The South Needs to Commemorate Its Southern Unionists

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The South Needs to Commemorate Its Southern Unionists

The historical amnesia of the South regarding its black and white Union soldiers should be rectified. By choosing to selectively remember and honor Confederate soldiers while simultaneously ignoring the many Southerners who fought for the Union, Southerners send clear message that loyalty to region, protection of white supremacy, and veneration of the Confederacy are the only legacies of the Civil War worth remembering. If Confederate monuments continue to be torn down, new ones should go up, celebrating those Southerners--black and white--who remained loyal to the Union and brought about “a new birth of freedom.”

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Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story? David Ireland and the 137th New York

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Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story? David Ireland and the 137th New York

We all know the story of Joshua Chamberlain holding the left of the Union line at Gettysburg. But, did you know that a similar action occurred on the right of the Union line as well? Guest author Justin Voithofer gives us a look at David Ireland's 137th New York Infantry at Culp's Hill.

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Why Some Southern College Campuses Cannot Escape their Confederate Past: The University of Mississippi

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Why Some Southern College Campuses Cannot Escape their Confederate Past: The University of Mississippi

Ole Miss has been in the news several times in the last couple of years, dealing with its Civil War and Civil Rights legacy. In 2010, the university made headlines when they changed their school mascot away from one that highlighted its Confederate heritage. In 2014, an Ole Miss fraternity was shut down after students placed a noose on the statue of James Meredith, the first black student to enroll in the all-white school. Most recently, the university joined the Confederate flag debate when the students and faculty chose to remove the state flag, which includes Confederate symbols, from the campus.

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"Still on Parade:" Civil War Veterans and Civic Expression in Memorial Day Parades

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"Still on Parade:" Civil War Veterans and Civic Expression in Memorial Day Parades

In terms of civic expressions of patriotism, few ceremonies are more quintessential than the Memorial Day Parade. Although the holiday honors those who fell in the service of the nation, veterans have always had a pivotal role in public expressions and observances. Veterans of the Civil War continued to participate in Memorial Day Parades well into the twentieth century, but as the years waned on, their role in these exercises began to change. By the 1930s, Civil War veterans were largely viewed by the public as curiosities or living memorials, their experience a lesson that Americans could draw upon for modern issues. 

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part VIII: Final Reflections

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part VIII: Final Reflections

With all the research that has been done on the Civil War, at times it seems as if the individual is lost in the seas of voices, stories, and statistics.  Armies are huge entities, regiments move like blocks on a map, and the individual experience is lost.  I found that when looking at a cemetery or even during Memorial Day events, the whole scope of death and devastation was apparent as one took in the rows of uniform graves, but there was no deeper connection to the lives and deaths of the men sleeping below our feet.

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part VII: Beyond the Civil War

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part VII: Beyond the Civil War

The National Cemetery at Fredericksburg contains more than just Civil War burials.  Yes, the vast majority of soldiers buried there fought between 1861 and 1865, but veterans of the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II are also buried within the cemetery.

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part VI: Nobody was Untouched by the Civil War

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part VI: Nobody was Untouched by the Civil War

Every grave in the national cemetery represents a story of service and struggle, but they also represent the impact of loss on a wide scale.  A soldier is one person, but think of the web of connections each had in their lives.  Every grave also represents loss for a mother, a father, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, wives, extended family, and friends. 

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part V: A Brother's War

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part V: A Brother's War

The Civil War is often called a war of brother against brother.  Imagery of American fighting American and family fighting family during the war arouse sentiment of sadness and horror at the thought of families ripped apart by war.  While there are instances of family members fighting on opposite sides of the conflict, more often family members were fighting side-by-side for the same army.  Recruitment within towns and counties meant brothers, fathers, sons, uncles, cousins, and close friends often ended up in the same regiments, or fought in different units at the same time.  As a consequence, many families faced multiple tragedies during the war. 

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part IV: The United States Colored Troops

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part IV: The United States Colored Troops

For five men buried in the National Cemetery, the Civil War was the opportunity for a completely new future.  African-American men were not allowed to enlist until the second half of the war (black troops would see their first action in Virginia at Spotsylvania in 1864) but by the end of the war there were 166 black regiments in US service consisting of 180,000 troops.  For these Colored Troops and the rest of the enslaved population, the Civil War was the road to emancipation. 

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part III: Beyond the Field of Battle

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part III: Beyond the Field of Battle

When one thinks of battle casualties, combat deaths come first to mind.  Many more men were wounded than killed instantly; those that did not die within a short time on the battlefield were carried to field hospitals where overworked, undertrained, and undersupplied doctors tried to keep up with the stream of men coming off the field. 

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part II: The Toll of Battle

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Secrets of a Cemetery, Part II: The Toll of Battle

Battle and violence are essential elements of war, and as a result many men become casualties.  These deaths were often sudden, gruesome, and disturbing and many occurred with little note taken of them.  Each grave in the cemetery obviously represents a death, and each deserves attention.  However, there are a few extraordinary stories that demonstrate both the courage of soldiers and the horrible nature of war.

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Bloody Field, Peaceful Field

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Bloody Field, Peaceful Field

Walk the field at Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle and you are struck by the peaceful beauty of the area.  Today, not a shadow of the violence, pain, and intensity remains on the fields where so many fell almost 150 years ago. But should battlefields be a place of peace?  Should fields which once soaked up the blood of countless men become beautiful, or does such a transformation detract from telling the story of their sacrifice and suffering? 

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Presidents' Day Review-Remembering Lincoln

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Presidents' Day Review-Remembering Lincoln

Today is President's Day, a day commemorating not only our first president George Washington, but also all subsequent American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln (who would've turned 207 this past Friday, February 12). Although busy schedules have prevented us from putting together a full Lincoln Week like last year, we did think it would be appropriate to share all our Lincoln-related posts again on this President's Day. It would do a disservice to Lincoln to make him a marble man, to allow the glow of his current position in America's civil pantheon to overshadow the very real, very human struggles he faced during the Civil War. This collection of posts should help shine light on Lincoln the leader and Lincoln in American public memory.

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A (Macabre) Family Affair: The Weavers and the Gettysburg Dead

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A (Macabre) Family Affair: The Weavers and the Gettysburg Dead

In 1863, Samuel Weaver carefully exhumed thousands of Union bodies from Gettysburg battlefield for burial in the new National Cemetery. Several years later, his son would pick up his father's work to send Confederate burials south.

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A Beginner's Guide to Researching Your Civil War Ancestor

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A Beginner's Guide to Researching Your Civil War Ancestor

For Americans, history is a personal matter. Whatever we do or don't learn in the classroom, read in books, see in films...Americans stillexperience and understand the past personally. I suspect many public historians are familiar with Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen’s work Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. The product of a 1994 survey, their book helps confirm and quantify the very personal ways in which everyday Americans experience the past...namely via their families. People feel most connected to the past when gathering with the families, and their most frequent “past-related” activity is looking at photographs with family and friends. Americans place greater trust in family stories than in college professors, high school teachers, or nonfiction books (personal family accounts were second only to museums). And of course, many Americans explore history through their own genealogy. Nothing helps bring history to life more than a personal connection; a realization that your family, your ancestor, lived and participated in the events of another age.

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Romanticizing Myths: the Role of Pop Culture in Civil War History

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Romanticizing Myths: the Role of Pop Culture in Civil War History

About a month ago I attended Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede in Gatlinburg, TN - fully expecting to be horrified by what might ensue. But after I left I was hesitant to apply too much criticism to something that advertises itself simply as a dinner show and is very clearly meant to exist in the realm of imagination and exaggeration.

Recent events, however, have convinced me that ending the myths that endure from the Civil War is not simply the job of historians.

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Confederate Meccas: The Unexpected Legacy of the Civil War in East Tennessee

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Confederate Meccas: The Unexpected Legacy of the Civil War in East Tennessee

So what is the legacy of the Civil War in East Tennessee? The short answer is, not a good one. War came to East Tennessee in the form of guerilla conflicts that harassed the lesser-developed portions of the United States in 1861.

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Stone Heroes North and South: The Connection between Mount Rushmore and Stone Mountain

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Stone Heroes North and South: The Connection between Mount Rushmore and Stone Mountain

One displays the heroes of the Confederacy—Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson—all on horseback riding across the wide gray canvas that is Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Georgia.  The other features four bust-style depictions of famous American presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln—gazing formally from Mount Rushmore over the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Each was created out of pride for heritage and nation.  Each inspires awe at its size and wonder at the artistic skill necessary to carve such massive. 

And each have very different meanings.  One is a very nationalistic and patriotic piece featuring four of America’s favorite presidents that was conceived to bring tourism into the area.  The other is a monument to the Confederacy led by Southerners who wanted to honor and sustain the Confederate legacy.  One honors the United States of America, the other the Confederate States of America.  They stand a nation apart, both figuratively and literally (in terms of locations), yet they are connected by the life of one man, the sculptor who set out to complete both projects and ended up finishing neither.

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