One of the more famous opening lines in all of political theory was written, in the sweep of history, pretty recently. With the simple line “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism,” Marx and Engels (1898, p. 11) conveyed much with relatively few words. Throughout researching and writing this book—a process which spanned half a decade when counting my doctoral dissertation from which it grew—those words felt apt in an admittedly unexpected way. The Lost Cause is, by pretty much any account, a conservative and reactionary ideology which glorifies a war to preserve an elite slaveholders’ society. And anything written by Marx would likely find a less-than-friendly reception in those quarters; sorting through nearly 2000 of Identity Dixie’s blog posts made clear that the modern Lost Cause community abhors communism. However, the concept of a haunting specter became increasingly compelling to me in the case of the Lost Cause nonetheless.