Apostle of the Lost Cause

J. William Jones, Baptists, and the Development of Confederate Memory

Chris Moore

• Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781621905400
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies
• Index: History

Perhaps no person exerted more influence on postwar white Southern memory than former Confederate chaplain and Baptist minister J. William Jones. Christopher C. Moore’s Apostle of the Lost Cause is the first full-length work to examine the complex contributions to Lost Cause ideology of this well-known but surprisingly understudied figure. Commissioned by Robert E. Lee himself to preserve an accurate account of the Confederacy, Jones responded by welding hagiography and denominationalism to create, in effect, a sacred history of the Southern cause.

In a series of popular books and in his work as secretary of the Southern Historical Society Papers, Jones’s mission became the canonization of Confederate saints, most notably Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, for a postwar generation and the contrivance of a full-blown myth of Southern virtue-in-defeat that deeply affected historiography for decades to come. While personally committed to Baptist identity, Jones supplied his readers with embodiments of Southern morality who transcended denominational boundaries and enabled white Southerners to locate their champions (and themselves) in a quasi-biblical narrative that ensured ultimate vindication for the Southern cause.
 
In a time when Confederate monuments and the enduring effects of white supremacy are in the daily headlines, an examination of this key figure in the creation of the Lost Cause legacy could not be more relevant.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter One. From the Mission Field to the Battlefield: Jones’s Early Life and Prewar Years
• Chapter Two. “We Mingled Together in Freest Intercourse”: Jones the Baptist and Wartime Confederate Religion
• Chapter Three. “Our Cause” and the Lost Cause: Jones’s Rise to Prominence
• Chapter Four. Southern Hagiography: Jones and the Confederate Trinity
• Chapter Five. Quest for a Faithful Narrative: Jones and the Battle for Southern History
• Chapter Six. Finishing the Course: Jones and the Changing Landscape of the Lost Cause
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index