Neo-Confederates are groups and individuals who portray the Confederate States of America and its actions during the American Civil War in a positive light. The League of the South (formed in 1994), the Sons of Confederate Veterans (formed 1896), and other neo-Confederate organizations continue to defend the secession of the 11 Confederate States.

Historian James M. McPherson used the term "neo-Confederate historical committees" in his description of the efforts which were undertaken from 1890 to 1930 to have history textbooks present a version of the American Civil War in which secession was not rebellion, the Confederacy did not fight for slavery, and the Confederate soldier was defeated by overwhelming numbers and resources. Historian Nancy MacLean used the term "neo-Confederacy" in reference to groups, such as the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, that formed in the 1950s to oppose the Supreme Court of the United States rulings demanding racial integration, in particular Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Former Southern Partisan editor and co-owner Richard Quinn used the term when he referred to Richard T. Hines, former Southern Partisan contributor and Ronald Reagan administration staffer, as being "among the first neo-Confederates to resist efforts by the infidels to take down the Confederate flag."

An early use of the term came in 1954. In a book review, Leonard W. Levy (later a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1968) wrote: "Similar blindness to the moral issue of slavery, plus a resentment against the rise of the Negro and modern industrialism, resulted in the neo-Confederate interpretation of Phillips, Ramsdell and Owsley."

Historian Gary W. Gallagher stated in an interview that neo-Confederates do not want to hear him when he talks "about how important maintaining racial control, white supremacy, was to the white South." He warns, however, that the term neo-Confederate can be overused, writing, "Any historian who argues that the Confederate people demonstrated robust devotion to their slave-based republic, possessed feelings of national community, and sacrificed more than any other segment of white society in United States history runs the risk of being labeled a neo-Confederate."

The "Lost Cause" is the name which is commonly given to a movement that seeks to reconcile the existence of the traditional society of the Southern United States with the defeat of the Confederate States of America (CSA) at the end of the American Civil War of 1861–1865. Those who contribute to the movement tend to portray the Confederacy's cause as noble and they also tend to portray most of the Confederacy's leaders as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry who were defeated by the Union's armies because the Union's armies used overwhelming force rather than superior military skills. They believe that the history of the Civil War which is commonly portrayed is a "false history". They also tend to condemn Reconstruction, the era when African Americans were first allowed to vote.

On its main website, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) speaks of "ensuring that a true history of the 1861-1865 period is preserved", claiming that "[t]he preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution."

James M. McPherson has written the following about the origins in 1894 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC): "A principal motive of the UDC's founding was to counter this 'false history' which taught Southern children 'that their fathers were not only rebels but guilty of almost every crime enumerated in the Decalogue.'" Much of what the UDC called "false history" centered on the relationship between slavery and secession and the war. The chaplain of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), forerunner of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, wrote in 1898 that history books as written could lead Southern children to "think that we fought for slavery" and would "fasten upon the South the stigma of slavery and that we fought for it ... The Southern soldier will go down in history dishonored". Referring to a 1932 call by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to restore "the purity of our history", McPherson notes that the "quest for purity remains vital today, as any historian working in the field can testify."

In the 1910s, Mildred Rutherford, the historian general of the UDC, spearheaded the attack on schoolbooks that did not present the Lost Cause version of history. Rutherford assembled a "massive collection" which included "essay contests on the glory of the Ku Klux Klan and personal tributes to faithful slaves". Historian David Blight concluded: "All UDC members and leaders were not as virulently racist as Rutherford, but all, in the name of a reconciled nation, participated in an enterprise that deeply influenced the white supremacist vision of Civil war memory."