Catholics, the Civil War, and the Problem of the Lost Cause

How a key period in American Catholic history connects with contemporary populism

Catholics fought on both sides of the American Civil War, but few supported the war's evolving aim of emancipating the enslaved. After the war, white Catholics played decisive roles in creating and promoting the ideology of the Lost Cause, a romantic distortion that the war had been a noble Southern fight for freedom, not caused by secession to preserve slavery.

Catholics, the Civil War, and the Problem of the Lost Cause sheds light on the surprising legacy of white American Catholics during and after the war years. Curran also explores other topics, such as church-state relations, anti-Catholic nativism, chaplains and nun nurses in wartime, the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Catholic colleges, and Catholic prisoners of war.

General readers, scholars, and students interested in the Civil War era and the history of American Catholicism will benefit from a deeper understanding of this history and how it predisposed conservative Catholics to respond positively to today's populist movement, which brought about the election of Donald Trump.

Robert Emmett Curran is a professor emeritus of history at Georgetown University and the author of fourteen books, including American Catholics and the Quest for Equality in the Civil War Era.