Remembering the Civil War [electronic resource] : reunion and the limits of reconciliation / Caroline E. Janney.

ISBN:

9781469607078

9781469607979

Title:

Remembering the Civil War [electronic resource] : reunion and the limits of reconciliation / Caroline E. Janney.

Author:

Janney, Caroline E.

Personal Author:

Janney, Caroline E.

Publication Information:

Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2013]

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 451 pages) : illustrations.

Series:

The Littlefield history of the Civil War era

Contents:

The war, April 1861-March 1865 -- A magnanimous peace? April-May 1865 -- Mourning and celebration in the wake of war, 1865-1869 -- Union and emancipation, 1865-1880s -- The lost cause, 1867-1890 -- Our friends, the enemy, 1880s-early 1900s -- Slavery, race, and reconciliation, 1880s-1890s -- Women and reconciliation, 1880s-1910s -- A new generation, 1913-1939.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Reunions -- United States -- History -- 19th century.

Reunions -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Memory -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 19th century.

Memory -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Geographic Term:

United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Social aspects.

United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Veterans.

United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Influence.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2013

Publication Information:

Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2013]

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
973.71 23	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

As early as 1865, survivors of the Civil War were acutely aware that people were purposefully shaping what would be remembered about the war and what would be omitted from the historical record. In Remembering the Civil War , Caroline E. Janney examines how the war generation--men and women, black and white, Unionists and Confederates--crafted and protected their memories of the nation's greatest conflict. Janney maintains that the participants never fully embraced the reconciliation so famously represented in handshakes across stone walls. Instead, both Union and Confederate veterans, and most especially their respective women's organizations, clung tenaciously to their own causes well into the twentieth century.

Janney explores the subtle yet important differences between reunion and reconciliation and argues that the Unionist and Emancipationist memories of the war never completely gave way to the story Confederates told. She challenges the idea that white northerners and southerners salved their war wounds through shared ideas about race and shows that debates about slavery often proved to be among the most powerful obstacles to reconciliation.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

In nine splendidly written chapters, Janney (Purdue) analyzes sectional reunion and reconciliation from the Civil War to the beginning of WW II. Effecting reunion was difficult, and both Lincoln and Grant hoped that easy peace terms would promote it. Reunion occurred, with Northerners and Southerners saluting the US flag. But sectional reconciliation proved more difficult. Veterans, their spouses, and descendants insisted on a sectional reading of the causes and effects of the war. Northerners viewed Southerners as traitors whose slaveholding disrupted the Union. Southerners saw themselves as the heirs of American nationalism, fighting for constitutional liberty. They had been outnumbered, not defeated, and they fought for a holy cause. Ironically, because national political reunion was successful, white Southerners and African Americans possessed more latitude to articulate powerful counter-narratives to reconciliation and union, perpetuating an ongoing regional and ethnic reading of the meaning of Civil War. Janney's nuanced analysis shows how contemporary agendas drove a continuously evolving memory of the war's causes and outcomes. "Grant the Magnanimous" became "Grant the Butcher"; dedication of commemorative sites perpetuated sectional debates over who was right and who was wrong, presaging today's political divides. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. E. R. Crowther Adams State University