colorway was released synchronously with a nationwide lemonade stand charity campaign raising money for the National Alliance of Mental Illness.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: On December 23, 2019, a third version of the 700 series, known as Yeezy 700 V3, debuted in a colorway called “Azael.”


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: A new variation of the 700 series, the Yeezy Boost 700 MNVN, debuted in a colorway known as “Triple Black” on February 8, 2020. Similar to previous models, the shoe differs by displaying the “700” branding on the upper using compact materials.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Adidas Yeezy 500 was released in December 2017, as a pre-order with delivery slated for March 2018. The debut colorway was known as "Desert Rat."


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: A high-top variation of the model, known as the Yeezy 500 High, was released in December 2019. The debut colorway was known as “Slate.” The following releases including "Blush", "Enflame" and "Clay".


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The first Adidas Yeezy Boost 380 was released in December 2019, as a surprise release on West's clothing launch site Yeezy Supply. The debut colorway was known as "Alien."


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: Adidas Yeezy slides are lightweight slippers that are easy to put on and off, released in December 2019.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: These open toe slippers are produced with soft Eva foam in the footbed and outsole, as a single monolithic piece. The durable and heightened sole is useful outdoors as well.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Yeezy QNTM BSKTBL was released in the Spring of 2020 and serves as a performance version of the Yeezy QNTM (Lifestyle Model) geared for the hardwood.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Yeezy Foam Runner is the first Adidas Yeezy shoe made in the United States and first released exclusively through Yeezy Supply on June 26, 2020. The shoe retailed for $75 and was partially made of harvested algae (EVA). The debut colorway was known as "Ararat".


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Adidas Yeezy 450 debuted on March 6, 2021 with a debut colorway called "Cloud White", which was later followed by the "Dark Slate" colorway. The shoe retailed at $200 USD.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Adidas Yeezy Knit Runner (stylized as Knit RNR) debuted on September 23, 2021, with a debut colorway called "Sulfur." The shoe retailed at $200 USD. The Knit Runner takes inspiration from the Yeezy Foam Runner silhouette while being predominantly made of knitted material.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Adidas Yeezy NSLTD BT meaning "Insulated Boot") debuted on November 5, 2021, with a debut colorway called "Khaki." These boots retailed at $340 USD.


title: Adidas Yeezy

text: The Adidas Yeezy 1050 was shown first back in July 28th, 2021 during one of Ye's listening parties in the Atlanta Mercedes-Benz Stadium for his 10th studio album, Donda, which was worn along with his other Yeezy appearal. The first colorway is called "Hi-Res" as an orange hightop yet shaped as a skinny kind of boot. The release date for this item is still unknown yet speculated to retail for $400 USD.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The Lost Cause of the Confederacy (or simply Lost Cause) is an American pseudohistorical negationist mythology that claims the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. First enunciated in 1866, it has continued to influence racism, gender roles and religious attitudes in the South to the present day.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Lost Cause proponents typically praise the traditional culture of honor and chivalry of the antebellum South. They argue that enslaved people were treated well and deny that their condition was the central cause of the war, contrary to statements made by Confederate leaders, such as in the Cornerstone Speech. Instead, they frame the war as a defense of states' rights, and as necessary to protect their agrarian economy against supposed Northern aggression. The Union victory is thus explained as the result of its greater size and industrial wealth, while the Confederate side is portrayed as having greater morality and military skill. Modern historians overwhelmingly disagree with these characterizations, noting that the central cause of the war was slavery.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: There were two intense periods of Lost Cause activity: the first was around the turn of the 20th century, when efforts were made to preserve the memories of dying Confederate veterans, and the second was during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, in reaction to growing public support for racial equality. Through actions such as building prominent Confederate monuments and writing history textbooks, Lost Cause organizations (including the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans) sought to ensure Southern whites would know what they called the "true" narrative of the Civil War, and therefore continue to support white supremacist policies such as Jim Crow laws. In that regard, white supremacy is a central feature of the Lost Cause narrative.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Though the idea of the Lost Cause has more than one origin, it consists mainly of an argument that slavery was not the primary cause, or not a cause at all, of the Civil War. Such a narrative denies or minimizes the statements of the seceding states, each of which issued a statement explaining its decision to secede, and the wartime writings and speeches of Confederate leaders, such as CSA Vice President Alexander Stephens's Cornerstone Speech, instead favoring the leaders' more moderate postwar views. The Lost Cause argument stresses the idea of secession as a defense against a Northern threat to a Southern way of life, and says that the threat violated the states' rights guaranteed by the Constitution. It asserts that any state had the right to secede, a point strongly denied by the North. The Lost Cause portrays the South as more adherent to Christian values than the allegedly greedy North. It portrays slavery as more benevolent than cruel, alleging that it taught Christianity and "civilization". Stories of happy slaves are often used as propaganda in an effort to defend slavery; the United Daughters of the Confederacy had a "Faithful Slave Memorial Committee" and erected the Heyward Shepherd monument in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. These stories would be used to explain slavery to Northerners. The Lost Cause portrays slave owners being kind to their slaves. In explaining Confederate defeat, an assertion is made that the main factor was not qualitative inferiority in leadership or fighting ability but the massive quantitative superiority of the Yankee industrial machine. At the peak of troop strength in 1863, Union soldiers outnumbered Confederate soldiers by over two to one, and the Union had three times the bank deposits of the Confederacy.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The defeat of the Confederacy devastated many white Southerners economically, emotionally, and psychologically. Before the war, many proudly believed that their rich military tradition would avail them in the forthcoming conflict. Many sought consolation in attributing their loss to factors beyond their control, such as physical size and overwhelming brute force.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The Lost Cause became a key part of the reconciliation process between North and South around 1900 and formed the basis of many white Southerners' postbellum war commemorations. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, a major organization, has been associated with the Lost Cause for over a century.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Yale University history professor Rollin G. Osterweis summarizes the content that pervaded "Lost Cause" writings:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The term "Lost Cause" first appeared in the title of an 1866 book by the Virginian author and journalist Edward A. Pollard, "The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates". He promoted many of the aforementioned themes of the Lost Cause. In particular, he dismissed the role of slavery in starting the war and understated the cruelty of American slavery, even promoting it as a way of improving the lives of Africans:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: However, it was the articles written by General Jubal A. Early in the 1870s for the Southern Historical Society that firmly established the Lost Cause as a long-lasting literary and cultural phenomenon. The 1881 publication of "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" by ex-Confederate President Jefferson Davis, a two-volume defense of the Southern cause, provided another important text in the history of the Lost Cause. Davis blamed the enemy for "whatever of bloodshed, of devastation, or shock to republican government has resulted from the war". He charged that the Yankees fought "with a ferocity that disregarded all the laws of civilized warfare". The book remained in print and often served to justify the Southern position and to distance it from slavery.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Early's original inspiration for his views may have come from Confederate General Robert E. Lee. When Lee published his farewell order to the Army of Northern Virginia, he consoled his soldiers by speaking of the "overwhelming resources and numbers" that the Confederate army had fought against. In a letter to Early, Lee requested information about enemy strengths from May 1864 to April 1865, the period in which his army was engaged against Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant (the Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg). Lee wrote, "My only object is to transmit, if possible, the truth to posterity, and do justice to our brave Soldiers." In another letter, Lee wanted all "statistics as regards numbers, destruction of private property by the Federal troops, &c." because he intended to demonstrate the discrepancy in strength between the two armies and believed it would "be difficult to get the world to understand the odds against which we fought". Referring to newspaper accounts that accused him of culpability in the loss, he wrote, "I have not thought proper to notice, or even to correct misrepresentations of my words & acts. We shall have to be patient, & suffer for awhile at least... At present the public mind is not prepared to receive the truth." All of the themes were made prominent by Early and the Lost Cause writers in the 19th century and continued to play an important role throughout the 20th.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In a November 1868 report, U.S. Army general George Henry Thomas, a Virginian who had fought for the Union in the war, noted efforts made by former Confederates to paint the Confederacy in a positive light:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Memorial associations such as the United Confederate Veterans, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and Ladies Memorial Associations integrated Lost-Cause themes to help white Confederate-sympathizing Southerners cope with the many changes during the era, most significantly Reconstruction. The institutions have lasted to the present and descendants of Southern soldiers continue to attend their meetings.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In 1879, John McElroy published "Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons", which strongly criticized the Confederate treatment of prisoners and implied in the preface that the mythology of the Confederacy was well established and that criticism of the otherwise-lionized Confederates was met with disdain:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In 1907, Hunter Holmes McGuire, physician of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, published in a book papers sponsored by the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans of Virginia, supporting the Lost Cause tenets that "slavery [was] not the cause of the war" and that "the North [was] the aggressor in bringing on the war". The book quickly sold out and required a second edition.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: American historian Alan T. Nolan states that the Lost Cause "facilitated the reunification of the North and the South". He quotes historian Gaines M. Foster, who wrote that "signs of respect from former foes and northern publishers made acceptance of reunion easier. By the mid-eighties, most southerners had decided to build a future within a reunited nation. A few remained irreconcilable, but their influence in southern society declined rapidly." Nolan mentioned a second aspect: "The reunion was exclusively a white man's phenomenon and the price of the reunion was the sacrifice of the African Americans."


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In exploring the literature of reconciliation, the historian William Tynes Cowa wrote, "The cult of the Lost Cause was part of a larger cultural project: the reconciliation of North and South after the Civil War". He identified a typical image in postwar fiction: a materialistic, rich Yankee man marrying an impoverished spiritual Southern bride as a symbol of happy national reunion. Examining films and visual art, Gallagher identified the theme of "white people North and South [who] extol the "American" virtues both sides manifested during the war, to exalt the restored nation that emerged from the conflict, and to mute the role of African Americans".


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Historian and journalist Bruce Catton argued that the myth or legend helped achieve national reconciliation between North and South. He concluded that "the legend of the lost cause has served the entire country very well", and he went on to say:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Historians have stated that the "Lost Cause" theme helped white Southerners adjust to their new status and move forward into what became known as "the New South". Hillyer states that the Confederate Memorial Literary Society (CMLS), founded by elite white women in Richmond, Virginia, in the 1890s, exemplifies that solution. The CMLS founded the Confederate Museum to document and to defend the Confederate cause and to recall the antebellum mores that the new South's business ethos was thought to be displacing. By focusing on military sacrifice, rather than on grievances regarding the North, the Confederate Museum aided the process of sectional reconciliation, according to Hillyer. By depicting slavery as benevolent, the museum's exhibits reinforced the notion that Jim Crow laws were a proper solution to the racial tensions that had escalated during Reconstruction. Lastly, by glorifying the common soldier and portraying the South as "solid", the museum promoted acceptance of industrial capitalism. Thus the Confederate Museum both critiqued and eased the economic transformations of the New South and enabled Richmond to reconcile its memory of the past with its hopes for the future and to leave the past behind as it developed new industrial and financial roles.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall stated that the Lost-Cause theme was fully developed around 1900 in a mood not of despair but of triumphalism for the New South. Much was left out of the Lost Cause:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The Virginian Moses Jacob Ezekiel, the most prominent , was the only sculptor to have seen action during the Civil War. From his studio in Rome, where a Confederate flag hung proudly, he created a series of statues of Confederate "heroes" which both celebrated the Lost Cause in which he was a "true believer", and set a highly visible model for Confederate monument-erecting in the early 20th century.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: According to journalist Lara Moehlman, "Ezekiel's work is integral to this sympathetic view of the Civil War". His Confederate statues included:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Kali Holloway, director of the Make It Right Project, devoted to the removal of Confederate monuments, has said that:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: No writer did more to establish the Lost Cause than Thomas Dixon Jr. (1864–1946), a Southern lecturer, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, and Baptist minister.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Dixon predicted a "race war" if current trends continued unchecked that he believed white people would surely win, having "3,000 years of civilization in their favor". He also considered efforts to educate and civilize African Americans futile, even dangerous, and said that an African American was "all right" as a slave or laborer "but as an educated man he is a monstrosity". In the short term, Dixon saw white racial prejudice as "self preservation", and he worked to propagate a pro-Southern view of the recent Reconstruction period and spread it nationwide. He decried portrayals of Southerners as cruel and villainous in popular works such as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852), seeking to counteract these portrayals with his own work.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: He was a noted lecturer, often getting many more invitations to speak than he was capable of accepting. Moreover, he regularly drew very large crowds, larger than any other Protestant preacher in the United States at the time, and newspapers frequently reported on his sermons and addresses.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: He resigned his minister's job so as to devote himself to lecturing full-time and supported his family that way. He had an immense following, and "his name had become a household word." In a typical review of the time, his talk was "decidedly entertaining and instructive... There were great beds of solid thought, and timely instruction at the bottom".


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Between 1899 and 1903, he was heard by more than 5,000,000 people; his play "" was seen by over 4,000,000. He was commonly referred to as the best lecturer in the country. He enjoyed a "handsome income" from lectures and royalties on his novels, especially from his share of "The Birth of a Nation". He bought a "steam yacht" and named it Dixie.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: After seeing a theatrical version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", "he became obsessed with writing a trilogy of novels about the Reconstruction period." The trilogy comprised "The Leopard's Spots. A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865–1900" (1902), "" (1905), and "The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire" (1907). "Each of his trilogy novels had developed that black-and-white battle through rape/lynching scenarios that are always represented as prefiguring total racewar, should elite white men fail to resolve the nation's 'Negro Problem'." Dixon also wrote a novel about Abraham Lincoln"The Southerner" (1913), "the story of what Davis called 'the real Lincoln'"another, "The Man in Grey" (1921), on Robert E. Lee, and one on Jefferson Davis, "The Victim" (1914).


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Dixon's most popular novels were "The Leopard's Spots" and "The Clansman." Their influential spin-off, "The Birth of a Nation" movie (1915), was the first film shown in the White House and repeated the next day to the entire Supreme Court, 38 Senators, and the Secretary of the Navy.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The basic assumptions of the Lost Cause have proved durable for many in the modern South. The Lost Cause tenets frequently emerge during controversies surrounding public display of the Confederate flag and various state flags. The historian John Coski noted that the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), the "most visible, active, and effective defender of the flag", "carried forward into the twenty-first century, virtually unchanged, the Lost Cause historical interpretations and ideological vision formulated at the turn of the twentieth". Coski wrote concerning "the flag wars of the late twentieth century":


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The Confederate States used several flags during its existence from 1861 to 1865. Since the end of the American Civil War, the personal and official use of Confederate flags and flags derived from them has continued under considerable controversy. The second state flag of Mississippi, adopted in 1894 after the state's so-called "Redemption" and relinquished in 2020 during the George Floyd protests, included the Confederate battle flag. The city flag of Trenton, Georgia, which incorporates the Confederate battle flag, was adopted in 2001 as a protest against the Georgia General Assembly voting to significantly reduce the size of the Confederate battle flag on their state flag. The city flag of Trenton greatly resembles the former state flag of Georgia.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: On March 23, 2015, a Confederate-flag-related case reached the Supreme Court of the United States. "Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans" centered on whether or not the state of Texas could deny a request by the SCV for vanity license plates that incorporated a Confederate battle flag. The Court heard the case on March 23, 2015. On June 18, 2015, the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 vote, held that Texas was entitled to reject the SCV proposal.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In October 2015, outrage erupted online following the discovery of a Texan school's geography textbook, which described slaves as "immigrants" and "workers". The publisher, McGraw-Hill, announced that it would change the wording.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Charles Wilson argues that many white Southerners, most of whom were conservative and pious evangelical Protestants, sought reasons for the Confederacy's defeat in religion. They felt that the Confederacy's defeat in the war was God's punishment for their sins and motivated by this belief, they increasingly turned to religion as their source of solace. The postwar era saw the birth of a regional "civil religion" which was heavily laden with symbolism and ritual; clergymen were this new religion's primary celebrants. Wilson says that the ministers constructed


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: On both a cultural and religious level, white southerners tried to defend what their defeat in 1865 made impossible for them to defend on a political level. The Lost Cause, the South's defeat in a holy war, left southerners to face guilt, doubt, and the triumph of evil and they faced them by forming what C. Vann Woodward called a uniquely Southern sense of the tragedy of history.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Poole stated that in fighting to defeat the Republican Reconstruction government in South Carolina in 1876, white conservative Democrats portrayed the Lost Cause scenario through "Hampton Days" celebrations and shouted, "Hampton or Hell!" They staged the contest between Reconstruction opponent and Democratic candidate Wade Hampton and incumbent Governor Daniel H. Chamberlain as a religious struggle between good and evil and called for "redemption". Indeed, throughout the South, the Democrats who overthrew Reconstruction were frequently called "Redeemers", echoing Christian theology.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Among writers on the Lost Cause, gender roles were a contested domain. Men typically honored the role which women played during the war by noting their total loyalty to the cause. Women, however, developed a much different approach to the cause by emphasizing female activism, initiative, and leadership. They explained that when all of the men left, the women took command, found substitute foods, rediscovered their old traditional skills with the spinning wheel when factory cloth became unavailable, and ran all of the farm or plantation operations. They faced apparent danger without having men to perform the traditional role of being their protectors.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The popularization of the Lost Cause interpretation and the erection of monuments was primarily the work of Southern women, the center of which was the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The duty of memorializing the Confederate dead was a major activity for Southerners who were devoted to the Lost Cause, and chapters of the UDC played a central role in performing it. The UDC was especially influential across the South in the early 20th century, where its main role was to preserve and uphold the memory of Confederate veterans, especially the husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers who died in the war. Its long-term impact was to promote the Lost Cause image of the antebellum plantation South as an idealized society which was crushed by the forces of Yankee modernization, which also undermined traditional gender roles. In Missouri, a border state, the UDC was active in setting up its own system of memorials.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The Southern states set up their own pension systems for veterans and their dependents, especially for widows, since none of them was eligible to receive pensions under the federal pension system. The pensions were designed to honor the Lost Cause and reduce the severe poverty which was prevalent in the region. Male applicants for pensions had to demonstrate their continued loyalty to the "lost cause". Female applicants for pensions were rejected if their moral reputations were in question.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In Natchez, Mississippi, the local newspapers and veterans played a role in the maintenance of the Lost Cause. However, elite white women were central in establishing memorials such as the Civil War Monument which was dedicated on Memorial Day 1890. The Lost Cause enabled women noncombatants to lay a claim to the central event in their redefinition of Southern history.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The UDC was quite prominent but not at all unique in its appeal to upscale white Southern women. "The number of women's clubs devoted to filiopietism and history was staggering," stated historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage. He noted two typical club women in Texas and Mississippi who between them belonged to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, the Daughters of the Pilgrims, the Daughters of the War of 1812, the Daughters of Colonial Governors, and the Daughters of the Founders and Patriots of America, the Order of the First Families of Virginia, and the Colonial Dames of America as well as a few other historically-oriented societies. Comparable men, on the other hand, were much less interested in belonging to historical organizations; instead, they devoted themselves to secret fraternal societies and emphasized athletic, political, and financial exploits in order to prove their manhood. Brundage notes that after women's suffrage came in 1920, the historical role of the women's organizations eroded.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: These women architects of whites' historical memory, by both explaining and mystifying the historical roots of white supremacy and elite power in the South, performed a conspicuous civic function at a time of heightened concern about the perpetuation of social and political hierarchies. Although denied the franchise, organized white women nevertheless played a dominant role in crafting the historical memory that would inform and undergird southern politics and public life.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The most powerful images and symbols of the Lost Cause were Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Pickett's Charge. David Ulbrich wrote, "Already revered during the war, Robert E. Lee acquired a divine mystique within Southern culture after it. Remembered as a leader whose soldiers would loyally follow him into every fight no matter how desperate, Lee emerged from the conflict to become an icon of the Lost Cause and the ideal of the antebellum Southern gentleman, an honorable and pious man who selflessly served Virginia and the Confederacy. Lee's tactical brilliance at Second Bull Run and Chancellorsville took on legendary status, and despite his accepting full responsibility for the defeat at Gettysburg, Lee remained largely infallible for Southerners and was spared criticism even from historians until recent times."


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In terms of Lee's subordinates, the key villain in Jubal Early's view was General Longstreet. Although Lee took all responsibility for the defeats (particularly the one at Gettysburg), Early's writings place the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg squarely on Longstreet's shoulders by accusing him of failing to attack early in the morning of July 2, 1863, as instructed by Lee. In fact, however, Lee never expressed dissatisfaction with the second-day actions of his "Old War Horse". Longstreet was widely disparaged by Southern veterans because of his postwar cooperation with US President Ulysses S. Grant with whom he had shared a close friendship before the war and for joining the Republican Party. Grant, in rejecting the Lost Cause arguments, said in an 1878 interview that he rejected the notion that the South had simply been overwhelmed by numbers. Grant wrote, "This is the way public opinion was made during the war and this is the way history is made now. We never overwhelmed the South... What we won from the South we won by hard fighting." Grant further noted that when comparing resources, the "4,000,000 of negroes" who "kept the farms, protected the families, supported the armies, and were really a reserve force" were not treated as a southern asset.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: One essential element of the Lost Cause movement was that the act of secession itself had been legitimate; otherwise, all of the Confederacy's leading figures would have become traitors to the United States. To legitimize the Confederacy's rebellion, Lost Cause intellectuals challenged the legitimacy of the federal government and the actions of Abraham Lincoln as president. That was exemplified in "Force or Consent as the Basis of American Government" by Mary Scrugham in which she presented frivolous arguments against the legality of Lincoln's presidency. They include his receiving a minority and unmentioned plurality of the popular vote in the 1860 election and the false assertion that he made his position on slavery ambiguous. The accusations, though thoroughly refuted, gave rise to the belief that the North initiated the Civil War, making a designation of "The War of Northern Aggression" possible as one of the names of the American Civil War.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: On the title page, Dixon cited Jeremiah 13:23: "Can the Ethiopian change his color, or the Leopard his spots?" He argued that just as the leopard cannot change his spots, the Negro cannot change his nature. The novel aimed to reinforce the superiority of the "Anglo-Saxon" race and advocate either for white dominance of black people or for the separation of the two races. According to historian and Dixon biographer Richard Allen Cook, "the Negro, according to Dixon, is a brute, not a citizen: a child of a degenerate race brought from Africa." Dixon expounded the views in "The Times" of Philadelphia while he discussed the novel in 1902: "The negro is a human donkey. You can train him, but you can't make of him a horse." Dixon described the "towering figure of the freed negro" as "growing more and more ominous, until its menace overshadows the poverty, the hunger, the sorrows and the devastation of the South, throwing the blight of its shadow over future generations, a veritable black death for the land and its people." Using characters from "Uncle Tom's Cabin", he shows the "happy slave" who is now, free and manipulated by carpetbaggers, unproductive and disrespectful, and he believed that freedmen constantly pursued sexual relations with white women. In Dixon's work, the heroic Ku Klux Klan protects American women. "It is emphatically a man's book," said Dixon to "The Times".


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The novel, which "blazes with oratorial fireworks", "attracted attention as soon as it came from the press", and more than 100,000 copies were quickly sold. "Sales eventually passed the million mark; numerous foreign translations of the work appeared; and Dixon's fame was international."


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In "The Clansman", the best known of the three novels, Dixon similarly claimed, "I have sought to preserve in this romance both the letter and the spirit of this remarkable period... "The Clansman" develops the true story of the 'Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy', which overturned the Reconstruction regime."


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: "Lincoln is pictured as a kind, sympathetic man who is trying bravely to sustain his policies despite the pressures upon him to have a more vindictive attitude toward the Southern states." Reconstruction was an attempt by Augustus Stoneman, a thinly-veiled reference to US Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, "the greatest and vilest man who ever trod the halls of the American Congress", to ensure that the Republican Party would stay in power by securing the Southern black vote. Stoneman's hatred for US President Andrew Johnson stems from Johnson's refusal to disenfranchise Southern whites. Stoneman's anger towards former slaveholders is intensified after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and Stoneman vows revenge on the South. His programs strip away the land owned by whites and give it to former slaves, as with the traditional idea of "forty acres and a mule". Men claiming to represent the government confiscate the material wealth of the South and destroy plantation-owning families. Finally, the former slaves are taught that they are superior to their former owners and should rise against them. These alleged injustices were the impetus for the creation of the Ku Klux Klan. "Mr. Dixon's purpose here is to show that the original formers of the Ku Klux Klan were modern knights errant, taking the only means at hand to right wrongs." Dixon's father belonged to the Klan, and his maternal uncle and boyhood idol, Col. Leroy McAfee, to whom "The Clansman" is dedicated, was a regional leader or, in the words of the dedication, "Grand Titan of the invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan".


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The depiction of the Klan's burning of crosses, as shown in the illustrations of the first edition, is an innovation of Dixon. It had not previously been used by the Klan, but was later taken up by them.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: "In Dixon's passionate prose, the book also treats at considerable length the poverty, shame, and degradation suffered by the Southerners at the hands of the Negroes and unscrupulous Northeners." Martial law is declared, US troops are sent in, as they were during Reconstruction. "The victory of the South was complete when the Klan defeats the federal troups throughout the state."


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: To publicize his views further, Dixon rewrote "The Clansman" as a play. Like the novel, it was a great commercial success; there were multiple touring companies presenting the play simultaneously in different cities. Sometimes, it was banned. "Birth of a Nation" is actually based on the play, which was unpublished until 2007, rather than directly on the novel.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Another prominent and influential popularizer of the Lost Cause perspective was D. W. Griffith's highly-successful "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), which was based on Dixon's novel. Noting that Dixon and Griffith collaborated on "Birth of a Nation", Blight wrote:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Dixon's vicious version of the idea that blacks had caused the Civil War by their very presence, and that Northern radicalism during Reconstruction failed to understand that freedom had ushered blacks as a race into barbarism, neatly framed the story of the rise of heroic vigilantism in the South. Reluctantly, Klansmen—white men—had to take the law into their own hands in order to save Southern white womanhood from the sexual brutality of black men. Dixon's vision captured the attitude of thousands and forged in story form a collective memory of how the war may have been lost but Reconstruction was won—by the South and a reconciled nation. Riding as masked cavalry, the Klan stopped corrupt government, prevented the anarchy of 'Negro rule' and most of all, saved white supremacy.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In both "The Clansman" and the film, the Klan is portrayed as continuing the noble traditions of the antebellum South and the heroic Confederate soldier by defending Southern culture in general and Southern womanhood in particular against rape and depredations at the hands of the freedmen and Yankee carpetbaggers during Reconstruction. Dixon's narrative was so readily adopted that the film has been credited with the revival of the Klan in the 1910s and 1920s. The second Klan, which Dixon denounced, reached a peak membership of 2-5 million members. The film's legacy is widereaching in the history of American racism, and even the now-iconic cross burnings of the KKK were based on Dixon's novel and the film made of it. The first KKK did not burn crosses, which was originally a Scottish tradition, "Crann Tara", designed to gather clans for war.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The romanticization of the Lost Cause is captured in film, such as "The Birth of a Nation", "Gone With the Wind", "Song of the South", and "Tennessee Johnson"the latter of which the "San Francisco Chronicle" called "the height of Southern mythmaking". "Gods and Generals" reportedly lionizes Jackson and Lee. "CNN" reported that these films "recast the antebellum South as a moonlight and magnolia paradise of happy slaves, affectionate slave owners and villainous Yankees".


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: In his novels about the Sartoris family, William Faulkner referenced those who supported the Lost Cause ideal but suggested that the ideal itself was misguided and out of date.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The "Confederate Veteran", a monthly magazine published in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1893 to 1932, made its publisher, Sumner Archibald Cunningham, a leader of the Lost Cause movement.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The Lost Cause view reached tens of millions of Americans in the best-selling 1936 novel "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell and the Oscar-winning 1939 film. Helen Taylor wrote:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: "Gone with the Wind" has almost certainly done its ideological work. It has sealed in popular imaginations a fascinated nostalgia for the glamorous southern plantation house and ordered hierarchical society in which slaves are 'family,' and there is a mystical bond between the landowner and the rich soil those slaves work for him. It has spoken eloquently—albeit from an elitist perspective—of the grand themes (war, love, death, conflicts of race, class, gender, and generation) that have crossed continents and cultures.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: From this combination of Lost Cause voices, a reunited America arose pure, guiltless, and assured that the deep conflicts in its past had been imposed upon it by otherworldly forces. The side that lost was especially assured that its cause was true and good. One of the ideas the reconciliationist Lost Cause instilled deeply into the national culture is that even when Americans lose, they win. Such was the message, the indomitable spirit, that Margaret Mitchell infused into her character Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind" ...


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Southerners were portrayed as noble, heroic figures, living in a doomed romantic society that rejected the realistic advice offered by the Rhett Butler character and never understood the risk that they were taking in going to war.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The 1946 Disney film "Song of the South" is the first to have combined live actors with animated shorts. In the framing story, the actor James Baskett played Uncle Remus, a former slave who apparently is full of joy and wisdom despite having lived part of his life in slavery. There is a common misconception that the story takes place in the antebellum period and that the African-American characters are slaves. One critic said, "Like other similar films of the period also dealing with the antebellum South, the slaves in the film are all good-natured, subservient, annoyingly cheerful, content and always willing to help a white person in need with some valuable life lesson along the way. In fact, they're never called slaves, but they come off more like neighborly workers lending a helping hand for some kind, benevolent plantation owners." Disney has never released it on DVD and the film has been withheld from Disney+. It was released on VHS in the United Kingdom several times, most recently in 2000.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The 2003 Civil War film "Gods and Generals", based on Jeff Shaara's 1996 novel, is widely viewed as championing the Lost Cause ideology with a presentation favorable to the Confederacy and lionizing Generals Jackson and Lee.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Writing in the "Journal of American History", the historian Steven E. Woodworth derided the movie as a modern-day telling of Lost Cause mythology. Woodworth called the movie "the most pro-Confederate film since "Birth of a Nation", a veritable celluloid celebration of slavery and treason". He summed up his reasons for disliking the movie:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Woodworth criticized the portrayal of slaves as being "generally happy" with their condition. He also criticized the relative lack of attention given to the motivations of Union soldiers fighting in the war. He excoriates the film for allegedly implying, in agreement with Lost Cause mythology, that the South was more "sincerely Christian". Woodworth concluded that the film through "judicial omission" presents "a distorted view of the Civil War".


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The historian William B. Feis similarly criticized the director's decision "to champion the more simplistic-and sanitized-interpretations found in post-war "Lost Cause" mythology". The film critic Roger Ebert described the movie as "a Civil War movie that Trent Lott might enjoy" and said of its Lost Cause themes, "If World War II were handled this way, there'd be hell to pay."


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Professor Gallagher contended that Douglas Southall Freeman's definitive four-volume biography of Lee, published in 1934, "cemented in American letters an interpretation of Lee very close to Early's utterly heroic figure". In that work, Lee's subordinates were primarily to blame for errors that lost battles. While Longstreet was the most common target of such attacks, others came under fire as well. Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, J. E. B. Stuart, A. P. Hill, George Pickett, and many others were frequently attacked and blamed by Southerners in an attempt to deflect criticism from Lee.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Hudson Strode wrote a widely read scholarly three-volume biography of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, published in the 1950s and 1960s. A leading scholarly journal that reviewed it stressed Strode's political biases:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: His [Jefferson Davis's] enemies are devils, and his friends, like Davis himself, have been canonized. Strode not only attempts to sanctify Davis but also the Confederate point of view, and this study should be relished by those vigorously sympathetic with the Lost Cause.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: One Dallas newspaper editorial in 2018 referred to the Texas Civil War Museum as "a lovely bit of 'Lost Cause' propaganda".


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: While not limited to the American South specifically, the Stop the Steal movement in the wake of the 2020 US presidential election has been interpreted as a reemergence of the Lost Cause idea and a manifestation of white backlash.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Contemporary historians overwhelmingly agree that secession was motivated by slavery. There were numerous causes for secession, but preservation and expansion of slavery was easily the most important of them. The confusion may come from blending the causes of secession with the causes of the war, which were separate but related issues. (Lincoln entered a military conflict not to free the slaves but to put down a rebellion or, as he put it, to preserve the Union.) According to the historian Kenneth M. Stampp, each side supported states' rights or federal power only when it was convenient for it to do so. Stampp also cited Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens's "A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States" as an example of a Southern leader who said that slavery was the "cornerstone of the Confederacy" when the war began and later said after his defeat that the war had not been about slavery but states' rights. According to Stampp, Stephens became one of the most ardent defenders of the 'Lost Cause' myth.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Similarly, the historian William C. Davis explained the Confederate Constitution's protection of slavery at the national level:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: To the old Union they had said that the Federal power had no authority to interfere with slavery issues in a state. To their new nation they would declare that the state had no power to interfere with a federal protection of slavery. Of all the many testimonials to the fact that slavery, and not states' rights, really lay at the heart of their movement, this was the most eloquent of all.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: Davis further noted, "Causes and effects of the war have been manipulated and mythologized to suit political and social agendas, past and present." The historian David Blight said that "its use of white supremacy as both means and ends" has been a key characteristic of the Lost Cause. The historian Allan Nolan wrote:


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: ... the Lost Cause legacy to history is a caricature of the truth. The caricature wholly misrepresents and distorts the facts of the matter. Surely it is time to start again in our understanding of this decisive element of our past and to do so from the premises of history unadulterated by the distortions, falsehoods, and romantic sentimentality of the Myth of the Lost Cause.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The historian William C. Davis labeled many of the myths which surround the war "frivolous" and these myths include attempts to rename the war by "Confederate partisans." He also stated that names such as "War of Northern Aggression" and "War Between the States" (the latter being an expression coined by Alexander Stephens) were just attempts to deny the fact that the American Civil War was an actual civil war.


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: The historian A. Cash Koeniger theorized that Gary Gallagher has mischaracterized films which depict the Lost Cause. He wrote that Gallagher


title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy

text: ... concedes that "Lost Cause themes" (with the important exception of minimizing the importance of slavery) are based on historical truths (p. 46). Confederate soldiers were often outnumbered, ragged, and hungry; southern civilians did endure much material deprivation and a disproportionate amount of bereavement; U.S. forces did wreck "" havoc on southern infrastructure and private property and the like, yet whenever these points appear in films Gallagher considers them motifs "celebratory" of the Confederacy (p. 81).


title: Fermat's Last Theorem

text: In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been known since antiquity to have infinitely many solutions.


title: Fermat's Last Theorem

text: The proposition was first stated as a theorem by Pierre de Fermat around 1637 in the margin of a copy of "Arithmetica". Fermat added that he had a proof that was too large to fit in the margin. Although other statements claimed by Fermat without proof were subsequently proven by others and credited as theorems of Fermat (for example, Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares), Fermat's Last Theorem resisted proof, leading to doubt that Fermat ever had a correct proof. Consequently the proposition became known as a conjecture rather than a theorem. After 358 years of effort by mathematicians, the first successful proof was released in 1994 by Andrew Wiles and formally published in 1995. It was described as a "stunning advance" in the citation for Wiles's Abel Prize award in 2016. It also proved much of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture, subsequently known as the modularity theorem, and opened up entire new approaches to numerous other problems and mathematically powerful modularity lifting techniques.


title: Fermat's Last Theorem

text: The unsolved problem stimulated the development of algebraic number theory in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is among the most notable theorems in the history of mathematics and prior to its proof was in the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the "most difficult mathematical problem", in part because the theorem has the largest number of unsuccessful proofs.


title: Fermat's Last Theorem

text: The Pythagorean equation, , has an infinite number of positive integer solutions for "x", "y", and "z"; these solutions are known as Pythagorean triples (with the simplest example 3,4,5). Around 1637, Fermat wrote in the margin of a book that the more general equation had no solutions in positive integers if "n" is an integer greater than 2. Although he claimed to have a general proof of his conjecture, Fermat left no details of his proof, and no proof by him has ever been found. His claim was discovered some 30 years later, after his death. This claim, which came to be known as "Fermat's Last Theorem", stood unsolved for the next three and a half centuries.


title: Fermat's Last Theorem

text: The claim eventually became one of the most notable unsolved problems of mathematics. Attempts to prove it prompted substantial development in number theory, and over time Fermat's Last Theorem gained prominence as an unsolved problem in mathematics.