The other was a “reconciliationist” memory that emphasized what the two sides shared in common, particularly the valor of individual soldiers, and suppressed thoughts of the war's causes and the unfinished legacy of emancipation. One was the “emancipationist” vision hinted at by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address when he spoke of the war as bringing a rebirth of the republic in the name of freedom and equality. Two understandings of how the Civil War should be remembered collided in post-bellum America. As his title suggests, Blight believes that how we think about the Civil War has everything to do with how we think about race and its history in American life. He gives black Americans a voice they are often denied in works on memory, scouring the black press for accounts of emancipation celebrations and articles about the war's meaning. “Race and Reunion” is the most comprehensive and insightful study of the memory of the Civil War yet to appear.īlight touches on a wide range of subjects, including how political battles over Reconstruction contributed to conflicting attitudes toward the war's legacy, the origins of Memorial Day, and the rise of the “reminiscence industry” (173) through which published memoirs by former soldiers helped lay the groundwork for sectional reconciliation. Blight's study of how Americans remembered the Civil War in the fifty years after Appomattox exemplifies these themes. Moreover, forgetting some aspects of the past is as much a part of historical understanding as remembering others. Rather than being straightforward and unproblematic, it is “constructed,” battled over, and in many ways political. What unites these studies is the conviction that memory is a product of history. A book on how New Englanders remembered King Philip's War against local Indians won the Bancroft prize a few years ago. The memory of World War I reflected in monuments, novels, and popular culture has been examined by numerous European historians. In recent years, the study of historical memory has become something of a scholarly cottage industry. In “Race and Reunion,” David Blight demonstrates that as soon the guns fell silent debate over how to remember the Civil War began. Clearly, as the historian Barbara Fields trenchantly remarked toward the end of Ken Burns' much-praised television documentary, the Civil War is not over. The past few years have witnessed disputes over the flying of the Confederate battle flag above the South Carolina state house, the National Parks Service's decision to devote more attention to slavery at its battlefield sites, and, most recently, statements by newly-appointed cabinet members John Ashcroft and Gail Norton that celebrate the Lost Cause. Nearly a century and a half after it ended, the Civil War remains the central event in American history and an enduring source of public controversy. New York Times Book Review, March 4, 2001 Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
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