The Lost Cause of the Confederacy was a tool in the shape of a history lesson. The American Civil War had just ended, but war is a bitter and terrible thing, and so the country that had so nearly been split in two by war tried to find a way to mend the terrible wounds they had inflicted on each other. The South needed a way to pick themselves up and go forward with pride despite their loss, and the North needed a way to see their Southern members as brethren once again. And so the Lost Cause of the Confederacy came to be, a lie with enough truth to make it palatable, used to paint over the bitter truths of the war.