Session Abstract

The American Civil War has been called the nation’s Iliad, its defining moment, and its felt past. The war’s battlefields have been described as shrines, sacred places, and hallowed ground. Those who fought the war are recalled as heroes of the republic, noble men fighting for principle, and emancipators. Behind these ways of knowing the Civil War, however, lie specific histories, constructed pasts, and tactics of power. These histories have been formed through the stories told about the war and inscribed on the landscape. And they have borne profound meanings and structured the ways that generations of Americans have made sense of their lives, experience, and nation for the last 150 years.

Since the publication of David Blight’s Race and Reunion more than 10 years ago, scholars of the Civil War era have become increasingly aware of how these stories and the places created to commemorate the soldiers and battles of 1861-1865 have forged social memories of the Civil War and how what they created transmitted deep meanings about race, nation, and America’s place in the imperial, international world of the 20^th century. This panel explores how in mass publication, in public celebration, and in public institutions the specifics of lives, places, and stories have been mobilized to create broader social, cultural, and political realities. It points toward the subtle creation of a powerful discourse of nation and empire that was transmitted through ordinary and everyday media. And it shows the persistence of those residual cultural artifacts and their meanings into the late 20^th and early 21^st century.