Future Generations

A future Sponsor of Kentucky.

The Children of the Confederacy and United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to make the descendents proud of their ancestry rather than ashamed. This goal especially became important after the turn of the twentieth century. Many Confederates began to die of old age and the older generations worried the noble ideals of the antebellum South would die with them. Florence Barrow, of Louisville, in her Lost Cause magazine wrote an article, “The Duty We Owe To Our Parents” Barrow wrote about the greatness of the South and argued for children to praise their parents’ involvement with the Confederacy. She eloquently stated, “It would be basest treason to the best of human instincts to leave ought undone which will exalt or magnify the Southern Confederacy, and he or she who would dim one light of this constellation is unworthy of the world’s praise or plaudit. Sons and daughters, arise to this super eminent task. Cherish these sublime memories and garner these grand recollections.”

Two Little Confederates

“Sue, 7 years old, September 1900. Martha Porter, 3 years old, March 1900. The interesting children of Mr. and Mrs. Len S. Miller, St. Catherine street. Their father was a member of Company B, Ninth Kentucky Infantry (Orphan Brigade).”Two Little Confederates, “Sue, 7 years old, September 1900. Martha Porter, 3 years old, March 1900. The interesting children of Mr. and Mrs. Len S. Miller, St. Catherine street. Their father was a member of Company B, Ninth Kentucky Infantry (Orphan Brigade).”

The United Daughters of the Confederacy and other Lost Cause organizations succeed in gaining the Confederacy esteem across the nation. After World War I ended in 1918, the reach of these organizations no longer permeated throughout the United States and activism began to fade. Women played a pivotal role in the Lost Cause movement after 1865 into the early twentieth century. In Kentucky, these women’s organization transformed the history of the state by changing the Union past into a Confederate memory.