Jamie,

From an author and poster on one of our other boards, he offers:

"Robert Penn Warren's quote in "The Legacy of the Civil War" where he claimed that the war had produced "two dangerous habits of mind in Americans. For the South, it offered the 'Great Alibi,' the great excuse for everything that was wrong or lacking in the region. For the North, it offered 'The Treasury of Virtue,' in which the war appeared as 'a consciously undertaken crusade so full of righteousness that there is enough overplus stored in Heaven, like the deeds of the saints, to take care of all the small failings and over-sights of the crusaders, certainly unto the present generation."

This "Treasury of Virtue" is not exactly the claim I was looking for. I recall reading a book many years ago that compared the overly romanticized and falsely constructed histories of the war from both sides. For the life of me, I can't remember the term used, but it was a semi-religious portrayal of the Northern cause similar to the words of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". The war to preserve the Union was supplanted by a war, fought by Christian soldiers to free the slaves.

I have no problem with the phrase "Lost Cause Mythology". There are mountains of books and articles and careers devoted to the study of it. I guess, I'm just curious why there is no such study or discussion of post-war Union mythology.

Jim