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American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era
Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared, "One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free." He delivered this speech just three years after the Virginia Civil War Commission published a guide proclaiming that "the Centennial is no time for finding fault or placing blame or fighting the issues all over again."
David Blight takes his readers back to the centennial celebration to determine how Americans then made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation that had wracked the United States a century earlier. Amid cold war politics and civil rights protest, four of America's most incisive writers explored the gulf between remembrance and reality. Robert Penn Warren, the southern-reared poet-novelist who recanted his support of segregation; Bruce Catton, the journalist and U.S. Navy officer who became a popular Civil War historian; Edmund Wilson, the century's preeminent literary critic; and James Baldwin, the searing African-American essayist and activist--each exposed America's triumphalist memory of the war. And each, in his own way, demanded a reckoning with the tragic consequences it spawned.
Blight illuminates not only mid-twentieth-century America's sense of itself but also the dynamic, ever-changing nature of Civil War memory. On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the war, we have an invaluable perspective on how this conflict continues to shape the country's political debates, national identity, and sense of purpose.
David Blight takes his readers back to the centennial celebration to determine how Americans then made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation that had wracked the United States a century earlier. Amid cold war politics and civil rights protest, four of America's most incisive writers explored the gulf between remembrance and reality. Robert Penn Warren, the southern-reared poet-novelist who recanted his support of segregation; Bruce Catton, the journalist and U.S. Navy officer who became a popular Civil War historian; Edmund Wilson, the century's preeminent literary critic; and James Baldwin, the searing African-American essayist and activist--each exposed America's triumphalist memory of the war. And each, in his own way, demanded a reckoning with the tragic consequences it spawned.
Blight illuminates not only mid-twentieth-century America's sense of itself but also the dynamic, ever-changing nature of Civil War memory. On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the war, we have an invaluable perspective on how this conflict continues to shape the country's political debates, national identity, and sense of purpose.
328 pages, Paperback
First published September 26, 2011
28 people are currently reading
475 people want to read
About the author
David W. Blight
125 books351 followersDavid William Blight is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previously, Blight was a professor of History at Amherst College, where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards, including the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. In 2021, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 12, 2016
A fantastic intellectual history, powerfully written by one of America's best minds on the Civil War. Non-academics or general readers will find esoteric stuff like a chapter on Bruce Catton pretty boring, but I'm fascinated by it and learned a lot about how Americans in the turbulent 1960s thought about the even more hectic 1860s. Blight's insights are profound, his pen is clean, and this book is good. Chapter on James Baldwin was my favorite, but it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book for some reason.
October 2, 2011
Blight studies the Civil War Centennial through the writings of four disparate people; Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson and James Baldwin. This is one of the best books I've read this year. The chapter on Baldwin was especially interesting as I had never read anything by or about him. Wonderful read!
August 11, 2013
I had the opportunity to listen to David Blight's Open Yale Course on the Civil War and Reconstruction http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-119 (which I highly recommend to Civil War buffs) and was intrigued especially by his thesis that it is the memory which has been created for us about the war which colors our understanding of this historical period.
American Oracle is Blight's reflection on the Centennial celebration of the Civil War which took place as the Civil Rights movement was growing stronger and more violent. He uses Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson and James Baldwin as the lens through which he looks at the 1960-65 era via their own reflections on the Centennial. I had the pleasure of reading Warren and Baldwin to fully understand Blight's work.
It is interesting to muse on the commemorations of the Civil War and Emancipation at 50 year intervals: 1913 (50th) happened during the height of Jim Crow when black Union veterans were refused participation in the Gettysburg re-enactment; 1963 (100th) was when Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and declared that the "promissory note" given to the freed slaves had come back "marked insufficient funds" from the United States' "bank of justice"; 2013 (150th) we find the US Supreme Court pulling back on the Voting Right Act and debating the future of affirmative action.
There is only one cause of the Civil War and that is slavery. Read "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin if you don't agree with me.
American Oracle is Blight's reflection on the Centennial celebration of the Civil War which took place as the Civil Rights movement was growing stronger and more violent. He uses Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson and James Baldwin as the lens through which he looks at the 1960-65 era via their own reflections on the Centennial. I had the pleasure of reading Warren and Baldwin to fully understand Blight's work.
It is interesting to muse on the commemorations of the Civil War and Emancipation at 50 year intervals: 1913 (50th) happened during the height of Jim Crow when black Union veterans were refused participation in the Gettysburg re-enactment; 1963 (100th) was when Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and declared that the "promissory note" given to the freed slaves had come back "marked insufficient funds" from the United States' "bank of justice"; 2013 (150th) we find the US Supreme Court pulling back on the Voting Right Act and debating the future of affirmative action.
There is only one cause of the Civil War and that is slavery. Read "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin if you don't agree with me.
July 18, 2021
A superbly written and thoughtful book. Even though written 10 years ago, its themes, insights and analysis remain current today.
April 11, 2021
David Blight is probably my favorite American Civil War historian. His writing style is extremely dense and sometimes I feel like I'm treading water just trying to keep up with him, but everything I have read by him has been insightful and highly important to read. This particular book is a literary analysis of four writers that have tackled the legacy of the Civil War in different ways. I thoroughly enjoy literary analysis, and with Blight's insightful historical analysis framing it, it's practically a dream to read this book. I highly recommend.
June 4, 2012
I didn't think the chapter on James Baldwin worked very well to make Blight's arguments about the CW centennial. Otherwise, it was an interesting book.
Want to read
February 10, 2012Enticing review in NYRB moved me to look this one up.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
November 12, 2012
This book was interesting but ponderous at times. I would recommend it but probably only to historians, professional or amateur. I think it is too much to digest for anyone else.
November 27, 2025
American Oracle was not what I had expected. Given the title, I had assumed that it would be about how people in the Civil Rights Movement used the history of the Civil War. Instead, it is an in-depth dive into four men writing popular histories and essays about the Civil War during its centennial. While all in various ways had to confront the Civil Rights movement, only Baldwin and Warren were active participants in it. In some ways, the title is ironic as the three white writers, even Warren, largely ignored the role of slavery in causing the Civil War, wrote negatively of the abolition movement, and either in whole or in part accepted portions of the Lost Cause myth.
Of the four, I had read Robert Penn Warren and James Baldwin, but had never even heard of the historian Bruce Catton or the literary critic and historian Edmund Wilson, though they were apparently very well known to the general public in the 1950s and 1960s. (Though inevitably, the day after I read the Catton chapter, I went to a book store not far from his home town and noticed several of his books.) The four men shared, as Blight puts it, a tragic view of American history, an awareness of how the standard historical narrative gains a mythic power, and a willingness to oppose the typical narrative. Yet Warren and Catton were still trapped in finding triumphal or redemptive narratives out of the conflict.
I was struck by how the Civil War was so immediate to them. Obviously, I logically understood that middle-aged people in the 1960s had known older relatives and neighbors who experienced the Civil War, but the time periods feel so far removed from each other that that seems impossible at first glance. I was also fascinated by Blight's brief asides into the history of the official national centennial commemorations, which were designed to push reconciliation and anticommunism and were usually segregated events.
For those who have read Blight's Frederick Douglass biography or listened to his Reconstruction lectures, you'll find this book a bit denser. It's a much more straightforward biography and analysis of each writer with little of the lyrical prose in his other works. But it's still a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in public history, memory, and the role of history in the present.
Of the four, I had read Robert Penn Warren and James Baldwin, but had never even heard of the historian Bruce Catton or the literary critic and historian Edmund Wilson, though they were apparently very well known to the general public in the 1950s and 1960s. (Though inevitably, the day after I read the Catton chapter, I went to a book store not far from his home town and noticed several of his books.) The four men shared, as Blight puts it, a tragic view of American history, an awareness of how the standard historical narrative gains a mythic power, and a willingness to oppose the typical narrative. Yet Warren and Catton were still trapped in finding triumphal or redemptive narratives out of the conflict.
I was struck by how the Civil War was so immediate to them. Obviously, I logically understood that middle-aged people in the 1960s had known older relatives and neighbors who experienced the Civil War, but the time periods feel so far removed from each other that that seems impossible at first glance. I was also fascinated by Blight's brief asides into the history of the official national centennial commemorations, which were designed to push reconciliation and anticommunism and were usually segregated events.
For those who have read Blight's Frederick Douglass biography or listened to his Reconstruction lectures, you'll find this book a bit denser. It's a much more straightforward biography and analysis of each writer with little of the lyrical prose in his other works. But it's still a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in public history, memory, and the role of history in the present.
April 16, 2022
A Deeply Informed Analysis of Four Writers on the Meaning of the Civil War On Its 100th Anniversary
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2022
David Blight is the preeminent historian alive today in illuminating the cause of the Civil War and how the discordant memories of it have influenced our Nation and all of us right to the current day.
In four chapters each of 50-60 pages, Blight analyzes with great insight and sensitivity the writing and the lives and characters of four great writers--Robert Penn Warren, Edmund Wilson, Bruce Catton and James Baldwin--as they reflect on the meaning of the Civil War during its 100 year anniversary in the early 1960s.
What they reflected on then bears a stunning relevance to what we are still experiencing today.
I cannot read this book today with out being conscious of the parallels between our Civil War and the human carnage and tragedy we are witnessing in Ukraine.
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2022
David Blight is the preeminent historian alive today in illuminating the cause of the Civil War and how the discordant memories of it have influenced our Nation and all of us right to the current day.
In four chapters each of 50-60 pages, Blight analyzes with great insight and sensitivity the writing and the lives and characters of four great writers--Robert Penn Warren, Edmund Wilson, Bruce Catton and James Baldwin--as they reflect on the meaning of the Civil War during its 100 year anniversary in the early 1960s.
What they reflected on then bears a stunning relevance to what we are still experiencing today.
I cannot read this book today with out being conscious of the parallels between our Civil War and the human carnage and tragedy we are witnessing in Ukraine.
May 30, 2020
David Blight discusses the great Southern myth which the white man lived by: the inferiority of the black race, and the benevolence of the slave system to care for them. Such selfserving hypocrisy which has created such racist sequelae.
He does this by analyzing the writings of 4 important authors during the time of the Civil War Centennial: Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson and James Baldwin. This was also the time of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
One conclusion: "The deepest legacy of the Civil War, for 90 dark years,had been the betrayal of the promises of Emancipation for blacks and of the expansion of liberty and equality for all Americans." Obviously a theme of poignant relevance to current times.
He does this by analyzing the writings of 4 important authors during the time of the Civil War Centennial: Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson and James Baldwin. This was also the time of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
One conclusion: "The deepest legacy of the Civil War, for 90 dark years,had been the betrayal of the promises of Emancipation for blacks and of the expansion of liberty and equality for all Americans." Obviously a theme of poignant relevance to current times.
August 7, 2019
I started this book with great enthusiasm, but didn't find it to be nearly as powerful as Blight's "Race and Reunion," which is one of the best Civil War-related books I've read. This one was a chore at times, and I felt like it was perhaps too long and repetitive. The chapter on Bruce Catton, whose books introduced me to the Civil War back in the '60s, was fascinating. Blight obviously knows his stuff.
August 13, 2018
The section on James Baldwin was the best. Not my favorite Blight.
April 5, 2020
Read for class.
Read
January 2, 2021articles by Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson, James Baldwin, epilogue about Ralph Ellison
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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September 30, 2015An outstanding examination, through the works of Edmund Wilson, Bruce Catton, Robert Penn Warren, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison of the way race and the Civil War were remembered during the civil rights movement. An outstanding piece of literary and intellectual criticism. 3.88 Martinie glasses
Want to read
December 23, 2016* Understanding Oppression: African American Rights (Then and Now)
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews