Nina Silber - This War Ain’t Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America

THIS BOOKS ORIGINS date back to car trips with my father. In my memory, Im about ten or twelve and hes belting out a chorus, often off-key, of Marching through Georgia. I was never quite sure why he sang this song with so much gusto. Now I think I know.

The scholarly genesis of this book, of course, doesnt go back quite that far, although it still feels like much time has passed. About fifteen years ago, I had a conversation with David Blight about the fascinating ways the Civil War was remembered in the 1930s and how someone really should do a book about that. Since that initial conversation, David has been a staunch supporter of this project. So have other colleagues in Civil Warand Civil War memorystudies, including Bill Blair, Thomas Brown, Fitz Brundage, Eric Foner, Gary Gallagher, Caroline Janney, and John Stauffer. Early funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gilder Lehrman Foundation enabled me to make some initial forays into the archives and glimpse the rich possibilities for this research. A fellowship from the Boston University Center for the Humanities gave me a chance to test out some preliminary arguments with a congenial and helpfully interdisciplinary group of BU colleagues. I am grateful, too, for the additional funds I received from BUs Center for the Humanities to help defray publishing costs.

Some of the most rewarding aspects of this project occurred on the road, in travels to libraries in New York; Washington, DC; Athens, Georgia; Champaign-Urbana, Illinois; and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Since we dont say it enough, let me just say it here: the men and women who staff these archives and libraries deserve the undying gratitude of all of us who write history books as well as everyone who reads them. I am especially grateful to Chuck Barber and Mazie Bowen at the Hargrett Library in Athens; Chatham Ewing and Dennis Sears at the University of Illinois; and Greg Goodell at the Gettysburg National Military Park. Big thanks, too, must go to Nanci Edwards and Bryan Sieling for their hospitality during my trips to Washington, including their heroic assistance during the earthquake that in 2011 forced me to flee the shaking stacks of the Library of Congress.

Pete Carmichaels generous invitation to deliver the 2014 Fortenbaugh Lecture at Gettysburg College offered a much-needed stimulant to pull together my musings about Lincoln in the 1930s. Various members of my department at Boston University, both faculty and graduate students, also listened to a version of this Lincoln talk and made me think anew about the sixteenth presidents ever-changing image. My good friend and colleague Jack Matthews provided numerous suggestions for thinking about the literary angle on the Civil War in the 1930s, especially (and obviously) William Faulkner.

A fellowship in 2017 at the Charles Warren Center at Harvard helped catapult this book to the finish line. Having this wonderful, uninterrupted time for writing, along with the thoughtful responses I received from fellow fellows, allowed me to finally turn the disparate threads of this project into a completed manuscript. An additional thank you must be offered here to Susan Ware, who gave particularly thoughtful feedback on the gendered dynamics of the 1930s slavery discourse. My final project would, ultimately, have been incomplete without the contributions of Susan and Rich Neckes, whose fortuitous combination of goodwill, recording technology, and cable access made it possible for me to watch a very bad movie.

Accompanying me throughout were my wonderful compatriots in Booksquad, a group of Boston-area writers all trying to produce readable historical prose. I am grateful to all of youMegan Kate Nelson, Liz Covart, Sara Georgini, Kevin Levin, and Heather Cox Richardsonfor careful dissections, good conversations, delicious meals, fine wine, and mint chip ice cream. If I managed to wrangle out even a few well-turned sentences and succinctly phrased arguments, I owe my debts to you. As the book inched closer to finished form, and as footnotes needed checking and illustrations had to be collected, I felt fortunate to have help from two top-notch grad students: Patrick Browne and Ryan Shaver. Nor can I forget my good-natured and always responsive editor at the University of North Carolina Press. Thank you, Mark Simpson-Vos, for talking and walking me through this journey.

My final and most heartfelt thanks go to Benjamin and Franny, who bring light and joy into my life, and to Louis for, well, everything.