Barbara A. Gannon - Americans Remember Their Civil War

AMERICANS REMEMBER THEIR CIVIL WAR

Recent Titles in Reflections on the Civil War Era

The Civil War at Sea
Craig L. Symonds

Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War
Michael S. Green

The Confederacy: The Slaveholders Failed Venture
Paul D. Escott

The Black Experience in the Civil War South
Stephen V. Ash

The Civil War in the East: Struggle, Stalemate, and Victory
Brooks D. Simpson

Civil War Journalism
Ford Risley

The Civil War in the Border South
Christopher Phillips

American Civil War Guerrillas: Changing the Rules of Warfare
Daniel E. Sutherland

The Civil War and the West: The Frontier Transformed
Carol L. Higham

Veterans North and South: The Transition from Soldier to Civilian after the American Civil War
Paul A. Cimbala

Food and Agriculture during the Civil War
R. Douglas Hurt

The Northern Home Front during the Civil War
Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller

BARBARA A. GANNON

Reflections on the Civil War Era
John David Smith, Series Editor

Copyright 2017 by Barbara A. Gannon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gannon, Barbara A., author.

Title: Americans remember their Civil War / Barbara A. Gannon.

Description: Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2017. | Series: Reflections on the Civil War era | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017007776 (print) | LCCN 2017009527 (ebook) | ISBN 9780275985721 (alk.paper: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780313049002 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: United StatesHistoryCivil War, 18611865Influence. | United StatesHistoryCivil War, 18611865Social aspects. | Collective memoryUnited States.

Classification: LCC E468.9 .G365 2017 (print) | LCC E468.9 (ebook) | DDC 973.7/1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007776

ISBN: 978-0-275-98572-1
EISBN: 978-0-313-04900-2

21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available as an eBook.

Praeger
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

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Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
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This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

In Memory
Cynthia Graham Hurd
Susie Jackson
Ethel Lance
Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor
Rev. Clementa Carlos Pinckney
Tywanza Sanders
Rev. Daniel L. Simmons Sr.
Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton
Myra Thompson
They went home together, one summer night
in Charleston, June 2015.

Like Ol Man River, the distinguished Civil War historian Peter J. Parish wrote in 1998, Civil War historiography just keeps rolling along. It changes course occasionally, leaving behind bayous of stagnant argument, while it carves out new lines of inquiry and debate.

Since Confederate general Robert E. Lees men stacked their guns at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, historians and partisans have been fighting a war of words over the causes, battles, results, and broad meaning of the internecine conflict that cost more than 620,000 American lives. Writers have contributed between 50,000 and 60,000 books and pamphlets on the topic. Viewed in terms of defining American freedom and nationalism, western expansion and economic development, the Civil War quite literally launched modern America. The Civil War, Kentucky poet, novelist, and literary critic Robert Penn Warren explained, is for the American imagination, the great single event of our history. Without too much wrenching, it may, in fact, be said to be American history.

The books in Praegers Reflections on the Civil War Era series examine pivotal aspects of the American Civil War. Topics range from examinations of military campaigns and local conditions to analyses of institutional, intellectual, and social history. Questions of class, gender, and race run through each volume in the series. Authors, veteran experts in their respective fields, provide concise, informed, readable synthesesfresh looks at familiar topics with new source material and original arguments.

Like all great conflicts, Parish noted in 1999, the American Civil War reflected the society and the age in which it was fought. Books in Reflections on the Civil War Era interpret the war as a salient event in the hammering out and understanding of American identity before, during, and after the secession crisis of 18601861. Readers will find the volumes valuable guides as they chart the troubled waters of mid-nineteenth-century American life.

John David Smith
Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte