We look at Civil War memory, white and black, in our Jim Crow Virginia part four. We begin with looking at how differences emerged in shared memories using “Race and Reunion”, “Cities of the Dead” and “Southern Past”. How women in associations and in their published writing of memoirs, novels and histories established the Lost Cause narrative is explored in “Burying the Dead” and “Blood and Irony”.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Gilded Age, New South, Civil Rights, New Dominion (1889-present). 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.
Race and Reunion
David W. Blight wrote Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory in 2001. It is now available on Kindle and new in paperback. Blight considers Civil War memories of southerners and northerners, white and black. The study spans recollections of emancipation in 1863 to the 1913 reunion of 50,000 Union and Confederate veterans in a tented camp at Gettysburg.
For blacks, memories began with the Emancipation Proclamation, recalled in black churches and at public ceremonies. African Americans initiated a Memorial Day in Charleston, but the imitations that followed, North and South, ignored emancipation. Gradually northern memories became of shared sectional suffering and loss in wartime experience and military sacrifice. Recollections divided among reconciliationists, white supremacists and emancipationists. The price of national reconciliation was slighting African Americans in slavery, freedom and in their participation in the war. Yankee-Rebel reunions led to whites abandoning the “southern question” of racial integration, whether civil or social.
Learn more to buy “Race and Reunion” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*August Meier and Elliott Rudwick wrote Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 in 1986. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Black History” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*David E. Johnson wrote Douglas Southall Freeman in 2002. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Douglas Southall Freeman” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Charles C. Osborne wrote Jubal: The Life and Times of General Jubal C. Early, CSA, Defender of the Lost Cause in 1992. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Jubal” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Cities of the Dead
William A. Blair wrote Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914 in 2004. It is now available on Kindle and online new and used. Blair centers his study of ceremonies memorializing the Civil War dead in Virginia. They were, for both blacks and whites, self-conscious attempts to create traditions and to make social and political statements as a community. During federal occupation in the early days of Reconstruction both were monitored, the former Confederates for signs of disloyalty, the African Americans for signs of disorderliness. The ceremonies determined who could express their view of history and who could march in public as full citizens.
African Americans began with the celebration of civil rights and political participation. The next phase focused on group self-help, political independence and promoting a national Emancipation Day in the 1880s. Finally in this pre-WWI period, memorialization of the Civil War focused on economic and educational development. Whites commemorating the Confederate dead began with establishing cemeteries for re-interments, Decoration Day ceremonies and then dedication of monuments, all aimed at creating a politically cohesive force to bring northerners to commemorate the Confederate dead, finally achieved at Woodrow Wilson’s dedication of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery in 1913.
Learn more to buy “Cities of the Dead” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
The Southern Past
Fitzhugh Brundage wrote The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory in 2005. It is now available online new in paperback. 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.
Learn more to buy “The Southern Past” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Jacqueline Goggin wrote Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History in 1993. It is out of print but available on line new and used. Learn more to buy “Carter G. Woodson” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Susan Goodman wrote Glasgow: A Biography in 1998. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Glasgow” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Burying the Dead
Caroline E. Janney wrote Burying the Dead but not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause in 2008. It is now available 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.
Learn more to buy “Burying the Dead” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*James M. Lindgren wrote Preserving the Old Dominion: Historic Preservation and Virginia Traditionalism in 1993. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Preserving the Old Dominion” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson edited Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory in 2003. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Monuments ” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Blood and Irony
Sarah E. Gardner wrote Blood and Irony: Southern White Women’s Narratives of the Civil War, 1861-1937 in 2004. It is now available on Kindle and online new in paperback. Southern white women writing after the Civil War were a central part of the booming literary market narrating stories of the conflict and its historical significance. They produced bitter portrayals of northern “sins” and offered a divine explanation for Confederate defeat. Unlike northern authors portraying successful intersectional post-war marriages, southern women depicted doomed love affairs between northern men and southern women. They cast the Confederacy in heroic terms without consideration of its slavery foundation.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) helped the former Confederate narrative to gain national acceptance. The meta-narrative vindicated the Lost Cause as a reaction to northern violations of southern constitutional rights. The UDC not only encouraged its members to write novels to fit their model, they established guidelines for authors writing histories and condemned books that did not conform to them. The triumph of the genre was Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 Gone With the Wind, which successfully made the southern narrative of the Civil War into a national one.
Learn more to buy “Blood and Irony” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Edward D. C. Campbell Jr. and Kym S. Rice edited A Woman’s War: Southern Women, Civil War, and the Confederate Legacy in 1996. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “A Woman’s War” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Karen L. Cox wrote Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture in 2003. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Dixie’s Daughters” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg wrote Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music in 2002. It is available on Kindle and online new and used. Learn more to buy “Will You Miss Me” at Amazon.com for your bookshelf.