The Politics of Civil War Memory
Benjamin Soskis
Since the cannons finally quieted one hundred and fifty years ago, most Americans have
regarded the Civil War as the defining event in this nation’s history, a fiery crucible out
of which the modern United States emerged. But the resolution of one war opened the
way for fresh fighting over the meaning of that conflict. In the century and a half since
the war ended, Americans—northerners and southerners, whites and blacks, men and
women—have struggled to come to terms with how it should be remembered. Should it
be honored as a clash of ideals, in which a commitment to universal freedom emerged
triumphant? Should the focus instead be on the suffering and heroism of those who
fought its battles? Should it be considered a tragic mistake or a necessary purgation? How
should the losers—Confederate soldiers and officials—be memorialized? As tragic but
noble fighters or as dangerous traitors?
This course will examine the public memory of the Civil War; it will assume that what
citizens remember about certain seminal events is shaped not merely by private
experiences but by broader forces of politics and ideology as well. And so we will ask a
number of questions about the public memory of the Civil War: how did it facilitate
reconciliation between Yankees and Confederates? How has it helped heal the wounds of
war and how has it kept others from healing? What do certain memories of the war
encourage us to forget? Who is foregrounded in Civil War memory and who is pushed
into the shadows? How is the Civil War invoked in contemporary political battles? We
will explore representations of the war in art, literature and film, and will base much of
our class on the memory of the war as manifested in Washington, DC—through statues,
memorials and commemorations—a city which does not merely serve as a political
capital, but as the repository of the nation’s collective memory. And we will focus on
how the war is being memorialized today, amidst a season of celebration of the conflict’s
sesquicentennial (150th anniversary).
Required Reading:
• David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001)
[please purchase copy or take one out of library]
• Class reader, with photocopied material, for purchase
Assignments:
Each student will be responsible for leading class discussion one week, and will
email me a list of topics for discussion the day before class. There are also three written
assignments:
• ESSAY 1: Using primary source materials that I will provide, as well as the
books and articles discussed in class, compare the way in which the Civil War was
commemorated at the conflict’s 50th, 100th, and 150th anniversaries, from both a Northern
and Southern perspective (3 pages)
• ESSAY 2: Choose one week of postings from the New York Times’ Disunion
web series and discuss how those posts grapple with the challenges of memorialization
that we have discussed in class (3 pages)
• ESSAY 3: Write a short essay comparing how the Civil War was represented
and remembered, choosing sources in two different media—film, painting/photography,
literature or statuary (5-6 pages)
GRADING:
Class Participation: 25%
Essay 1: 20:
Essay 2: 25%
Essay 3: 30%
Week One: How We Remember the Civil War: An Introduction
Reading:
• Leon Litwack, “Telling the Story: The Historian, the Filmmaker, and the
Civil War,” in Robert Brent Toplin, ed., Ken Burns’s The Civil War
(1996), 119-140
• David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War and American Memory
(2001), Prologue, chap. 1.
[PLEASE TRY YOUR BEST TO HAVE DONE THIS READING BY
THE FIRST CLASS]
In class movie: Ken Burns, The Civil War (1990)
Week Two: The Republic of Suffering: How Americans Dealt with Civil War Death
Reading:
• Drew Gilpin Faust, A Republic of Suffering: Death and the American
Civil War (2009), chap. 5
• D. Blight, “Forgetting Why We Remember,” New York Times, May 30,
2011: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/opinion/30blight.html?_r=0
• Discussion: Remembering the war dead in the nineteenth and twenty-first
centuries
Week Three: From War to Reconciliation: The Culture of Reunion
Reading:
• Blight, Race and Reunion, chaps. 4, 6
• Chandra Manning and Adam Rothman, “The Name of War,” New York
Times, August 17, 2013:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/the-name-of-war/?_r=1
In class:
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “The Soldier’s Faith,” speech given on May
30, 1895
Week Four: Troubled Commemorations
Reading:
• LeeAnn White, “War, cold war, civil rights: the Civil War Centennial in
context, 1960-1965,” in The memory of the Civil War in American culture,
eds. Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh (2004)
In class:
• Woodrow Wilson, “An Address at the Gettysburg Battlefield,” July 4,
1913
• Discuss selected articles from the New York Times online series,
“Disunion,” which looks back at the Civil War in honor of its
sesquicentennial
• Possible tour of Library of Congress’ sesquicentennial exhibit on Civil
War
Week Five: Now He Belongs to the Ages: Lincoln in American Culture
Reading:
• Andrew Ferguson, Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America
(2008), selection TBD
• Selection of articles on Speilberg’s Lincoln from Eric Foner, Ta-Nehisi
Coates, Kevin Levin, Kate Masur, accessible at
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/category/lincoln-roundtable/
In class:
• Scenes from Steven Speilberg’s Lincoln (2012)
• Discussion of depictions of Lincoln in art, literature and politics
Essay 1 due
Week Six: Remembering the Civil War in Stone
Reading:
• Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and
Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (1997), Introduction, chap. 4
[on the Lincoln and Kneeling Slave statue in Lincoln Park, DC]
• Thomas Brown, The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief
History With Documents (2004), 24-41 [on soldiers’ monument designs
and inscriptions]
In class:
• DC Civil War statuary tour
Week Seven: The Reel Civil War: The Civil War on Screen
Reading:
• Gary Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood &
Popular Art Shape what we Know about the Civil War (2008), selection
TBD
In class:
• Scenes from Birth of a Nation (1915); Glory (1989); Gods and Generals
(2003); C.S.A: Confederate States of America (2004), others TBD
Week Eight: Hallowed Ground: The Place of Battlefields in American Culture
Reading:
• TBD
• Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” (1863)
In class:
• Possible visit to Antietam or talk by National Park Service official.
Essay 2 Due
Week Nine: The Lost Cause: Confederate Memory
Reading:
• Blight, Race and Reunion, chap. 8
• John Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag (2006), selections TBD
In class:
• NAACP, “Resolution on Confederate Battle Flag and Emblem (2002)”
and Charley Reese, “Purge South of its Symbols? You’re Barking up
Wrong Flagpole” (1997)
• Discussion on the Confederate flag in American politics
Week Ten: The Meaning of Freedom and the Legacy of Emancipation
Reading:
• Blight, Race and Reunion, chap. 9
• Scott Sandage, “A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the
Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory, 1939-1963,” The
Journal of America History (June 1993), 135-167
Week Eleven: Remembering the Civil War in the Twenty-First Century
In class:
• GUEST TBA
Discussion: How should the nation commemorate Appomattox?
Essay 3 Due