When the nation’s first national military park was dedicated at Chickamauga, Georgia in September 1895, the speeches delivered by former Union and Confederate leaders confirmed a new meaning of the Civil War. In the narrative that emerged in two days of speech-making, slavery and emancipation were ceremonially pushed out of the story; the sacrifices made in support of opposing views of the future of slavery had been blended into a narrative that made the war’s violence a part of a bodily sacrifice to a common “manhood”; the war redefined as a crucible in which a new, internationally powerful nation would be born. For the next century, the battlefield remained a site where the meanings inscribed during the 1890s dominated the interpretive landscape.
This paper shows how the public celebrations that focused on the Chickamauga National Military Park functioned as ceremonies of assent to the national narrative. By examining the Blue and Gray Bar-B-Que of 1889, the dedication ceremonies of 1895, the ongoing veteran’s reunions of the late 19th and early 20th century, and the centennial re-enactment of the Blue and Gray BBQ in 1989 it will reveal a pattern in which these ceremonies bolstered the park’s interpretation of the battle as defined by the 1890 enabling legislation. In so doing, it will show how these ceremonies helped determined how generations of Americans came to knowledge the Civil War as combat between brave white men without reference to cause, context, or to the long-term social implications of the conflict. It will also point out how the park slowly began to re-adjust its narrative framing during the last ten years and its struggle to meet visitor expectations with narratives that challenge the limited view of the war.
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