It has been said that \u201cthe winners write the history books,\u201d and Mildred Rutherford must have heard that and decided to change that – except she didn\u2019t just write down what happened, she reimagined it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mildred Rutherford was the daughter of a wealthy family from Athens, Georgia, and was in her teens during the Civil War. Two of her uncles were Confederate generals. With the slaves freed and no one to tend to the formerly enslaved human-dependent booming agricultural businesses of the South, Southern wealth had decreased by an estimated 60%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mildred became a public school teacher, and wrote several textbooks, mostly about literature. Because Mildred spent more time focusing on the authors of the literature rather than studying the literature pieces themselves, these books were not widely accepted and ended up going mostly unused after a few years in publication.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She became an honorary president of the Daughters of the Confederacy, helping to spread the \u201cLost Cause\u201d message. This message was that the Civil War was based on economics, and the enslavement of humans was a strategic pawn and not a major part of the entire Confederate reason for wanting to secede in the first place (see Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens\u2019s 1861 \u201cCornerstone Speech\u201d for further details).\u00a0<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.15.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.15.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_code _builder_version=”4.15.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]