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Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.
In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war.
Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.
Blight's sweeping narrative of triumph and tragedy, romance and realism, is a compelling tale of the politics of memory, of how a nation healed from civil war without justice. By the early twentieth century, the problems of race and reunion were locked in mutual dependence, a painful legacy that continues to haunt us today.
In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war.
Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.
Blight's sweeping narrative of triumph and tragedy, romance and realism, is a compelling tale of the politics of memory, of how a nation healed from civil war without justice. By the early twentieth century, the problems of race and reunion were locked in mutual dependence, a painful legacy that continues to haunt us today.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
David W. Blight
132 books369 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 - 30 of 169 reviews
December 19, 2012
A very eloquently written book on the aftermath of the Civil War in the United States. The author’s conclusions, backed by facts, are that reunion (reconciliation) of North and South took precedence over resolving slavery (race) in the South. Reconstruction started out with Lincoln’s address after the war, but ultimately was doomed to failure by the mid-1870s’. Southern racism and power overturned the Reconstruction forces and Jim Crow became ascendant. As pointed out by Mr. Blight, the South lost slavery due to the Civil War, but not much else. Importantly, it also re-wrote history, glorifying plantations, slavery, and “almost” turning the South into the winners of the Civil War. Frederick Douglas posed the question: “When the war between the white people is over – what next?”
The great strength of this book is the story of the occupation (still poignant and relevant today) and how it failed – or more precisely – how it was turned head over heels. The movie “Birth of a Nation” is about how the South regained its’ “righteous sovereignty” and that emancipation of African Americans was evil incarnate.
It would take over 100 years of Civil Rights struggle before Americans were forced to come to grips to realize the grave mistakes made after the Civil War. The struggle still goes on to this day.
The great strength of this book is the story of the occupation (still poignant and relevant today) and how it failed – or more precisely – how it was turned head over heels. The movie “Birth of a Nation” is about how the South regained its’ “righteous sovereignty” and that emancipation of African Americans was evil incarnate.
It would take over 100 years of Civil Rights struggle before Americans were forced to come to grips to realize the grave mistakes made after the Civil War. The struggle still goes on to this day.
July 26, 2012
This is a terribly interesting history. Simply put, Race and Reunion is an examination of how the Civil War came to be remembered in the 50 years following the war and how the racial equality granted during the war came to be forgotten and racism and white supremacy accepted in American society.
Blight's great theme is that the need to reconcile and reunify the 2 sides--north and South--overrode the equality granted African-Americans during the war. The Panic of 1873 hastened the need to end the oppressive Reconstruction and rebuild the South for economic strength and growth of the entire country. There was also a general feeling, north and South, that African-Americans weren't racially equal. The Spanish-American War helped to reconcile the 2 sides, but it radicalized American patriotism in an alliance of white supremacy and imperialism in opposition to the darker races of the Caribbean and the Philippines. The result of all this was an increase of Jim Crow laws and segregation. By 1915, at the time of the great 50th anniversary celebration held at Gettysburg to commemorate the end of the war, reconciliation had come at the expense of African-American equality and the nation was well on its way to an apartheid society.
"The Southern victory over Reconstruction replaced Union victory in the war and Jim Crow laws replaced the Fourteenth Amendment in their places of honor in national memory."
"By 1913 racism in America had become a cultural industry and twisted history a commodity. A segregated society required a segregated historical memory and a national mythology that could blunt or contain the conflict at the root of that segregation. Most Americans embraced the unblinking celebration of reunion and accepted segregation as a natural condition of racism."
Blight's great theme is that the need to reconcile and reunify the 2 sides--north and South--overrode the equality granted African-Americans during the war. The Panic of 1873 hastened the need to end the oppressive Reconstruction and rebuild the South for economic strength and growth of the entire country. There was also a general feeling, north and South, that African-Americans weren't racially equal. The Spanish-American War helped to reconcile the 2 sides, but it radicalized American patriotism in an alliance of white supremacy and imperialism in opposition to the darker races of the Caribbean and the Philippines. The result of all this was an increase of Jim Crow laws and segregation. By 1915, at the time of the great 50th anniversary celebration held at Gettysburg to commemorate the end of the war, reconciliation had come at the expense of African-American equality and the nation was well on its way to an apartheid society.
"The Southern victory over Reconstruction replaced Union victory in the war and Jim Crow laws replaced the Fourteenth Amendment in their places of honor in national memory."
"By 1913 racism in America had become a cultural industry and twisted history a commodity. A segregated society required a segregated historical memory and a national mythology that could blunt or contain the conflict at the root of that segregation. Most Americans embraced the unblinking celebration of reunion and accepted segregation as a natural condition of racism."
July 12, 2012
David Blight is one of the most prolific historians alive today. In this book, Blight traces the origins and growth of the Lost Cause myth from the end of the Civil War and examines the impact it has on people all over the country. It is clear that the myth could never have achieved acceptance without the complicity of the North. It is proof beyond a doubt that the North won the war but lost the peace. This book should be required reading for all those who still labor under the illusion that the South fought this war for any reason other than slavery.
July 30, 2017
Reconstruction Versus Reconciliation
Following the end of the Civil War, there was a tension between those who favored a strict reconstuction of the governments of the defeated South and those who favored a reconciliationist approach. The reconstructionists, led by the Radical Republicans in Congress wanted to protect,implement, and perhaps expand the rights of the newly freed blacks. The reconciliationists favored putting the Civil War behind the United States and creating a sense of nationalism among sections that, up to 1865, had been bitter enemies.
Professor Blight traces the tension between these two competing visions from 1863, when President Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address, through 1913, which witnessed a reunion of Civil War veterans at Gettysburg and a commemorative speech by the then-President, Woodrow Wilson.
Professor Blight drawns heavily on the work of recent scholars such as Eric Foner (and his predecessors) which has changed the way many historians view the Reconstruction Era. Professors Blight and Foner reject the view that Reconstruction was primarily an era of carpetbaggers, corruption and victimization of the South. The see it instead as a necessary attempt to protect black Americans. Reconstuction was gradually rejected and came to an end in 1876. The end of Reconstruction saw the rise of Jim Crow and segregation in the South with tragic consequences that would not be redressed until the Civil Rights Era of the mid-twentieth Century. The consequences remain with us.
According to Professor Blight, the Reconciliationist picture relegated the treatment of Black Americans to secondary significance. This picture focused instead on the common threads that existed between North and South and particularly between their fighting forces. The militaries of both sides were motivated by patriotism, valor and courage, as they saw it. They fought for what they believed in, with, in the Reconciliatist approach, the cause of the War in slavery carefully omitted or marginalized. The Reconciliationist approach led in time, Professor Blight argues, to the myth of the Lost Cause and to the romanticization of the Old South.
Professor Blight has amassed a great amount of learning and familiarity with primary source material to discuss the Reconstuctionist and Reconciliationist approaches to American History subsequent to the Civil War. He treats in detail much important American literature, including writers such as Walt Whitman, Steven Crane, Joel Chandler Harris, and Ambrose Bierce, among many others. He discusses Civil War writing by battlefiled participants that appeared in great quantity beginning in the late 1870's together with the memoirs of Civil War Generals, particularly Grant and Sherman. He discusses the work of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington and other black leaders. And he discusses works from politicians and apologists in both North and South.
The book is an excellent study of the American experience following the Civil War. I think it is persuasive for the most part. In places, I think Professor Blight creates too much of a dichotomy between the Reconstructionist and Reconciliationist pictures. I think there was and is room for both visions. More importantly, the sources Professor Blight discusses show that there were many competing versions of the Civil War and its meanings, not all of which fall readily into the camp of either Reconstruction and Reconciliation.
Following the Civil War, the United States needed to both secure the Civil Rights of Black Americans and also provide for a new American union and sense of Nationalism. Neither purpose was achieved fully or entirely well. We are working on them both today. Professor Blight has shown the tragedy of the War. He has also shown the serious consequences to our country of the long delay in fully addressing the Civil Rights of all American people. This is a worthwhile, thoughtful study of the legacy of the Civil War, but it does not provide the only word on the subject.
Robin Friedman
Following the end of the Civil War, there was a tension between those who favored a strict reconstuction of the governments of the defeated South and those who favored a reconciliationist approach. The reconstructionists, led by the Radical Republicans in Congress wanted to protect,implement, and perhaps expand the rights of the newly freed blacks. The reconciliationists favored putting the Civil War behind the United States and creating a sense of nationalism among sections that, up to 1865, had been bitter enemies.
Professor Blight traces the tension between these two competing visions from 1863, when President Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address, through 1913, which witnessed a reunion of Civil War veterans at Gettysburg and a commemorative speech by the then-President, Woodrow Wilson.
Professor Blight drawns heavily on the work of recent scholars such as Eric Foner (and his predecessors) which has changed the way many historians view the Reconstruction Era. Professors Blight and Foner reject the view that Reconstruction was primarily an era of carpetbaggers, corruption and victimization of the South. The see it instead as a necessary attempt to protect black Americans. Reconstuction was gradually rejected and came to an end in 1876. The end of Reconstruction saw the rise of Jim Crow and segregation in the South with tragic consequences that would not be redressed until the Civil Rights Era of the mid-twentieth Century. The consequences remain with us.
According to Professor Blight, the Reconciliationist picture relegated the treatment of Black Americans to secondary significance. This picture focused instead on the common threads that existed between North and South and particularly between their fighting forces. The militaries of both sides were motivated by patriotism, valor and courage, as they saw it. They fought for what they believed in, with, in the Reconciliatist approach, the cause of the War in slavery carefully omitted or marginalized. The Reconciliationist approach led in time, Professor Blight argues, to the myth of the Lost Cause and to the romanticization of the Old South.
Professor Blight has amassed a great amount of learning and familiarity with primary source material to discuss the Reconstuctionist and Reconciliationist approaches to American History subsequent to the Civil War. He treats in detail much important American literature, including writers such as Walt Whitman, Steven Crane, Joel Chandler Harris, and Ambrose Bierce, among many others. He discusses Civil War writing by battlefiled participants that appeared in great quantity beginning in the late 1870's together with the memoirs of Civil War Generals, particularly Grant and Sherman. He discusses the work of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington and other black leaders. And he discusses works from politicians and apologists in both North and South.
The book is an excellent study of the American experience following the Civil War. I think it is persuasive for the most part. In places, I think Professor Blight creates too much of a dichotomy between the Reconstructionist and Reconciliationist pictures. I think there was and is room for both visions. More importantly, the sources Professor Blight discusses show that there were many competing versions of the Civil War and its meanings, not all of which fall readily into the camp of either Reconstruction and Reconciliation.
Following the Civil War, the United States needed to both secure the Civil Rights of Black Americans and also provide for a new American union and sense of Nationalism. Neither purpose was achieved fully or entirely well. We are working on them both today. Professor Blight has shown the tragedy of the War. He has also shown the serious consequences to our country of the long delay in fully addressing the Civil Rights of all American people. This is a worthwhile, thoughtful study of the legacy of the Civil War, but it does not provide the only word on the subject.
Robin Friedman
April 14, 2007
every good citizen should read this.
May 31, 2026
In case I never get around to writing a real review: This is a very impressive and wide-ranging look at the decades from the Emancipation Proclamation was issued (1863) to 1913 and how the Civil War was remembered. The racial element of the proclamation was largely gone by the early 20th century. The Civil War was about valor and patriotism. Only a couple of decades after the war, novels set on Southern plantations with brave men and women and loyal slaves were bestsellers. When it came to how the war would be thought of in American culture, the South won.
July 24, 2015
I first became interested in reading Professor David Blight after listening to his course on the Civil War and Reconstruction on iTunes University. This year’s intense racial strife in America and the recurring arguments over displaying the confederate flag in the south caused me to move “Race and Reunion” to the top of my reading list. The book is an exhaustive examination of the American memory of the meaning of the Civil War in the first 50 years following the south’s defeat. Blight recounts how the meaning of the war was framed differently by southern whites, freed African Americans, northern businessmen and politicians everywhere. It is in these early years that the concept of the “Lost Cause” was conceived and subsequently promulgated by vanquished southern whites. Understanding this history helps explain the tragedy of how over 150 years later southern GOP politicians continue to insist the Civil War was not fought over slavery. If you want to understand present day race relations in the US, a perfect place to start is by reading “Race and Reunion” and learning about this important period of American history.
July 9, 2018
It might be fair to say that the South lost the Civil War but won the after war. What gets overlooked by some people in the debate about Confederate Statues, those outside of commentaries, is that it is a monument to a traitor. Sorry. But it is. Not only that but to traitors who lost a war that was fought so people could own other people.
The question is how that happened. How did it that we have shown after television show with a former Confederate solider as a lead, one that we are nine times out ten supposed to feel sorry because Union solider, those devils, killed his wife and family?
Think about that.
Then we have politicians who talk as if the removal of a statue to Lee will lead to a total forgetting of history. What history this is, is never stated, but I doubt that it is Lee deciding to fight for the Confederacy instead of the Union. We don’t see statues honoring Benedict Arnold or John Andre, so why do we have ones to Stonewall Jackson and Lee?
Blight’s book attempts to answer this question, and it does a pretty good job.
The question is how that happened. How did it that we have shown after television show with a former Confederate solider as a lead, one that we are nine times out ten supposed to feel sorry because Union solider, those devils, killed his wife and family?
Think about that.
Then we have politicians who talk as if the removal of a statue to Lee will lead to a total forgetting of history. What history this is, is never stated, but I doubt that it is Lee deciding to fight for the Confederacy instead of the Union. We don’t see statues honoring Benedict Arnold or John Andre, so why do we have ones to Stonewall Jackson and Lee?
Blight’s book attempts to answer this question, and it does a pretty good job.
Want to Read
July 12, 2015Recommended by BI (one of our rhetoric faculty)
July 12, 2020
Raamat sisuliselt räägib sellest, kuidas kaotanud lõunaosariiklased suutsid veenda kõiki selles, et 1) kodusõda ei käinud orjuse ümber, 2) konföderatsioon väärib õndsat mälestamist, 3) rahva lepitamine on tähtsam kui mustanahaliste õigused. Blight jutustab kurba lugu yankeede järeleandmistest ja ex-orjapidajate oskuslikust propagandatööst.
Minu viga oli see, et kuulasin pool raamatut Audible’is ja pärast püüdsin enne magamaminekut lehitseda. Tegelikult on tegemist pigem akadeemilise teosega. Näiteid ja argumente on väga palju. Spetsialisti seisukohalt see kindlasti hea, aga mina tahtsin üksnes populaarset ülevaadet, seega antud raamat oli natuke overkill. Peatükid, mis käsitlesid sõjajärgset ilukirjandust ja mustanahaliste kogukondade mäluloomet, olid sellegipoolest põnevad.
Minu viga oli see, et kuulasin pool raamatut Audible’is ja pärast püüdsin enne magamaminekut lehitseda. Tegelikult on tegemist pigem akadeemilise teosega. Näiteid ja argumente on väga palju. Spetsialisti seisukohalt see kindlasti hea, aga mina tahtsin üksnes populaarset ülevaadet, seega antud raamat oli natuke overkill. Peatükid, mis käsitlesid sõjajärgset ilukirjandust ja mustanahaliste kogukondade mäluloomet, olid sellegipoolest põnevad.
April 3, 2021
Although this book was written 20 years ago - its narrative is still relevant in these times. Clear and empathetic writing from of the U.S.’s finest historians. Well worth a read👍
May 15, 2021
Slow start but really makes you see the Civil War memory in a completely different way. Holy research. Just listing all the memoirs is a huge task. Growing up in the south where Confederate memory is glorified, this is a great read.
December 1, 2021
3.5 stars
In David Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, Blight examines the period of 50 years after the American Civil War. Using the two themes of race and reunion, Blight looks at how public memory clashes with private memory. He decides to look at the three significant visions that emerged during this period after the civil war. The three visions are the reconciliationist vision, the white supremacist vision, and the emancipationist vision. Examining these three visions and how they fit into the American memory is what Blight does with Race and Reunion. As one reviewer puts it, Race and Reunion “should be read by anyone who has ever considered what different society we might have become if white supremacy had not defeated the promise of re-construction race relations… and if a memory of the Civil War that celebrated equality between white and black Americans could have prevailed.”
Finding meaning in the death and destruction of war is nothing new from a historical viewpoint. David Blight does a great job of exploring how the romanticism of the Civil War helped shift its spot in history. Defining the Civil War and the memories surrounding it is something the American public did and is still doing today. On the one hand, the African American memory of the Civil War is one of oppression and freedom that emerged from the war. While on the other hand, there is the Civil War memory unblemished by cruelties that presents the war as a fight between two brothers. Trying to find meaning in either of these visions have been to no avail. The Reconciliation vision has not been accepted by the majority of the population enough to thrive. America is still trying to find meaning in the death and destructure of the Civil War.
I enjoyed reading Race and Reunion. With all the current issues of race going on in the media today, I found this book helpful in terms of why reconciliation has not happened for the United States. The observation of romanticization of historical memory shows that it can be dangerous in a historical context. A reviewer of the Journal of American History put it like this “He [Blight] has addressed some hopelessly difficult issues, and the result is a moving and eloquent book that should force Americans to think afresh about the troubled legacies of their Civil War.” Another reviewer said sweet memories bring healing while bitter memories bring salvation. There is perhaps hope for the future with this new look David Blight has provided for Civil War. With a lot of information Race and Reunion is a book that needs to be read again and again to digest all the arguments.
In David Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, Blight examines the period of 50 years after the American Civil War. Using the two themes of race and reunion, Blight looks at how public memory clashes with private memory. He decides to look at the three significant visions that emerged during this period after the civil war. The three visions are the reconciliationist vision, the white supremacist vision, and the emancipationist vision. Examining these three visions and how they fit into the American memory is what Blight does with Race and Reunion. As one reviewer puts it, Race and Reunion “should be read by anyone who has ever considered what different society we might have become if white supremacy had not defeated the promise of re-construction race relations… and if a memory of the Civil War that celebrated equality between white and black Americans could have prevailed.”
Finding meaning in the death and destruction of war is nothing new from a historical viewpoint. David Blight does a great job of exploring how the romanticism of the Civil War helped shift its spot in history. Defining the Civil War and the memories surrounding it is something the American public did and is still doing today. On the one hand, the African American memory of the Civil War is one of oppression and freedom that emerged from the war. While on the other hand, there is the Civil War memory unblemished by cruelties that presents the war as a fight between two brothers. Trying to find meaning in either of these visions have been to no avail. The Reconciliation vision has not been accepted by the majority of the population enough to thrive. America is still trying to find meaning in the death and destructure of the Civil War.
I enjoyed reading Race and Reunion. With all the current issues of race going on in the media today, I found this book helpful in terms of why reconciliation has not happened for the United States. The observation of romanticization of historical memory shows that it can be dangerous in a historical context. A reviewer of the Journal of American History put it like this “He [Blight] has addressed some hopelessly difficult issues, and the result is a moving and eloquent book that should force Americans to think afresh about the troubled legacies of their Civil War.” Another reviewer said sweet memories bring healing while bitter memories bring salvation. There is perhaps hope for the future with this new look David Blight has provided for Civil War. With a lot of information Race and Reunion is a book that needs to be read again and again to digest all the arguments.
June 19, 2019
A book that definitely has earned its place as a classic historical work. At its heart I think this book is a warning about the moral ambiguity of reconciliation. Blight's basic argument is that there were 3 computing memories of the Civil War between Reconstruction and about 1920. The first was the emanicipationist vision in which African-Americans and Republicans viewed the war as a struggle for freedom and a redefinition of the meaning and values of the nation. The second was the white supremacist or full on lost cause vision, which treated the Civil War as a justified southern attempt to resist Yankee political and economic domination and preserve a way of life that fit blacks and whites better. The third was the reconciliationist vision, which Blight says sort of fused with the white supremacist vision to dominate the memory of and scholarship on the Civil War until well into the 20th century. Under reconciliation, the focus shifted from the war's political and racial significance to the shared sacrifice and valor of the soldiers and the tragedy of death and loss. The reconciliationist vision was geared toward healing and national reunification after the war, and it was epitomized by soldiers' reunions on battlefields where white soldiers walked the old killing fields together in amity.
Does that kind of reconciliation really sound so bad? Well, the lesson of this book is that reconciliation is almost always political, and it often requires leaving some group out. There are always terms to reconciliation. Blight convincingly shows that the south basically demanded that the war be remembered on their terms: that they didn't fight for slavery, that the north was responsible for the war as well, that the old south was preferable to the chaos of Reconstruction, and that the north was right to essentially bail on black civil rights. The glue that held this memory-deal together was, quite frankly, racism: the belief that African-Americans were either incapable or not yet ready for full and responsible participation in political and economic life. After a brief period of moral reform, most white Americans slipped back into racism and cynicism, and also into making lots of money and creating a deeper sense of nationalism, which made them even less keen to hash out seemingly outdated fights over the status of AA's.
Thus ends one of the strangest episodes of memory and history I can think of. The side that won the Civil War lost the battle for its memory and meaning, and the meaning that Lincoln and Douglass assigned to it wasn't recaptured until well into the 20th century. Jim Crow hinged on the reconciliationist memory of the Civil War, enforced by the activism of the UDC and the UCV. Blight covers a ton of cultural and political ground in this book, and the discussion of magazines, literature, speeches, etc isn't always compelling. In fact, the intro and conclusion are so concise and well-argued that you could just read those and be good on his argument. Still, this is the kind of argument that all Americans should be familiar with in terms of its broad strokes. I often think that there are too many memory studies out there these days, but this book shows how important and relevant they can be. Oh, and he should be further complemented for telling this story in plain English!
Does that kind of reconciliation really sound so bad? Well, the lesson of this book is that reconciliation is almost always political, and it often requires leaving some group out. There are always terms to reconciliation. Blight convincingly shows that the south basically demanded that the war be remembered on their terms: that they didn't fight for slavery, that the north was responsible for the war as well, that the old south was preferable to the chaos of Reconstruction, and that the north was right to essentially bail on black civil rights. The glue that held this memory-deal together was, quite frankly, racism: the belief that African-Americans were either incapable or not yet ready for full and responsible participation in political and economic life. After a brief period of moral reform, most white Americans slipped back into racism and cynicism, and also into making lots of money and creating a deeper sense of nationalism, which made them even less keen to hash out seemingly outdated fights over the status of AA's.
Thus ends one of the strangest episodes of memory and history I can think of. The side that won the Civil War lost the battle for its memory and meaning, and the meaning that Lincoln and Douglass assigned to it wasn't recaptured until well into the 20th century. Jim Crow hinged on the reconciliationist memory of the Civil War, enforced by the activism of the UDC and the UCV. Blight covers a ton of cultural and political ground in this book, and the discussion of magazines, literature, speeches, etc isn't always compelling. In fact, the intro and conclusion are so concise and well-argued that you could just read those and be good on his argument. Still, this is the kind of argument that all Americans should be familiar with in terms of its broad strokes. I often think that there are too many memory studies out there these days, but this book shows how important and relevant they can be. Oh, and he should be further complemented for telling this story in plain English!
December 4, 2024
A solid history of the place of memory of the Civil War in American consciousness from the Battle of Gettysburg to around 1915. Blight divides the "modes of memory" into three distinct categories: the reconciliationist memory, the white supremacist memory, and the emancipationist memory.
The reconciliationist memory comprehends the Southern insurgency as a "war between brothers," an unfortunate tussle between kin of the same hearth forced into battle by the unfortunate but inevitable evil of slavery, but in which slavery was merely an impersonal, ahistorical force. This was a war fought for the nation on both sides, in the name of freedom on both sides, and with honor and glory on both sides. The North and South in the postbellum period had only to reconcile, and all would be well. The was the memory of moderate Democrats and post-Reconstruction Republicans, tiring of "waving the bloody shirt" and of the costs of Reconstruction.
The white supremacist memory is simple: the South fought for freedom, plain and simple. Reconstruction an unqualified evil, it wrought corrupt government by miscegenation and "universal negro suffrage," in which a foreign liberalism was foisted upon an honorable and aristocratic South, a situation in which the gallant fighters of the South could only respond with the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. Slavery, when it existed, was good; the Yankee intervention immoral. This was the memory of unrepentant Fire-Eaters and Redeemers, such as Confederate general Jubal Early.
The emancipationist memory was the most radical: the Northern war effort ultimately became a war of liberation and a fight to end the evils of slavery. Reconstruction and rights for Black Americans were logical result of the destruction of the structure of the South. This was the memory of the abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, black activists such as Frederick Douglass, and radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens.
In the end, the reconciliationist memory and the white supremacist memory came to a "core master narrative" which held until the civil rights era, in which the destruction of slavery was allowed as a positive good, but the war and Reconstruction mistakes, and the maintenance of the Jim Crow South a necessity for stability and profit. Driven together by events such as the Spanish-American War and even promoted by the likes of Booker T. Washington, white supremacist reconciliation quashed the chances of racial reconciliation on a equal basis, briefly visible in flashes such as Southern Reconstruction governments, the Virginian Readjuster movement, and a short period of the Populist movement.
The most striking critique I have of Blight's work is his treatment of Lincoln in the early part of the book. Lincoln is cast as an ardent emancipationist, so radical that Blight says without jest that Douglass's radicalism was Lincoln's "alter-ego." This might be the Lincoln that the postbellum Radical Republicans and freedmen wanted to promote as part of the righteous emancipationist narrative, but this is not and was never the truth of the matter. Most any serious historian of the Civil War can talk of Lincoln in such glowing terms on the race and slavery issue. He may have issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but he was a reluctant emancipator indeed—Blight's refusal to recognize this is simply inaccurate.
The reconciliationist memory comprehends the Southern insurgency as a "war between brothers," an unfortunate tussle between kin of the same hearth forced into battle by the unfortunate but inevitable evil of slavery, but in which slavery was merely an impersonal, ahistorical force. This was a war fought for the nation on both sides, in the name of freedom on both sides, and with honor and glory on both sides. The North and South in the postbellum period had only to reconcile, and all would be well. The was the memory of moderate Democrats and post-Reconstruction Republicans, tiring of "waving the bloody shirt" and of the costs of Reconstruction.
The white supremacist memory is simple: the South fought for freedom, plain and simple. Reconstruction an unqualified evil, it wrought corrupt government by miscegenation and "universal negro suffrage," in which a foreign liberalism was foisted upon an honorable and aristocratic South, a situation in which the gallant fighters of the South could only respond with the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. Slavery, when it existed, was good; the Yankee intervention immoral. This was the memory of unrepentant Fire-Eaters and Redeemers, such as Confederate general Jubal Early.
The emancipationist memory was the most radical: the Northern war effort ultimately became a war of liberation and a fight to end the evils of slavery. Reconstruction and rights for Black Americans were logical result of the destruction of the structure of the South. This was the memory of the abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, black activists such as Frederick Douglass, and radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens.
In the end, the reconciliationist memory and the white supremacist memory came to a "core master narrative" which held until the civil rights era, in which the destruction of slavery was allowed as a positive good, but the war and Reconstruction mistakes, and the maintenance of the Jim Crow South a necessity for stability and profit. Driven together by events such as the Spanish-American War and even promoted by the likes of Booker T. Washington, white supremacist reconciliation quashed the chances of racial reconciliation on a equal basis, briefly visible in flashes such as Southern Reconstruction governments, the Virginian Readjuster movement, and a short period of the Populist movement.
The most striking critique I have of Blight's work is his treatment of Lincoln in the early part of the book. Lincoln is cast as an ardent emancipationist, so radical that Blight says without jest that Douglass's radicalism was Lincoln's "alter-ego." This might be the Lincoln that the postbellum Radical Republicans and freedmen wanted to promote as part of the righteous emancipationist narrative, but this is not and was never the truth of the matter. Most any serious historian of the Civil War can talk of Lincoln in such glowing terms on the race and slavery issue. He may have issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but he was a reluctant emancipator indeed—Blight's refusal to recognize this is simply inaccurate.
June 22, 2017
This book is a polemic disguised as history. Its cornerstone is Blight's revision of the meaning to be taken from the close of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "of the people, by the people, for the people." Blight claims this was a demand for racial equality, and in a timeline sleight of hand he construes the war itself, which commenced in April 1861, as rooted in this sentiment (found nowhere outside Abolitionist writings) supposedly expressed by Lincoln in November 1863.
Only racial equality, which in our ears rightly rings as a good and true note, is not at all what Lincoln meant by that phrase. Rather, he was asserting his belief that the foundation of the U.S. government's legitimacy rests on the will and votes of individual citizens, not continuing ratification by the states. He was making yet again, in other words, his argument that the southern states had no right to secede.
Why does Blight misconstrue the meaning of this passage? Because he wants the Civil War to be a story of noble Northerners laying down life and treasure to free the slaves against Southerners uniformly in favor of slavery. Lincoln's statement here (as well as his numerous statements elsewhere, all of which Blight, despite a penchant for heavy quotation, ignores) substantiates the long-held understanding that the Civil War was primarily a conflict over states rights and federal authority, with slavery serving as the inevitable kindling.
The remainder of his book is more of the same: selective quotations, omissions that ought to embarrass an academic historian (even one from Yale), and bold, unfounded assertions about the meaning and intent of words yanked from their context. The fact that the popular debunking site Snopes had to weigh in on Blight's false claims about the origins of Memorial Day, also advanced in this brick-like screed, ought alone to dissuade serious people from citing him, but his sanctimonious elevation of Northerners to sainthood, and Southerners to near-demonic status, makes him a predictable source for the likes of Salon, The Atlantic, etc.
Only racial equality, which in our ears rightly rings as a good and true note, is not at all what Lincoln meant by that phrase. Rather, he was asserting his belief that the foundation of the U.S. government's legitimacy rests on the will and votes of individual citizens, not continuing ratification by the states. He was making yet again, in other words, his argument that the southern states had no right to secede.
Why does Blight misconstrue the meaning of this passage? Because he wants the Civil War to be a story of noble Northerners laying down life and treasure to free the slaves against Southerners uniformly in favor of slavery. Lincoln's statement here (as well as his numerous statements elsewhere, all of which Blight, despite a penchant for heavy quotation, ignores) substantiates the long-held understanding that the Civil War was primarily a conflict over states rights and federal authority, with slavery serving as the inevitable kindling.
The remainder of his book is more of the same: selective quotations, omissions that ought to embarrass an academic historian (even one from Yale), and bold, unfounded assertions about the meaning and intent of words yanked from their context. The fact that the popular debunking site Snopes had to weigh in on Blight's false claims about the origins of Memorial Day, also advanced in this brick-like screed, ought alone to dissuade serious people from citing him, but his sanctimonious elevation of Northerners to sainthood, and Southerners to near-demonic status, makes him a predictable source for the likes of Salon, The Atlantic, etc.
July 7, 2012
This is an essential book for understanding not just the Civil War and how it has been interpreted, but for understanding our current political situation (I write on July 22, 2022, the day after the eighth Jan 6 hearing). Read it now.
Blight carefully dismantles every iteration of the Lost Cause fallacy, exposing the White Supremacist underpinnings of both the Confederacy itself and the myth making around it. He reveals the complicity of white Northerners in propagating a vision of the war as a disagreement between honorable brothers, erasing Black people and their struggles and triumphs from the narrative entirely. The book showcases yet another opportunity our country had to come to terms with its racist past and move forward with reparations and healing. Instead we got the Klan, Gone with the Wind, and sleazy politicians referencing “The War of Northern Aggression.”
Our country continues to bury its head in the sand over issues of race, both historical and contemporary, and Blight’s book goes a long way towards revealing the concessions we have made to white supremacist demands, which continue to this day.
Blight’s research is impeccable and the endnotes make a fascinating read just on their own. He uses the words and actions of Confederates themselves to undermine their claims of an honorable war fought over competing interpretations of governance, to reveal the ugly and uncomfortable truth that an ideology of racial superiority was the cornerstone (as the CSA’s own VP tells us literally) of secession and war.
Blight carefully dismantles every iteration of the Lost Cause fallacy, exposing the White Supremacist underpinnings of both the Confederacy itself and the myth making around it. He reveals the complicity of white Northerners in propagating a vision of the war as a disagreement between honorable brothers, erasing Black people and their struggles and triumphs from the narrative entirely. The book showcases yet another opportunity our country had to come to terms with its racist past and move forward with reparations and healing. Instead we got the Klan, Gone with the Wind, and sleazy politicians referencing “The War of Northern Aggression.”
Our country continues to bury its head in the sand over issues of race, both historical and contemporary, and Blight’s book goes a long way towards revealing the concessions we have made to white supremacist demands, which continue to this day.
Blight’s research is impeccable and the endnotes make a fascinating read just on their own. He uses the words and actions of Confederates themselves to undermine their claims of an honorable war fought over competing interpretations of governance, to reveal the ugly and uncomfortable truth that an ideology of racial superiority was the cornerstone (as the CSA’s own VP tells us literally) of secession and war.
March 6, 2020
Two occurrences in recent years drew me to think about how the meaning of history influences modern conceptions widely held in the national mind. While at a funeral in Richmond I sat by an elderly, very Southern, woman. I mentioned how rich is Richmond in museums and remarked on its famous boulevard of monuments to Confederate notables. She told me she was distantly related to Kirby Smith, a lesser known Confederate general. She said it is important to revere "our Southern heritage". I thought, "what on earth does that mean?" What is to revere about a political revolt that sought to dissolve the union and whose motivating aim was preserving of slavery. What about the 100+ years of overt white supremacy with its lynchings and social and political suppression? The second occurrence was (and still is) the controversy roiling about the "Silent Sam" statue on the campus of UNC. How is it that 150+ years after the end of the Civil War this issue generates such intense hostility on both sides? Reverence of "Southern heritage" as a desirable virtue? What would we think of reverence for history in modern Germany that resulted in statues of Nazi military and political leaders placed in every village square?
History is memory. Memory is inherently a matter of interpretation, never neutral and quite often shaped powerfully by contemporaneous social, political and cultural forces. David Blight gives a masterful analysis of how memories of the Civil War were hugely influenced by its losing side and with the nearly cavalier acceptance nationally by academia and literature/journalism. His themes can be succinctly summarized as: the drive toward reconciliation, sentimentality and romanticism replacing revulsion of the horrors of the war, reaction to the perceived oppression of Reconstruction, a false portrayal in literature that in its halcyon days slavery a benign institution, the threat to white supremacy resulting from emancipation, and distortions to the point of falsehoods about the causes of the conflict and the South's defeat. All of this infused the so-called "Lost Cause" mythology. It may be legitimate to conclude that what the South in the war, it regained (to some degree) after the war.
Its defeat forcibly rejoined the southern states to the union. But, how would the hostilities and bitterness of the bloodiest war in history ever be resolved? Blight argues convincingly that within years after the end of the war the two sides drifted toward reconciliation, that bitter animus began to diminish and disappear. We see this, do we not, after every war. The opponents accept each other on new terms and even become allies. For many Southerners, however, this did not entail wiping away their beliefs in the righteousness of their cause. (Do today's Germans think that Nazi ideology is, or ever was, proper?) The South's defeat did not produce an epiphany on the errors of its ways. Rather, notions arose that the South's casus belli was and remained morally justifiable, defeat was due only to the North's overwhelming advantages in resources. What was important for memory to extol was valor, what was to be suppressed were morally and politically dubious instigating factors. The conflict, thus, became in Southern eyes the "War Between the States" or the "War of Northern Aggression".
How, then, to deal with the view that the decades-long tension over slavery was a primary cause? Southerners evoked the idea that slavery was a beneficent relationship between the races that the masters and slaves cherished, that the disruption of this natural state of relations was detrimental to both races. In this view, Negroes were helplessly child-like who benefited from the guidance and protection of the beneficent masters. Underlying this theme, of course, was the imperative to Southerners to preserve absolute supremacy over the emancipated slaves, politically, culturally and socially. This, as we know, resulted in the "Jim Crow" era of political repression in all its ugly manifestations.
If its ethos was virtuous, if its defeat was due only to a far more powerful enemy, then efforts of the victors to reorder the South politically and socially were heinously wrong. So emerged the distorted historical theses on Reconstruction. I recall from my now distant high school days the teaching on those reviled characters -- the "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" -- who imposed corrupt regimes on the Southern states. The image of blacks as incompetent and nearly savage in their new found political voice was a prominent feature of textbooks of the day. Blight points out that a major strategy of promoters of the "redemption" of the South's was to capture the minds of the young. It is astonishing to realize that a great number of purportedly professional historians adopted this perspective. As the wag said, "History is the way by which we betray the past." Is revisionism sometimes a product of rethinking stimulated by contemporary views? Yes, of course, history should never ignore its ongoing obligation to correct its errors, to get things right.
Perhaps, then, we should not wonder why, in 21st century America, there is renewed attention to the meaning of memorials that commemorate an ideology based on racism and oppression. When our president spews forth his "dog whistle" messages on racism, when he posits the virtue of a racist-themed film like "Gone with the Wind" as a we should admire, when hostility and violence erupts over removing symbols of racism from the public square, we know that history must remain deeply responsible to fulfilling its responsibility to the its place in the public psyche.
History is memory. Memory is inherently a matter of interpretation, never neutral and quite often shaped powerfully by contemporaneous social, political and cultural forces. David Blight gives a masterful analysis of how memories of the Civil War were hugely influenced by its losing side and with the nearly cavalier acceptance nationally by academia and literature/journalism. His themes can be succinctly summarized as: the drive toward reconciliation, sentimentality and romanticism replacing revulsion of the horrors of the war, reaction to the perceived oppression of Reconstruction, a false portrayal in literature that in its halcyon days slavery a benign institution, the threat to white supremacy resulting from emancipation, and distortions to the point of falsehoods about the causes of the conflict and the South's defeat. All of this infused the so-called "Lost Cause" mythology. It may be legitimate to conclude that what the South in the war, it regained (to some degree) after the war.
Its defeat forcibly rejoined the southern states to the union. But, how would the hostilities and bitterness of the bloodiest war in history ever be resolved? Blight argues convincingly that within years after the end of the war the two sides drifted toward reconciliation, that bitter animus began to diminish and disappear. We see this, do we not, after every war. The opponents accept each other on new terms and even become allies. For many Southerners, however, this did not entail wiping away their beliefs in the righteousness of their cause. (Do today's Germans think that Nazi ideology is, or ever was, proper?) The South's defeat did not produce an epiphany on the errors of its ways. Rather, notions arose that the South's casus belli was and remained morally justifiable, defeat was due only to the North's overwhelming advantages in resources. What was important for memory to extol was valor, what was to be suppressed were morally and politically dubious instigating factors. The conflict, thus, became in Southern eyes the "War Between the States" or the "War of Northern Aggression".
How, then, to deal with the view that the decades-long tension over slavery was a primary cause? Southerners evoked the idea that slavery was a beneficent relationship between the races that the masters and slaves cherished, that the disruption of this natural state of relations was detrimental to both races. In this view, Negroes were helplessly child-like who benefited from the guidance and protection of the beneficent masters. Underlying this theme, of course, was the imperative to Southerners to preserve absolute supremacy over the emancipated slaves, politically, culturally and socially. This, as we know, resulted in the "Jim Crow" era of political repression in all its ugly manifestations.
If its ethos was virtuous, if its defeat was due only to a far more powerful enemy, then efforts of the victors to reorder the South politically and socially were heinously wrong. So emerged the distorted historical theses on Reconstruction. I recall from my now distant high school days the teaching on those reviled characters -- the "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" -- who imposed corrupt regimes on the Southern states. The image of blacks as incompetent and nearly savage in their new found political voice was a prominent feature of textbooks of the day. Blight points out that a major strategy of promoters of the "redemption" of the South's was to capture the minds of the young. It is astonishing to realize that a great number of purportedly professional historians adopted this perspective. As the wag said, "History is the way by which we betray the past." Is revisionism sometimes a product of rethinking stimulated by contemporary views? Yes, of course, history should never ignore its ongoing obligation to correct its errors, to get things right.
Perhaps, then, we should not wonder why, in 21st century America, there is renewed attention to the meaning of memorials that commemorate an ideology based on racism and oppression. When our president spews forth his "dog whistle" messages on racism, when he posits the virtue of a racist-themed film like "Gone with the Wind" as a we should admire, when hostility and violence erupts over removing symbols of racism from the public square, we know that history must remain deeply responsible to fulfilling its responsibility to the its place in the public psyche.
Read
September 29, 2015Great study of how the civil war was remembered and how memories/interpretations changed over time.
December 16, 2023
David Blight is an eminent, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian interested in the role of race in American history. Many think that American attitudes about race were “solved” by the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves. Those battles were won by the Union and not the Confederacy, right? This book seeks to chronicle how in the 50 years after emancipation (until around World War I), southern states and the promotion of “Lost Cause” ideology won a place in American society, north and south. Americans were more concerned with reconciliation among the whites than peace among all peoples. This attitude laid the necessity of further social action in the Civil Rights movements, up to today.
When I was ten years old, I moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to upstate South Carolina. I noticed a cultural difference in attitudes about the Civil War. My community in St. Louis was quite proudly multicultural while my community in South Carolina was predominantly white. Southernisms abounded, like the word “y’all” and sayings like “The devil’s beating his wife” when it rained. Likewise, conversations about the Civil War were less about the end of slavery and more about family who fought.
I have since lived in northern, western, and southern states and currently live in urban Tennessee. I’ve seen a lot of attitudes about the Civil War and racism: Northern pride over “uneducated southerners,” southern regions with a pro-Union history, southerners celebrating frank ignorance, and a Nashville pride of birthing the Civil Rights movement. Often forgotten are the victims and survivors of slavery and white supremacy. Blight’s book indicts all white history with abundant, carefully reasoned evidence. Our ancestors almost universally favored white reunion over racial reconciliation. Civil rights movements, past and present, try to overturn the remnants of such structural racism. White supremacy lingered far past 1863 or 1865. Indeed, some is still with us, north and south.
I appreciate this book for correcting my common tendency to overlook racial injustice. I’ve tried to fight it in protests, professional advocacy, and personal relationships. Yet anywhere in America, it’s easy to fall prey to forgetting historical inertia. And I remain a complicit part of that forgetful inertia. Blight’s work clearly corrects that tendency in a dispassionate, erudite, and reflective manner. By enlightening me and healing my own unknowing biases, I hope it will help me have better relationships and construct a better society. The American experiment is not done yet, and Race and Reunion can help put up a few more supporting flanks in its house.
When I was ten years old, I moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to upstate South Carolina. I noticed a cultural difference in attitudes about the Civil War. My community in St. Louis was quite proudly multicultural while my community in South Carolina was predominantly white. Southernisms abounded, like the word “y’all” and sayings like “The devil’s beating his wife” when it rained. Likewise, conversations about the Civil War were less about the end of slavery and more about family who fought.
I have since lived in northern, western, and southern states and currently live in urban Tennessee. I’ve seen a lot of attitudes about the Civil War and racism: Northern pride over “uneducated southerners,” southern regions with a pro-Union history, southerners celebrating frank ignorance, and a Nashville pride of birthing the Civil Rights movement. Often forgotten are the victims and survivors of slavery and white supremacy. Blight’s book indicts all white history with abundant, carefully reasoned evidence. Our ancestors almost universally favored white reunion over racial reconciliation. Civil rights movements, past and present, try to overturn the remnants of such structural racism. White supremacy lingered far past 1863 or 1865. Indeed, some is still with us, north and south.
I appreciate this book for correcting my common tendency to overlook racial injustice. I’ve tried to fight it in protests, professional advocacy, and personal relationships. Yet anywhere in America, it’s easy to fall prey to forgetting historical inertia. And I remain a complicit part of that forgetful inertia. Blight’s work clearly corrects that tendency in a dispassionate, erudite, and reflective manner. By enlightening me and healing my own unknowing biases, I hope it will help me have better relationships and construct a better society. The American experiment is not done yet, and Race and Reunion can help put up a few more supporting flanks in its house.
January 31, 2017
I went with my mother to a local books a million when I was a senior in High School to special order David W. Blight's essay collection Beyond the Battlefield. I knew that I wanted to study history and that I was particularly interested in historical memory, but didn't know what that actually was. Blight seemed the writer who had the key. I read the essay about Ken Burns's Civil War (something I had watched multiple times at that point), and the rest were way above my head. I eventually sold the book out of frustration and will likely buy it back this year, now that I have some understanding of the literature of the Civil War.
This book has been on my radar since I first started to study history seriously. It was always a little too long or a bit too expensive, and I never made time to read it. It was in a used book shop in the French Quarter (that I have not returned to since) that I found a decent hardback edition for $5. A year or so later I have read it and it is one of my all time favorite historical monographs ever.
I imagine a book about the Civil War like this would annoy many history buffs. No minutiae and very little of the battlefield is included, but the way Blight streamlines a great deal of theory on collective and historical memory, memoir, and cultural history into a readable and eminently quotable history that has a clear narrative arc that is intuitive and never nearly as weighty as I expected. So much of my interest in history has been try to articulate, with my own poor powers, what Blight sets out here. There is always a sense of excitement and disappointment when you find the idea that's always been lurking at the back of your work so clearly and plainly done well by some one 16 years earlier. Regardless, this book has reaffirmed my faith in historical memory as a valuable lens to study history. We'll see if my students will tolerate me now, but I would recommend this book to anyone who has a decent background in Civil War history who wants a different type of discussion on it's larger meanings in American history and culture. Highly recommended.
This book has been on my radar since I first started to study history seriously. It was always a little too long or a bit too expensive, and I never made time to read it. It was in a used book shop in the French Quarter (that I have not returned to since) that I found a decent hardback edition for $5. A year or so later I have read it and it is one of my all time favorite historical monographs ever.
I imagine a book about the Civil War like this would annoy many history buffs. No minutiae and very little of the battlefield is included, but the way Blight streamlines a great deal of theory on collective and historical memory, memoir, and cultural history into a readable and eminently quotable history that has a clear narrative arc that is intuitive and never nearly as weighty as I expected. So much of my interest in history has been try to articulate, with my own poor powers, what Blight sets out here. There is always a sense of excitement and disappointment when you find the idea that's always been lurking at the back of your work so clearly and plainly done well by some one 16 years earlier. Regardless, this book has reaffirmed my faith in historical memory as a valuable lens to study history. We'll see if my students will tolerate me now, but I would recommend this book to anyone who has a decent background in Civil War history who wants a different type of discussion on it's larger meanings in American history and culture. Highly recommended.
December 13, 2023
"Racial legacies, conflict itself, the bitter consequences of Reconstruction's failure to make good on the promises of emancipation, and the war as America's second revolution in the meaning of liberty and equality had been seared clean from the nation's master narrative. But that clean narrative of a Civil War between two foes struggling nobly for equally honorable notions of liberty, of a sentimentalized plantation South to which Americans of the hectic industrial age could escape, of soldiers' devotion in epic proportions to causes that mattered not, could not rest uncontested forever across American culture."
Blight, quite fortunately, is correct on the last point. This book is a thorough survey of the political and cultural tendencies and literature that allowed for the creation of what was for roughly a century post-Appomattox the prevailing mainstream American perception of the Civil War's legacy---a perception that occluded the true meaning of the war's causes and avoided discussion of Black citizens' continued exclusion from their rights as Americans.
But, as formulated by the author, "all memory is prelude."
Blight, quite fortunately, is correct on the last point. This book is a thorough survey of the political and cultural tendencies and literature that allowed for the creation of what was for roughly a century post-Appomattox the prevailing mainstream American perception of the Civil War's legacy---a perception that occluded the true meaning of the war's causes and avoided discussion of Black citizens' continued exclusion from their rights as Americans.
But, as formulated by the author, "all memory is prelude."
May 29, 2019
“If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?” --Frederick Douglass
A thorough exploration of the fifty years following the Civil War and how reconciliation between white Americans was sought at the expense of freedom and justice for black Americans. At times frustrating to read knowing that the battle over remembrance continues 150+ years later. My mind constantly wandered to flashbacks of small-town Georgia where Lost Cause ideology still thrives, as captured in statements like "the Civil War wasn't about slavery."
Highly recommend to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of how the Lost Cause ideology came to proliferate in the decades following the Civil War, and why abolitionist/emancipationist voices receded to the background. Also an excellent examination of the varying responses of African American leaders to the consequences of white reunion.
A thorough exploration of the fifty years following the Civil War and how reconciliation between white Americans was sought at the expense of freedom and justice for black Americans. At times frustrating to read knowing that the battle over remembrance continues 150+ years later. My mind constantly wandered to flashbacks of small-town Georgia where Lost Cause ideology still thrives, as captured in statements like "the Civil War wasn't about slavery."
Highly recommend to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of how the Lost Cause ideology came to proliferate in the decades following the Civil War, and why abolitionist/emancipationist voices receded to the background. Also an excellent examination of the varying responses of African American leaders to the consequences of white reunion.
March 20, 2021
Honestly very informative, but insanely dense. This book is worthy of being a part of a college syllabus related to American history, or more specifically Southern American history.
Thorough and comprehensive explanations as to why our society is what it is specially in relation to the unapologetic nature of Confederate apologist and those that refuse to process the level of severity that slavery has on modern day society.
Would recommend, would not recommend if you are trying to read it during a 2-week library loan, this book needs to be discussed through either a group discussion or with a college professor to moderate discussion.
Thorough and comprehensive explanations as to why our society is what it is specially in relation to the unapologetic nature of Confederate apologist and those that refuse to process the level of severity that slavery has on modern day society.
Would recommend, would not recommend if you are trying to read it during a 2-week library loan, this book needs to be discussed through either a group discussion or with a college professor to moderate discussion.
Read
August 28, 2023I read this the first time quickly in an effort to add some ideas to my American history lectures. I've appreciated a chance to revisit this book and the ideas here. I'm not someone who generally enjoys Civil War history and have a general frustrated rage with the failures of Reconstruction. Blight digs into both in a way that helps me to appreciate the depth of these American wounds and why that frustration exists in me (and many others).
Blight's research and even-handed narrative are both world-class.
Blight's research and even-handed narrative are both world-class.
February 20, 2022
This was a book that takes time to read and digest. It's not easy to read--both because it is dense with facts and because it is an important and painful subplot in American History. I learned so much about the time period that wasn't well covered in my High School or college curriculum. It's a topic which we'll continue to explore in the future. I don't always agree with Blight's perspective but he does a great job fleshing out different perspectives.
August 10, 2020
An amazing book. The thesis is how we remember things as defining our reality now and in the future. This had huge impacts for our history and race relations in this country. Not for the best. Blight is an amazing historian.
December 5, 2020
Amazing. This is the best book I've read this year. A definite must read for anyone interested in Civil War history, history of race in the US, or generally how public understandings of history are constructed
December 16, 2021
Really illuminating. We only learn a few bullet points about this time in school but so much of who we are now is because of who we were then. And sooooooo much of what is happening now (2021) echoes what happened then. They who control what is perceived as history and truth control the world.
February 12, 2026
This one has been a long time coming—I’ve been meaning to read “Race and Reunion” since I was in high school. It lost a star for being long-winded at times, but the central insight of the book—that the South won the battle over Civil War memory, at the expense of Black Americans—is important and undeniable.
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