135 Years Ago: 
The “Lost Cause” Is Born 
Edward T. O'Donnell * The Irish Echo * May 16, 2001

 One hundred 35 years ago this week, on May 19, 1866, the poem “The Conquered Banner” appeared in the pages of the Freeman’s Journal.  Published thirteen months after Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, it captured the spirit of sentimentality and martyrdom then emerging in the war-torn South.  The “Lost Cause,” the characterization of the South’s bid for independence as noble and tragic, was born. 

 Surprisingly, the author of “The Conquered Banner” was Abram Joseph Ryan, a Catholic priest.  Born in Maryland in 1838 to Matthew Ryan and Mary Coughlin Ryan of County Limerick, Ryan grew up in St. Louis.  He entered the seminary at Niagra Falls, NY in 1854 and was ordained in 1860. 

 Ryan returned to the South and was working as a parish priest and teacher when the Civil War broke out.  Denied a formal commission in the Confederate Army, Ryan nonetheless served in an unofficial capacity for the duration of the war.  For four years he offered mass and spiritual comfort, as well as care for the sick and wounded.  According to legend, on more than one occasion he shouldered a rifle in battle. 

 So unlike so many subsequent contributors to the Lost Cause canon, Ryan experienced the war firsthand.  Indeed, his first attempt at poetry – “In Memoriam” and “In Memory of My Brother” -- came in response to the death of his brother, killed in battle fighting for the Confederacy. 

 Nearly everyone who met Ryan during and after the war was struck by his captivating, almost mystical persona.  With long, flowing black hair and bright, expressive eyes, he cut the figure of an Old Testament prophet.  Soldiers recalled his fearlessness under fire and in ministering to cholera victims. 

 When the war ended, Ryan returned to his normal duties as a parish priest (he would serve as pastor of churches in several southern states).  But he continued to write poetry.  Inspiration for “The Conquered Banner,” he later related, came within hours of Lee’s surrender.  He wrote it as a cathartic exercise with little thought of publication.  One year later, however, he submitted it to the Freeman’s Journal. 

 The poem became an overnight sensation.  It was reprinted in papers across the South and soon set tp the music of a popular hymn. Its spirit and tone are captured in the last stanza: 

     Furl that Banner, softly, slowly!
     Treat it gently – it is holy – 
     For it droops above the dead.
     Touch it not – unfold it never, 
     Let it droop there, furled forever, 
     For its people’s hopes are dead!

Within months it was being recited or sung everywhere from parlors to public meetings. 

 Inspired by his success, Ryan continued to write poems in the Lost Cause style for the next two decades.  Among the more memorable are, “C.S.A.”, “The Sword of Robert E. Lee,” and “The South.”   All touched on the now-familiar themes of heroic sacrifice by men pledged to defend their native land against a powerful, tyrannical invader.  “There’s grandeur in graves,” reads one line, “There’s glory in gloom.”  The similarity between Ryan’s work and rhetoric, poetry, and song of Irish nationalism is striking.  Not surprisingly, among Ryan’s collected poems one finds several about Ireland’s 
struggle for freedom. 

 Ryan was the first, but by no means the last contributor to the Lost Cause idea.  In fact, the phrase Lost Cause comes from a book written by Edward A. Pollard and published a few months after “The Conquered Banner” appeared.  In the decades that followed, a veritable Lost Cause industry arose, producing hundreds of books, poems, and songs, not to mention countless memorials to Confederate warriors. 

 While the Lost Cause emerged as an understandable response to the devastation of the South and expressed admirable themes of honor, courage, sacrifice, and cultural pride, it also served more sinister ends.  If southerners had a difficult time accepting their military defeat, they had an even harder time with the most dramatic change it brought: emancipation of 3.5 million slaves.  Between 1865 and 1870, Congress granted full civil and political rights to African Americans.  After 1870, however, a revitalized South (unhindered by northerners less and less committed to enforcing Reconstruction policy) systematically stripped away most of these rights and re-imposed white supremacy.

 Underlying this effort was the spirit of the Lost Cause.  According to it, the Confederacy had been superior to the Union in every way except military might.  Thus any effort to restore the society of the Old South – especially in the realm of race relations – appeared moral and just. 

 Unlike most southerners of his generation, Ryan actually came to terms with the Confederacy’s loss.  The occasion was a cholera epidemic that swept the South in 1878.  The outpouring of contributions by northerners to relief efforts so impressed Ryan that he penned two poems in the spirit of reconciliation – “Reunited” and “Requiem for the Federal Dead.” 

Fr Abram Ryan died in Lexington, KY in 1886 and was buried in Mobile, Alabama.  In 1912 a local newspaper launched a drive to erect a statue to him.  Unveiled in July 1913, it included a stanza from “The Conquered Banner” below an inscription that read: “Poet, Patriot, and Priest.” 

HIBERNIAN HISTORY WEEK

May 16, 1926: Fianna Fail (“Soldiers of Destiny”) founded by Eamon DeValera and followers.

May 17, 1974: Unionist bombs kill 33 in Dublin and Monaghan. 

May 19, 1863: Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher resigns in disgust as head of the Fighting 69th Regiment when his request that his tattered force be allowed to withdraw and rebuild is rejected. 

HIBERNIAN BIRTHDATES:

May 16, 1952: Actor Pierce Brosnan is born in of Navan, Co. Meath.

May 22, 1859: Writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is born (to parents born in Ireland) in Edinburgh, Scotland.

May 22, 1901: Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin is born in Boston.

(c) Edward T. O'Donnell, 2001