The problem for many such people is that they personalize it. If they come from a Northern state, or if they have ancestors who fought on the Union side during the war, they see the discussion as personal rather than abstract.
When it becomes personal they have to justify what happened, and the only fig leaf of justification they can find is "Well they were bad people, so they deserve what my ancestors/state did to them."
It is called "rationalization".
That’s an interesting case of projection. One only need read the responses from some of the southern sympathizers on this very thread to see who has “personalized” the issue. Most union sympathizers are more interested in examining the history than re-fighting the war.
DiogenesLamp: "The problem for many such people is that they personalize it...
When it becomes personal they have to justify what happened, and the only fig leaf of justification they can find is...
It is called 'rationalization'. "
rockrr: "That’s an interesting case of projection."
Nobody posting here is "disinterested", but some of us are much more devoted to historical facts than are others.
So Lost Causer mythology is just that: total myths, created by secessionists themselves beginning when it became clear their war would end in defeat.
Suddenly, their war was no longer about protecting their "peculiar institution", as their Declarations of Causes of Secession clearly spelled out, but rather became about everything & anything but slavery.
Still, what's so astonishing, now 150 years later, is how utterly immune our Lost Causers are to basic historical facts & reasons, instead endlessly repeating lies upon lies regarding the start & course of our Civil War.