 Royce’s use of the phrase “lost cause” in explaining the concept of loyalty can perhaps be treated in this manner. While the phrase does carry the baggage of reference to a mythical vision of the racist and sexist Confederacy (Fischer 2012, 32), it is not restricted to that reference. People embrace many admirable “lost causes,” in the sense that their causes can never be perfectly fulfilled. These communities and their causes can serve as exemplars of Roycean loyalty; explicitly rejecting the problematic Lost Cause of the Confederacy as one of these does not affect Royce’s  point.[3] That he chose “The Lost Cause” and the decision by Robert E. Lee to defend the Confederacy as positive exemplars of loyalty can be challenged on Royce’s own principles—Royce elsewhere explicitly rejected the “disastrous” association of loyalty with warfare (1995 [1908], 7–8). The fact that he failed to do so can be seen both as a useful warning to philosophers who fail to be adequately critical of their own commitments, and as further evidence that loyalty is a useful concept in understanding moral commitments and where they can go wrong.