This discussion will take place on twitter on Sunday, May 3 at 8pm on Twitter using the hashtag #CWM101.
We are now more than halfway through Caroline Janney’s book, Remembering the Civil War: Reconciliation and the Limits of Reunion. This week we will discuss chapter 6. This chapter addresses the thesis at the center of the book and highlights the importance of distinguishing between reunion and reconciliation. Even as veterans embraced one another in the spirit of reconciliation at reunions and monument dedications, it did not extinguish lingering feelings of bitterness. Indeed, it may have deepened the resentment between one-time enemies.
Reading Questions
- What motivated veterans to want to meet one another on the old battlefields beginning in the 1880s?
- How did reconciliationist rhetoric among Union veterans bolster the Lost Cause narrative?
- How was memory of the battlefield dead transformed by reconciliationist rhetoric during the 1880s?
- How and why did Ulysses S. Grant’s death become a symbol of reconciliation?
- How important were business interests in encouraging reconciliationist sentiment throughout the country during the 1880s?
- Why did the dedication of monuments to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia raise such strong feelings of bitterness among northern veterans?
- In what ways did the dedication of the Chickamauga battlefield reflect the continuing challenges of balancing reunion and reconciliation among veterans and Americans generally by the 1890s?
Further Reading
- Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory by Carol Reardon
- “Pageantry and Woe: The Funeral of Ulysses S. Grant” by Joan Waugh
- “Ira Forbes’s War” by Lesley Gordon
Primary Sources
- Confederate Veteran magazine
- Dedication Speech: South Carolina monument at Chickamauga battlefield
- Full Text: Dedication of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park
- Photograph: Unveiling of the Robert E. Lee Monument in Richmond, Virginia
- Photographs/Text: Gettysburg reunion of 1888.