Gettysburg: Display Window for Popular Memory

Abstract

Gettysburg's streets rocked with din of artillery on February 26, 1884. Added to clamor of bells and cheering crowds fluttering red, white, and blue, booming signaled festivity rather than conflagration. Into town irrevocably changed by war in steamed bedecked locomotive Jay bearing a beaming Cooke himself. Financed in part by Cooke, inaugural of & Harrisburg Railroad opened to improved connections with northern, eastern, and western population centers. The Harrisburg Patriot termed celebratory cannonading nearly as important to town as that which occurred twenty-one years ago, and railroad another victory for Gettysburg that brings historic battlefield within reach of thousands who want to visit it. Appropriately, locomotive stopped outside of town for a brief ceremony that included driving two golden spikes, one inscribed 1863 and other 1883. But spikes represented more than just corporate gimmickry exploiting historical memory, and even more than a new era in apotheosis of Gettysburg. Rather, they symbolized ongoing metamorphosis of angel of death into an avatar of commercial celebration.' Although railroad opened to new clients and attractions, it served as only one of many enterprises that transformed into a commodity. No project of twentieth-century avarice, production and exchange of in America's cultural marketplace began immediately after battle. Since Civil War Centennial a succession of struggles, each labeled by media the second battle of Gettysburg, have pitted preservationists against developers. The issues usually limn secular forces of commerce as beast of Apocalypse threatening to desecrate sacred ground. Similarly, an axiom in histories of post-Civil War is that patriotic preservationists founded shrine while later promotion by commercial forces tainted holy for venal purposes.' Perhaps part of contemporary self-castigation, this romanticized perspective overlooks grip of market forces on American life before Civil War. The morality play view of good versus evil might enhance site's sacred value, but it ignores complex web of market transactions that created and continue to shape shrine. It baits late-twentieth century mind with profaning intrusions, but does not consider subtle ways market penetrated all areas of American life in nineteenth century. In his book Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields, Edward T. Linenthal points to amount of cultural labor such as rituals, monument building, and panegyrics involved in forging and maintaining a shrine out of a battle site such as Gettysburg.' What needs to be given its due is prodigious market activity that entwined with venerative gestures at to produce a popular American shrine. It was no coincidence that icon grew apace with America's shift from a producer to a consumer nation. As we shall see, a variety of purveyors in decades surrounding turn of century marketed for a commercial society characterized by display, spectacle, images, and commercial leisure. In vernacular of merchandising, became a display window for popular memory, presenting American past in a manner appealing to Victorian consumers. Although consumer capitalism finally triumphed around turn of twentieth century, it had been making strides for decades. Even at time of battle, marketplace provided main arena for cultural production and consumption. The middle class rising from turmoil of industrialization provided a ready market for cultural commodities available from transportation, printing, and other technological improvements. Full of aspiration and intensely self-conscious, middle class simultaneously turned inward toward family and outward to a world accessible through commercial venues of print, images, and travel. …