The Civil War in Public Memory

doi:10.1017/9781316650721.023

23 - The Civil War in Public Memory

from Part III - Outcomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2019

Caroline E. Janney

Edited by

Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Show author details

Aaron Sheehan-Dean: Affiliation:
Louisiana State University

Book contents

Get access

Summary

By July 4, 1865, vestiges of the savage battle that had wrecked Gettysburg two years earlier were beginning to fade. On this first Fourth of July since peace, thousands descended once more on the small town, but this time veterans of the Army of the Potomac joined state dignitaries to lay the cornerstone for a soldiers’ monument in the national cemetery. Speaking to the somber crowd, Major General Oliver Otis Howard, commander of the XI Corps during the battle and commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, declared that the memorial they now dedicated was raised to the Union soldier and his “unceasing herald of labor, suffering, union, liberty, and sacrifice.” “The maimed bodies, the multitude of graves, the historic fields, the monumental stones like this we are laying to-day,” he noted, “are only meager memorials of the soldiers’ work.”

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 481 - 505

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316650721.023 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Key Works

Blair, William A., Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865–1914 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).Google Scholar

Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

Clark, Kathleen. Defining Moments: African American Commemoration & Political Culture in the South, 1863–1913 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).Google Scholar

Cook, Robert J. Troubled Commemorations: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961–1965 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007).Google Scholar

Coski, John. The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

Cox, Karen L. Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003).Google Scholar

Foster, Gaines M. Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

Gallagher, Gary W. and Nolan, Alan T. (eds.). The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

Gannon, Barbara A. The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).Google Scholar

Janney, Caroline E. Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).Google Scholar

Marten, James. Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).Google Scholar

McConnell, Stuart. Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).Google Scholar

Neff, John R. Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005).Google Scholar

Silber, Nina. This War Ain’t Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018).Google Scholar

Book contents

23 - The Civil War in Public Memory

Summary

Access options

References

Key Works

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive