SOURCE: Grammer, John M. “Conclusion: After the Lost War.” In Pastoral and Politics in the Old South, pp. 159-67. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Grammer examines the myth of the pastoral South as it is represented in the literature of the Civil War period and after.

In June, 1862, as northern troops menaced Richmond, the Confederate cavalry commander J. E. B. Stuart led his command on their famous four-day “reconnaissance in force” all the way around George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac. The ride was instantly transformed into legend (as Stuart no doubt hoped it would be), but the most memorable thing about it turned out to be one of its unintended consequences, the death and impromptu burial of its only Confederate casualty. In a successful skirmish with pursuing Union troops, Captain William Latané was shot several times and killed. The dead man's...