The Ghosts of Guerrilla Memory: How Civil War Bushwhackers Became Gunslingers in the American West

UnCivil Wars

by Matthew C. Hulbert

The Civil War tends to be remembered as a vast sequence of battles, with a turning point at Gettysburg and a culmination at Appomattox. But in the guerrilla theater, the conflict was a vast sequence of home invasions, local traumas, and social degeneration that did not necessarily end in 1865. This book chronicles the history of “guerrilla memory,” the collision of the Civil War memory “industry” with the somber realities of irregular warfare in the borderlands of Missouri and Kansas. In the first accounting of its kind, Matthew Christopher Hulbert’s book analyzes the cultural politics behind how Americans have remembered, misremembered, and re-remembered guerrilla warfare in political rhetoric, historical scholarship, literature, and film and at reunions and on the stage. By probing how memories of the guerrilla war were intentionally designed, created, silenced, updated, and even destroyed, Hulbert ultimately reveals a continent-wide story in which Confederate bushwhackers―pariahs of the eastern struggle over slavery―were transformed into the vanguards of American imperialism in the West.

Genres: History, War

344 pages, ebook

Published October 15, 2016

Reviews

[Tony Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Ghosts of Guerilla Memory by Matthew Christopher Hulbert
Disappointed. I could probably leave my review go at that word but I will not, the reader deserves more. This is a subject in which I am very interested. Being a history and especially a Civil War buff I was truly looking forward to reading this book. The structure was confused, the stories, while some were interesting did not have a cohesion to them. This made reading difficult. If I was teaching Civil War history I might have students read this book as ancillary but not required reading. Other than that I would not take the time. I received a free copy of The Ghosts of Guerilla Memory from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Many thanks to NetGalley.

[Maddie]

Read for comps

[Mills College Library]

973.7 H912 2016