Integrating the voices of historians and scholars of contemporary America, this collection explores the use (and abuse) of Civil War memory in the modern era, from the Civil War Centennial to the present day.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020 reignited a passionate nationwide debate over Confederate memorials and flags as symbols of white supremacy in our public landscape. Controversies about Confederate monuments, however, have overshadowed more consequential battles over Civil War memory taking place in American politics, popular culture, and civil society today.
Integrating the voices of Civil War historians, public historians, and scholars of contemporary America, They Are Dead and Yet They Live explores the use (and abuse) of Civil War memory in the modern era, from the Civil War Centennial and the civil rights era through the political turmoil of the present day. Moving the conversation of Civil War memory beyond Confederate monuments to crucial debates about the Civil War’s usefulness as a frame for understanding America’s recent struggles, these essays show how Civil War memory is as politically urgent and socially relevant today as it was a half century ago.
Arvustused
This is a book of history like few othersa bold step in the evolution of our understanding of the Civil War. Courageous and sometimes provocative, these essays push us to consider the past in the presenthow the tendrils of myth and memory have touched every corner of our social and political community and shape the everyday conversation we have about the nature and future of our nation.John Hennessy, National Park Service historian (retired) and author of Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas Filled with extraordinary research and superb writing, They Are Dead and Yet They Live provides a necessary reckoning with the power the American Civil War still holds over contemporary politics. Moving beyond the well-trod subject of Confederate monuments, the essays cover a range of topics, from renaming U.S. military bases to romance novels, reminding us along the way that the battles to control and leverage the wars meaning continue to have profound and sometimes even deadly consequences.Caroline E. Janney, author of Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation Brilliantly argued with passion and conviction, They Are Dead and Yet They Live is a timely and provocative reminder of the profound ways the memory of the Civil War influences present-day America. A powerful and riveting read, the book helps explain our recent political and cultural life.Ty Seidule, author of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerners Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Governor and the Palmetto Patriots
John M. Kinder and Jennifer M. Murray
Part
1. Lost Causes
1. To Understand Where You Are Going, Remember Where You Have Been:
Reconstruction's Reverberations in Twenty-First-Century America
Brooks D. Simpson
2. The Republican Party, the Lost Cause, and the Transformation of American
Politics
Tim Galsworthy
Part
2. Reclamation Projects
3. The Politics of Civil War Memory in America's Military: The Battles to
Rename Nine U.S. Army Bases
Jennifer M. Murray
4. Freedom on the Fringes: Interpreting the Civil War and Relevancy at Camp
Nelson
Steve T. Phan
5. Ghosts of Atchison: The Lynching of George Johnson
Joshua Wolf
Part
3. Consuming Memory
6. Confederates in the Record Cabinet: Civil War Memory and the Historical
Turns in Modern Country Music
Joseph M. Thompson
7. Love Is a Battlefield: Civil War Memory in Modern Romance Novels
Sarah Handley-Cousins
8. Dixie Chic: Hoodies and Embodying Confederate Exceptionalism
Nicole Maurantonio
Part
4. Civil War Memory in the Age of Black Lives Matter
9. "This Battle Was Fought Because Black Lives Matter": How Black Lives Are
(or Aren't) Remembered at Gettysburg
Scott Hancock
10. The Black Confederate Myth and Civil War Memory in the Trump Era
Kevin M. Levin
Part
5. The Next Civil War
11. The Confederate Battle Flag's Symbolic Shorthand: Appropriation,
Dissemination, and Proliferation by U.S.-Based White Supremacists in
PostCivil War America
Brett A. Barnett
12. Dylann Roof's Civil Wars
John M. Kinder
Epilogue: "Wow, That Was a Big Mistake"
Jennifer M. Murray and John M. Kinder
Timeline of Key Events from the Civil War Centennial to 2025
Contributors
Index
John M. Kinder is a professor of history and American studies at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of Paying with Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran and World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age. Jennifer M. Murray is an assistant professor of history and the director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War at Shepherd University. She is the author of On a Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 19332013 and The Civil War Begins: Opening Clashes, 1861.
