In this five-part review of Civil War Era literature at the Virginia History Blog, we will take a look at period topics in politics, war commands, home front, economy, slavery and memory. Turning to memory, we begin with “Diehard Rebels” describing the outlook and later influence of soldiers defending the Confederacy to the end. “Burying the Dead but not the Past” explains how the Lost Cause was forwarded by women’s groups. “Margaret Junkin Preston” documents the literary career of the poet of the Confederacy and its Lost Cause.
“The Southern Past” contrasts the received white recollection of the Civil War era versus the rememberances of the black experience. “Defining Moments” shows the intellectual history of black commitment to civic participation in celebrations at the same time as the flourishing of the Lost Cause ideology among whites. “Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten” explains four traditions of interpretation for the Civil War in popular culture.
Current releases reviewed in Spring 2018 journals can be found at Civil War Era – Spring 2018.
Recent blogs include Civil War Era politics, Civil War commanders and commands, Civil War home front, Civil War economy, and Civil War slavery.
Diehard Rebels
Jason Phillips wrote Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility in 2007. Available from the University of Georgia Press and online new and used.
This book is an effort to understand why so many non-slave holding Confederates persisted in their commitment and urged others to so, even after all material indications were that the Cause was lost. It looks at the words of the participants during the war and in the months immediately after it. The mounting sacrifices of the war effort did not dissuade these soldiers from their commitment, they only intensified hatred for the Yankees. They fought to defend their homeland and to preserve slavery.
Despite evidence that the Confederacy might be losing, these nationalists believed that every victory or defeat was God’s will, and they were sure that the ultimate outcome was in His hands alone. The yardstick for the soldier’s “worm’s eye view” was holding ground against superior odds or inflicting greater casualties on the enemy than those lost. They believed their cause righteous, their enemies unworthy of victory, honor or respect, and they took pride in their own endurance. Though a minority at defeat in April 1865, their views were popularized throughout the South following surrender and Federal amnesty.
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Burying the Dead but Not the Past
Caroline E. Janney wrote Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Association and the Lost Cause in 2008. It is a TVH top 300 pick for Virginia History. Available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
Janney shows how the Ladies’ Memorial Associations (LMAs) deserve the credit for honoring the Confederate dead, caring for aging veterans and redefining military defeat as a political, social and cultural victory for the white South. Though made up of elites who had not lost a family member in the conflict, they extended their public sphere due to their devotion to the Confederate cause. They both broadened white women’s citizenship and first voiced the ideals of the Lost Cause.
The LMAs were 19th century pioneers who laid the groundwork for the explosion of club organization among younger white women in the 20th century’s Progressive Era. Most of the younger generation flocked to new groups with broader appeal such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy. While the LMAs were able to found the Confederate Museum in the former White House of the Confederacy at the turn of the century, their statewide influence soon declined.
To buy “Burying the Dead” on Amazon, click here.
Margaret Junkin Preston
Stacey Jean Klein wrote Margaret Junkin Preston, Poet of the Confederacy: A Literary Life in 2007. Available from the University of South Carolina Press and online new and used.
This is a study of the life and career of the Virginia poet Margaret Junkin Preston. She was the Pennsylvania-born daughter of the president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia who relocated with her father in 1848. Margaret married John Thomas Lewis Preston, a professor of the Virginia Military Institute on the adjacent campus. Another family marriage made her the sister-in-law to “Stonewall” Jackson.
By 1848, Margaret Junkin was an accomplished author of poetry, essays and short stories in prestigious journals and newspapers, including the Southern Literary Messenger and Graham’s Magazine. When she married in 1857, her husband forbade her to write for publication. At the Civil War, now Margaret Junkin Preston began to write again in support of the Confederate cause.
Following the war, she forwarded the Lost Cause ideology. Klein’s book is similar to Mary Price Coulling’s 1993 biography which focuses on personal events versus literary career, but Klein contradicts Preston’s step daughter in the 1903 The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston.
To buy “Margaret Junkin Preston” on Amazon, click here.
The Southern Past
Fitzhugh Brundage wrote The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory in 2005. It is a TVH top 300 pick for Virginia History. Available from the Harvard University Press and online new and used.
Brundage writes a social history of how visions of history become a vehicle for political power. His central theme is the received white southern memory that endures in public places and black resistance to it. It began with commemoration and celebration of a past that asserted a fantasy of the Old South as a golden age of refinement and harmonious race relations. Then came the preservation of the past and promotion of historical tourism in a way that would legitimate the Jim Crow present.
The author alternates chapters of Confederate cemetery preservation and memorials with black efforts to fashion a vision of a redemptive past looking forward. A chapter on state funded efforts to preserve documents and relics supporting white supremacy is balanced with one examining efforts of Virginian African Americans Carter Woodson and Luther P. Jackson who offered accounts of black life and accomplishment. The final chapter surveys public memory in the south since the end of legal segregation.
To buy “The Southern Past” on Amazon, click here.
Defining Moments
Kathleen Ann Clark wrote Defining Moments: African American Commemoration & Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913 in 2005. Available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
This book is looks at emancipation celebrations as political culture and intellectual history. After emancipation, African American community leaders sought to self-consciously develop a new civic identity in the South generally and especially in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. Integrationist activities included Emancipation Day and Fourth of July parades as expression of a newfound faith in a fundamentally reconstructed social order. They emphasized taking up arms to defend independence, defending rights, and political participation. But there were ideological tensions and open conflict among organizers, participants and public observers.
At the end of Reconstruction, the development of the Jim Crow South made it more difficult to sustain vital white support for black interests in the face of white supremacist insistence that there be no African American achievement, whether political, social or even economic self-help. The interracial parades of Reconstruction were relegated to privately segregated ceremonies.
To buy “Defining Moments” on Amazon, click here.
Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten
Gary W. Gallagher wrote Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War in 2008. Available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
This book on popular culture seeks to explore the nature of the public understanding of the Civil War through fourteen films released between 1989 and 2006. It classifies four traditions. In the Lost Cause interpretation, a righteous Confederacy was defeated by overwhelming force. The Unionist interpretation holds that preserving a democratic republic was worth the sacrifices on both sides. The emancipationist tradition celebrates the freedom of four million slaves as the morally most significant outcome. And the reconciliationist interpretation holds that both sides fought gallantly as Americans, and the reunited nation emerged stronger than it was before.
While the Lost Cause was once dominant, neo-Confederate influence has waned. It has been supplanted by a persistent reconciliationist tradition and the emergence of the emancipationist tradition. The Unionist tradition is nearly gone, it is “Hollywood’s real lost cause”. Most influential have been The Killer Angels and its movie Gettysburg (1993), Gods and Generals and its movie of the same name (2003), and Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War.
To buy “Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten” on Amazon, click here.
Additional history related to Virginia during this time period can be found at the Table of Contents of TheVirginiaHistorian website on the page for Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction, 1820-1883. Titles are organized by topics, political and economic Virginia, social history, gender, religious, African American, and Wars in Virginia 1750-1824.
General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Note: Insights for these reviews include those available from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.