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For feminist historians, acknowledging that women were some- times agents of their own oppression not only rankles but also seems to defy common sense. But Karen Cox, in a well- researched book based upon her dissertation, shows that South- ern women worked actively to sustain and perpetuate the pater- nalistic and patriarchal ideology of the Old South, a South where men ruled and women and blacks knew their place. Cox, director of the public history program at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, argues that Lost Cause historians have generally over- looked the central role of women in the preservation of Confeder- ate tradition. Nearly every public monument honoring Confeder- ate heroes was established by the United Daughters of the Con- federacy (UDC), and nearly all such statues were erected between 1890 and 1918, the heyday of this women's organization. Cox's book joins a recent spate of work highlighting the gen- dered nature of the Lost Cause movement and the predominant role of women in it. "It can be argued," Cox writes, "that women founded the Confederate tradition." (p. 2) While the Sons of Con- federate Veterans (SCV) was organized in 1896 with objectives similar to those of the UDC, the men were too focused on their business or political goals to have much time for volunteerism. The "New Men" of the turn of the century, especially those who had fought in the Spanish-American War, were looking forward to a New South and were not especially interested in venerating their defeated ancestors. Thus, the job of preserving "Confeder- ate culture" fell to women. It was they who invented Confederate