Dr. Tichenor’s ‘Lost Cause’: The Rise of New Orleans’s Confederate Culture during the Gilded Age

• Main Author: Morris, Granville R
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UNO 2019
• Subjects: United Confederate Veterans (UCV); United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC); George Tichenor; Margret Tichenor; Gilded Age; Memorialization; Cultural History; Political History; Public History; Social History; United States History
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2626; https://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3814&context=td

Serving three times as president of the Cavalry Association, Camp Nine of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), George Tichenor was instrumental in forging Lost Cause ideology into a potent social force in New Orleans. Though more widely remembered in New Orleans for his antiseptic invention, his support of Confederate monuments, Confederate activism, and his wife Margret’s role as vice-president of a chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) are lesser known aspects of Tichenor’s life in New Orleans. This paper examines the cultural changes taking place in New Orleans that allowed Tichenor to become a leader of the Lost Cause movement that transformed New Orleans, with a focus on social networking via the United Confederate Veterans and the collaborative nature of their work with the UDC in New Orleans, a collaboration that opened a cultural and societal pathway for Lost Cause ideology to permeate Southern cities and influence national thinking on how to interpret the history of the Civil War.