Commonwealth of Compromise: Civil War Commemoration in Missouri by Amy Laurel Fluker

Abstract

Reviewed by: Commonwealth of Compromise: Civil War Commemoration in Missouri by Amy Laurel Fluker Antoinette G. van Zelm (bio) Commonwealth of Compromise: Civil War Commemoration in Missouri. By Amy Laurel Fluker. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2020. Pp. 288. Cloth, $35.00.) Amy Laurel Fluker's Commonwealth of Compromise is an excellent contribution to the prolific recent scholarship on Civil War memory. Focusing on a border state whose moderate citizenry became sharply divided during the war, Fluker argues that Missouri's history and unique wartime situation resulted in a distinctive commemorative tradition highlighted by pragmatic reconciliation. Readers will quickly note that Fluker explicitly steers away from the emphasis on irregular warfare that has dominated scholarship on the Civil War in Missouri over the past three decades. While not denying the importance of the guerrilla story, Fluker contends that the ongoing focus on it has led to an overemphasis on Missouri's connection to the South in both the antebellum and postbellum periods. Fluker instead identifies Missourians as westerners above all else and argues that, as such, they exhibited a fondness for compromise and practicality both before and after the war. Governor David R. Francis personified this outlook in 1890 when he referred to the state as a "commonwealth of compromise" that held "recuperative powers" for the nation's citizens (131). While Fluker maintains that reconciliation was a key component of Civil War memory in Missouri, she also concludes that the state ultimately does not fit completely into any of the primary categories identified within the historiography. "Just as there was no singular response to the war among Missourians, there was no singular interpretation of its legacy," she states (10). In addition to reconciliationists, Missouri was home to Lost Cause adherents, African American Unionists focused on long-term liberation, and white Unionists, who were largely conservative. [End Page 597] Commonwealth of Compromise is based on extensive research in the records of veterans' organizations and women's auxiliaries, personal papers, newspapers from across the state, and state government archives. After providing the necessary context with a chapter on the divisiveness of the war in Missouri, Fluker analyzes each of the state's commemorative practices in depth. About 100,000 Missourians fought for the Union, and returning veterans were joined by a significant influx of postwar migrants from Union states. The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) established white, Black, and integrated posts, bolstered in part by General William T. Sherman's membership in a St. Louis post. Fluker demonstrates that, although they were dismissed by many northerners skeptical of their wartime loyalty, Missouri's Union veterans persisted in their efforts to honor the state's Unionism and their own contributions to U.S. victory. Fluker argues that African American Unionists in Missouri were particularly proud of their wartime service and dedicated themselves to parlaying it into expanded civil rights. More than eight thousand Black soldiers had filled seven United States Colored Troops regiments during the war. Marginalized by white GAR members and discriminated against by white Missourians of all loyalties, African Americans focused on their own communities and sought to further the emancipation cause through the pursuit of education, suffrage, and equal rights. Most notably, in Fluker's view, Black veterans founded the Lincoln Institute, an enduring site of Civil War memory that is now a university. While Missouri had stars on both the U.S. and Confederate flags during the war, proponents of the Lost Cause struggled to establish a vibrant commemorative tradition in the state. Fluker explores the reasons, which included disinterest on the part of many veterans, national neglect of the war's western theater, moderate postwar Democratic leaders, and competition from the Union cause. Fluker draws a clear contrast between Missouri and its fellow border state of Kentucky, where the Lost Cause flourished after the war. Fluker credits Missouri's United Daughters of the Confederacy members for the success that the Lost Cause did have, which was most conspicuous in the form of a Confederate monument erected in 1914 in St. Louis's Forest Park. Missouri's relatively muted Lost Cause efforts helped pave the way for an influential reconciliation movement, which Fluker analyzes thoroughly. She underscores the...