In The Review Queue: Across The Bloody Chasm

Across the Bloody Chasm:

The Culture of Commemoration
among Civil War Veterans

By M. Keith Harris

Long after the Civil War ended, one conflict raged on: the battle to define and shape the war's legacy. Across the Bloody Chasm deftly examines Civil War veterans commemorative efforts and the concomitant and sometimes conflicting movement for reconciliation.

Though former soldiers from both sides of the war celebrated the history and values of the newly reunited America, a deep divide remained between people in the North and South as to how the country s past should be remembered and the nation's ideals honored. Union soldiers could not forget that their southern counterparts had taken up arms against them, while Confederates maintained that the principles of states rights and freedom from tyranny aligned with the beliefs and intentions of the founding fathers. Confederate soldiers also challenged northern claims of a moral victory, insisting that slavery had not been the cause of the war, and ferociously resisting the imposition of postwar racial policies. M. Keith Harris argues that although veterans remained committed to reconciliation, the sectional sensibilities that influenced the memory of the war left the North and South far from a meaningful accord.

Harris’ masterful analysis of veteran memory assesses the ideological commitments of a generation of former soldiers, weaving their stories into the larger narrative of the process of national reunification. Through regimental histories, speeches at veterans gatherings, monument dedications, and war narratives, Harris uncovers how veterans from both sides kept the deadliest war in American history alive in memory at a time when the nation seemed determined to move beyond conflict.

ISBN 978-0807157725, Louisiana State University Press, © 2014, Hardcover, 232 pages, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $42.50.  To purchase a copy of this book click HERE.

Book Review: The Good Men That Won The War

The Good Men Who Won The War: Army Of The Cumberland Veterans And Emancipation Memory

By Robert Hunt

The field of study relating to the American Civil War (1861-1865) is vast, yet during the last few years has emerged a new way to look at the war: how it was, and is, remembered. How did the soldiers who fought the war remember it, its events and its consequences? How do we choose to remember the war today? How has the remembrance of the war changed in the nearly 150 years since the guns fell silent?

Dr. Robert E. Hunt, professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University, has narrowed down the topic of Civil War memory in two ways; he has first limited his study to the Army of the Cumberland, which fought primarily, and progressively south from Kentucky, through Tennessee, to the battlefields around Atlanta. Secondly, Dr. Hunt has further limited his study to emancipation, or rather the memory of emancipation. The result of his study is his book, “The Good Men Who Won The War: Army Of The Cumberland And Emancipation Memory.”

Dr. Hunt’s thin tome is divided into a prelude and four parts. The prelude provides his readers a brief overview of the Army of the Cumberland’s, formation, organization and history. His chapters explore: how the Cumberland veterans remembered their embrace of a war of emancipation; their understanding of their status as citizen-soldiers, their view of the “real war” and how they remembered the victory they had won; how they incorporated African Americans and former Confederates into their writings; and his last chapter centers on two individuals, Wilber Fisk Hinman, author of the novel, “Corporal Si Klegg and his Pard,” and Joseph Warren Keifer, a Republican congressman who according to Dr. Hunt wrote the most politically charged memoir of all the authors.

Using the histories and memoirs of the Army of the Cumberland, Dr. Hunt argues quite convincingly that the men did not view the war as a crusade against slavery, but emancipation as a by-product of the war, they did not rebel against the idea of fighting to emancipate the slaves of the south, they embraced it as a necessary war measure. And yet he also demonstrates that though the soldiers of the Army of the Cumberland fought for and were proud of the extermination of slavery, they did not consider African Americans their equals.

Using the order of battle at it appeared just prior to the Tullahoma Campaign in June 1863, Dr. Hunt thoroughly sought out every published regimental history and personal memoir, published in 1880 or later, of the units and men that comprised the Army of the Cumberland, which by that time had been formed by the juncture of Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio, reinforcements from Missouri, newly formed units from the “western” states in 1862 and Gordon Granger’s “Reserve Corps” having previously been stationed in Kentucky. He did not however use sources such as “Battles and Leaders,” or the Papers of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, for such sources tend to have articles of a singular nature, relating to a battle, anecdotes or incidents. He rather chose to concentrate on sources that treated the war as a whole. Also eliminated from Dr. Hunt’s study are memoirs of major figures from the army such as Philip Sheridan, as he notes other Civil War histories have studied the leadership of the Western armies at length and there is already a large secondary literature available. In doing this culling of sources, Dr. Hunt has assured his readers that his book is from the point of view of the men who did the war’s fighting.

Dr. Hunt’s book includes a single appendix, “Cumberland Regimental Histories and Personal Memoirs Reviewed for This Study,” which serves as a limited bibliography of the sources he consulted, but he frequently quotes, or otherwise alludes to the work of other historians throughout his text, and it would have been preferable to have a fully fleshed out bibliography, not only of the primary sources used, but also of the secondary as well.

Walt Whitman claimed the real war would never get in the books. Dr. Hunt argues that it did.

ISBN 978-0-8173-1688-4, University Alabama Press, © 2010, Hardcover, 192 pages, Photographs, Appendix: “Cumberland Regimental Histories and Personal Memoirs Reviewed for This Study,” Endnotes, & Index. $36.00

Review: Causes Won, Lost & Forgotten

Causes Won, Lost & Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War
By Gary W. Gallagher

How we remember the past doesn’t reflect on historical events as much as it reflects on the persons remembering them, individually as people, or collectively as a community or a nation. Studying how we choose interpret and remember the Civil War, and how our interpretations of it have changed over time, tells us where we’ve been, where we are now and how far we’ve come. Gary Gallagher, in his book, “Causes Won, Lost & Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War,” has given us just such a study.

Mr. Gallagher has chosen to focus his study to the last twenty-five years or so in films and the last forty years in popular art. Before he tells us where we are in our remembrances on the Civil War he tells us where we’ve been, and to do that he defines the four narrative traditions that emerged after the Civil War: 1.) “The Lost Cause,” The Confederacy fighting against overwhelming odds 2.) The Union Cause, 3.) The Emancipation Cause and 4.) The Reconciliation Cause. Of the four narrative traditions The Union Cause, popular both during and immediately after the war has fallen by the wayside in modern times, in part because it is not so easily depicted.

To be able to tell us where we are as a society in our remembrances of the Civil War, Mr. Gallagher first briefly tells us where we’ve been by taking a look at how motion pictures have portrayed the Civil War from the development of the medium until the mid 1960’s. Though he briefly mentions many movies, two stand out far and above the others, “The Birth of a Nation” and “Gone with the Wind.” Both films rely heavily on their “Lost Cause” foundations. Other films of the era focus to a greater or lesser degree on The Lost Cause and Reconciliation traditions. Films dealing with the Civil War practically vanished during the Vietnam era. But starting with the observances of the quasiquicentenial of the Civil War in the mid to late 1980s and Ken Burns’ 1991 PBS documentary “The Civil War,” the war itself has made a comeback in American memory.

For his study, Mr. Gallagher looked at 14 films: Glory, Dances With Wolves, Gettysburg, Sommersby, Little Women, Pharaoh’s Army, Andersonville, Ride with the Devil, Gangs of New York, Gods and Generals, Cold Mountain, The Last Samurai, The Confederate States of America and Seraphim Falls. With the notable exception of Gods and Generals the Lost Cause tradition has fallen by the wayside in film to join its brother The Union Cause. And in its place the Emancipation and the Reconciliation causes have taken root and blossomed.

In popular art however, Mr. Gallagher has observed just the opposite. Looking at advertisements for works of art in Civil War magazines over the last forty years, Mr. Gallagher has noted that pictures with a Lost Cause theme or featuring Confederate Army and its leaders by far and away out sell artworks featuring Union themes, the Federal Army or its leaders.

So why would the Lost Cause be in decline in films and be on the rise in art? Films are a greater reflection of the public in general, while works of art are often a personal choice and not displayed in public, but rather in the privacy of ones home or office. So while the Lost Cause may be vanishing from public view it certainly is firmly imbedded in our private psyches.

ISBN 978-0-8078-3206-6, The University of North Carolina Press, © 2008, Hardcover, 288 pages, Photographs, Endnotes & Index. $28.00