Historians Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr. attempt to explain why the South lost the war and look at the excuses and justifications of literature written after the war. Past authors have tried to explain why the North won and the South. A result of this attempt has been the idea of the Lost Cause. They hope through their analysis to show a relationship between the military success, morale, and will and weakness of Confederate nationalism when undermined by battlefield defeat. They also intend to show the effect of the interaction of these factors that created an effect greater than the contributing factors. They are combining all of the factors that past historians believed was the reason why the
