resistant to changes in their history, and more receptive to mythology, which guides a large part of their opinion and identity in the South. 258 In order to gain an accurate idea of how this mythology came to obscure the true history of the South, historians have to focus largely on the period of the Lost Cause and how, reality started to become distorted. With the drive during the Lost Cause to preserves memory, groups such as the Sons of the Confederate Veterans loyalty kept the region fascinated by the war and preserving the memory. 259 Many historians writing in the 1960s assumed that these myths being harboured by these members of the Lost Cause were the true ‘Mind of the South’ and therefore represented the minds of the South before and after the Civil War, leading to the theory of the Lost Cause causing the convincing evident to turn memory into myth. 260 Nevertheless older historian polls suggest that the Lost Cause did not lead to an increase in knowledge of the War or public interest in keeping it alive. They suggest that this creation of historical memory could not have been due to the Lost Cause activists, as the numbers were so small that they influenced. 261 Similarly, those whom agree that the Lost Cause was the reason for widespread confusion of Southern history and myth argue that it lost ‘any lasting effect after 1915’ due to ‘the forces of modernisation’ as it spread across the South’ 262 This idea is now widely considered true, with many historians, such as Gallagher agreeing that the myth of the South started to slip during the 258 Vandiver, p.2. 259 Gaines Foster, Civil War Sesquicentennial: The Lost Cause, Civil War Book Review, (Fall 2013), <http://www.cwbr.com/civilwarbookreview/index.php?q=5590&fiel d=ID&browse=yes&record=full&searching=yes&Submit=Search> [date of access, 29/04/15]
260 Ibid 261 Ibid 262 Gallagher, p.179.
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