Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration Among Civil War Veterans

A Slower, Less Traveled Road to Reunion More than three quarters of a century ago historian Paul Buck traced The Road to Reunion (1938) that Americans traveled after the Civil War. Buck’s Pulitzer Prize winning book rested on the premise that sectional reconciliation was a national...

No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics

Assorted abolitionists Foot soldiers of the antislavery movement Frederick Blue\u27s No Taint of Compromise traces the lives of eleven antebellum opponents of slavery. In concise, crisp, and compelling biographical sketches, Blue underscores the diversity within the antislave...

Death at the Edges of Empire: Fallen Soldiers, Cultural Memory, and the Making of an American Nation, 1863-1921

Shannon Bontrager has written an intricate, impressive book about mourning, memory, and national identity. Some facets of his story are familiar, but he extends the sweep of his analysis in fresh and provocative directions, enlarging it, as the title suggests, to the edges of the American empire. At the core of the book is the evolution of the commemoration of the fallen citizen soldier from the advent of mass casualties during the American Civil War through the carnage of World War One. Keen to honor dead soldiers who had been deprived of the comforts of death within the bosom of their families, the Civil War generation expended impressive energy and resources to consecrate their graves through a system of national cemeteries..

Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915

Jubilee Commemorating the abolition of slavery Mitch Kachun has written an important book on African American traditions of historical commemoration, a topic that has escaped the attention of historians for too long:. Perhaps in our present age, when pundits complain that public...

The Myth of Nathan Bedford Forrest

Simple man, complex symbol Authors contend Forrest represents the unreconstructed South Nathan Bedford Forrest poses a major challenge to any student of his life. Although his exploits include ample controversy and numerous life-and-death confrontations (on the battlefield and el...

Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War

Desperate Measures The Southern Plans of Emancipation Sparked by a proposal by Major General Patrick Cleburne in late 1863, Confederates spent the final year and half of the Civil War debating and eventually implementing plans to offer slaves freedom in return for military servi...

The memorialization of southern poor white men's labor in rick bragg's memoir trilogy

This article explores the ways that Rick Bragg memorializes poor white men's labor across his memoir trilogy, examining the tensions that arise as he attempts to bring poor whites into the center of the southern community. I consider the neo-Agrarian strains within his work, as well as Bragg's responses to the globalization of the region. The work addresses the absences within the South's memorial landscape, and questions the extent to which Bragg's work addresses those gaps. © 2012 Cambridge University Press