7 - 1865 and After

Summary

The damaging impact of the armies continued through the spring and summer of 1865, even after the war officially ended, as the disbanding armies took resources from civilians. In the first months of defeat, some pro-Confederate whites admitted that the rebel army did them harm, but that moment passed to be replaced by the Lost Cause mythology. Its tenets included the false notion that only the Union army damaged the region, with a particular demonization of William T. Sherman, and the equally false notion that all white Southerners supported the Confederacy. The collective memory did not reflect accurately the actual experience of war. Historians are still coming to terms with the complexity of the South's wartime experience.