Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865

by Robert J. Cook

Overview

Why has the Civil War continued to influence American life so profoundly?

Winner of the 2018 Book Prize in American Studies of the British Association of American Studies

At a cost of at least 800,000 lives, the Civil War preserved the Union, aborted the breakaway Confederacy, and liberated a race of slaves. Civil War Memories is the first comprehensive account of how and why Americans have selectively remembered, and forgotten, this watershed conflict since its conclusion in 1865. Drawing on an array of textual and visual sources as well as a wide range of modern scholarship on Civil War memory, Robert J. Cook charts the construction of four dominant narratives by the ordinary men and women, as well as the statesmen and generals, who lived through the struggle and its tumultuous aftermath.

Part One explains why the Yankee victors’ memory of the “War of the Rebellion” drove political conflict into the 1890s, then waned with the passing of the soldiers who had saved the republic. It also touches on the leading role southern white women played in the development of the racially segregated South’s “Lost Cause”; explores why, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of Americans had embraced a powerful reconciliatory memory of the Civil War; and details the failed efforts to connect an emancipationist reading of the conflict to the fading cause of civil rights.

Part Two demonstrates the Civil War’s capacity to thrill twentieth-century Americans in movies such as The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. It also reveals the war’s vital connection to the black freedom struggle in the modern era. Finally, Cook argues that the massacre of African American parishioners in Charleston in June 2015 highlighted the continuing relevance of the Civil War by triggering intense nationwide controversy over the place of Confederate symbols in the United States.

Written in vigorous prose for a wide audience and designed to inform popular debate on the relevance of the Civil War to the racial politics of modern America, Civil War Memories is required reading for informed Americans today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421423494
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2017
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert J. Cook is a professor of American history at the University of Sussex and author of Civil War Senator: William Pitt Fessenden and the Fight to Save the American Republic.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Part I The Postwar Period

Chapter 1 A Fractured Country and Its Fractured Memories 11

Chapter 2 The Resurgent South and Its Lost Cause 40

Chapter 3 Remembering the Victors' War in the Gilded Age 69

Chapter 4 The Rocky Road to Sectional Reconciliation 95

Part II The Modern Era

Chapter 5 Distant Drums in an Age of Global Warfare 125

Chapter 6 Centennial Blues 156

Chapter 7 Afterlife 180

Conclusion: The Continuing Civil War 207

Notes 215

Bibliography 241

Index 261

What People are Saying About This

Joan Waugh

Cook makes clear the powerful ways that the reverberations of the Civil War still resonate within American political culture. A compelling story told by a uniquely qualified expert in southern history and civil rights.

From the Publisher

Cook makes clear the powerful ways that the reverberations of the Civil War still resonate within American political culture. A compelling story told by a uniquely qualified expert in southern history and civil rights.
—Joan Waugh, University of California–Los Angeles, author of U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth

The Civil War has occupied a special place in the American psyche, for northerners and southerners, for blacks and whites, ever since General Robert E. Lee’s men stacked their guns at Appomattox in 1865. In his fast-paced, well-researched, and gripping Civil War Memories, Robert J. Cook underscores why and how Americans have remembered (and forgotten) the war’s complex meanings and legacies. Cook’s book is especially relevant at a moment in American history when pro-Confederate symbols remain hotly contested and recurrent racial violence challenges the myth of a post-racial age.
—John David Smith, University of North Carolina–Charlotte, coauthor of Soldiering for Freedom: How the Union Army Recruited, Trained, and Deployed the U.S. Colored Troops

John David Smith

The Civil War has occupied a special place in the American psyche, for northerners and southerners, for blacks and whites, ever since General Robert E. Lee’s men stacked their guns at Appomattox in 1865. In his fast-paced, well-researched, and gripping Civil War Memories, Robert J. Cook underscores why and how Americans have remembered (and forgotten) the war’s complex meanings and legacies. Cook’s book is especially relevant at a moment in American history when pro-Confederate symbols remain hotly contested and recurrent racial violence challenges the myth of a post-racial age.

Editorial Reviews

The book is full of interesting anecdotes that illustrate the many skirmishes between the competing narratives
—History News Network

Cook's work has the advantage of covering the entirety of post-Civil War history, making his the most comprehensive entry in this scholarly debate . . . His consistent attention to electoral politics across time sets his work apart from that of many other authors and makes the book well worth reading.
—Annals of Iowa

Civil War Memories offers a comprehensive treatment of the memory of the nation's most enduring and contested event. In offering a study of Civil War memory since 1865, Cook underscores that memories of the war have never been monolithic. They have always been debated, politicized, and maligned. His attention to the war's differing memories in the modern era reminds us how the Civil War continues to resonate within our own "mystic chords of memory."
—Jennifer M. Murray, University of Virginia's College at Wise, Journal of Southern History

In Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865, Robert J. Cook outlines the fight over the memory of the Civil War since Appomattox. It is a tightly argued work that blends adept synthesis with primary source research, and Cook offers an absorbing study of the Civil War's long memory and, implicitly, a meditation on the ways in which various entities "marshal the past so powerfully in the service of the present."
—Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz, Eastern Illinois University, American Historical Review

From the Publisher

In Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865, Robert J. Cook outlines the fight over the memory of the Civil War since Appomattox. It is a tightly argued work that blends adept synthesis with primary source research, and Cook offers an absorbing study of the Civil War's long memory and, implicitly, a meditation on the ways in which various entities "marshal the past so powerfully in the service of the present."

American Historical Review - Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz

Cook's work has the advantage of covering the entirety of post-Civil War history, making his the most comprehensive entry in this scholarly debate . . . His consistent attention to electoral politics across time sets his work apart from that of many other authors and makes the book well worth reading.

Annals of Iowa

Civil War Memories offers a comprehensive treatment of the memory of the nation's most enduring and contested event. In offering a study of Civil War memory since 1865, Cook underscores that memories of the war have never been monolithic. They have always been debated, politicized, and maligned. His attention to the war's differing memories in the modern era reminds us how the Civil War continues to resonate within our own "mystic chords of memory."

Journal of Southern History - Jennifer M. Murray

The book is full of interesting anecdotes that illustrate the many skirmishes between the competing narratives

History News Network