History Education for Sectional Reconciliation and the Emergence of Racial Nationalism : Revisiting the Civil War and Reconstruction in the Late Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth-Century History Schoolbooks

Abstract

Liberalism and nationalism surged together in revolutionary France creating civic nationalism. However, as the 19th century wore on, civic nationalism increasingly declined. In European nations, nationalism became a conservative ideology to support the unequal system, mobilize people for imperialist causes, and combat socialism. It also idealized a racially homogeneous community and reproduced ethnic and racial hierarchies.<BR> As early history schoolbooks represented, in the era of nation-building, American intellectuals also tried to construct civic nationalism. However, as the Civil War ended slavery and made liberty universal, the need of reconciling whites in two regions facilitated racial nationalism by forgetting the cause of the War and stressing the common racial traits among whites.<BR> In fact, racial nationalism in schoolbooks already appeared in prewar textbooks and its narrative was formulated in as early as the 1870s. However, it does not mean that liberalism passed away even before the 1900s. These schoolbooks represented that it was alive into the 1900s, but was greatly constrained by the reconciliatory nationalism and racism.