Confederate Visions: Nationalism, Symbolism, and the Imagined South in the Civil War

A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era

by Ian Binnington

Nationalism in nineteenth-century America operated through a collection of symbols, signifiers citizens could invest with meaning and understanding. In Confederate Visions, Ian Binnington examines the roots of Confederate nationalism by analyzing some of its most important Confederate constitutions, treasury notes, wartime literature, and the role of the military in symbolizing the Confederate nation. Nationalisms tend to construct glorified pasts, idyllic pictures of national strength, honor, and unity, based on visions of what should have been rather than what actually was. Binnington considers the ways in which the Confederacy was imagined by antebellum Southerners employing intertwined mythic concepts―the "Worthy Southron," the "Demon Yankee," the "Silent Slave"―and a sense of shared history that constituted a distinctive Confederate Americanism. The Worthy Southron, the constructed Confederate self, was imagined as a champion of liberty, counterposed to the Demon Yankee other, a fanatical abolitionist and enemy of Liberty. The Silent Slave was a companion to the vocal Confederate self, loyal and trusting, reliable and honest. The creation of American national identity was fraught with struggle, political conflict, and bloody Civil War. Confederate Visions examines literature, newspapers and periodicals, visual imagery, and formal state documents to explore the origins and development of wartime Confederate nationalism.

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Elly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for my Civil War in American Memory class. This book talks about the process the Confederacy went through in creating a Confederate nationalism. Binnington examines print culture and literature to explore the ways in which the confederacy saw its own construction of nationalism and the reoccurring tropes in these texts/documents. It is especially interesting because some of these tropes continue to appear today in the way in which people talk/defend the Confederacy. It was a short read, sometimes dry, but overall engaging.

[Tim Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful book for thinking about nationalism as a literary construct. I found the chapter about currency most interesting; currency is about print and narrative but always neglected in intellectual history. Not sure anything else in the book is particularly surprising.