Marten and Janney, eds., Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America

Abstract

Reviewed by: Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America ed. by James Marten and Caroline E. Janney Gaines M. Foster Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America Edited by James Marten and Caroline E. Janney (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021. Pp. 312. Notes, bibliography, index. Clothbound, $114.95; paperback, $36.95.) Anyone interested in how Americans thought about the Civil War in the late nineteenth century, even those familiar with the vast scholarship on Civil War memory, will find much that they did not know in Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America. Edited by James Martin and Caroline E. Janney, the collection explores how America's emerging commercial culture portrayed the war. Its fifteen essays discuss the move of Richmond's Libby Prison to Chicago to become a museum; opiate addiction cures; veterans' publications, such as the Military Annals of Tennessee and the National Tribune; clocks, and other items offered as premiums to Tribune subscribers; United Confederate Veteran uniforms manufactured for and worn by Confederate veterans, which were different than their wartime uniforms; tobacco and other types of advertising that featured Civil War generals or battle scenes; illustrations of the Monitor and Merrimac; images of reunion and reconciliation; the greater popularity of Civil War photographs over stereoviews; the unpopularity of Oliver Optic's books for young readers; public lectures on the war; Milton Bradley's Myriopticon: A Historical Panorama of the Rebellion, which presented the war in a roll of illustrations; and Civil War cycloramas. In addition to the discussions of all these "products and services," there is also an essay [End Page 342] on attitudes toward both the Union and Confederate war debt, although it seems a little out of place. From what the editors term their "ground level view," the essays interpreting these and other commercial enterprises expand an understanding of society's memory of the Civil War on the eve of the twentieth century. They stress the important role that profit seeking and a growing commercial and industrial economy played in making references to the war common in postwar culture. In the process, as several of the essays show, commercial products not only kept the memory of the war alive, they also promoted the values of a modern industrial economy, particularly in presenting a model of behavior for young males. Demonstrating how the modernizing economy shaped Civil War memory, and how that memory supported the emerging society, is an important contribution. So, too, are the essays' observations on how many non-veterans sought to experience the war, although most of them had reservations about experiences that were too intense or realistic. Several essays also emphasize the veterans' need to have society understand the traumas of battle and acknowledge their heroism and honor. While earlier studies have stressed a common need among Confederate veterans to be recognized, these essays show that northern veterans shared that desire. Most of the essays, in fact, focus on the North rather than on the South, which reinforces the growing appreciation that the war's memory remained important above as well as below the Mason-Dixon line. Although a few essays provide evidence of northerners' criticism of southern society, and lingering hostilities toward their former enemies, most argue or assume that by 1900, both sections had embraced reconciliation. Those that stress reconciliation find it in stories or images of the period that portray common heroism and sacrifice and avoid potentially divisive issues. Slavery and the role of African Americans in the war were featured in a few northern writings or pictures, as some authors show; more often, popular culture ignored or demeaned Blacks, which facilitated white reconciliation. The collective insights of these diverse essays make a significant contribution to understanding Civil War memory, and the individual essays provide intriguing analyses of a host of things ignored in earlier studies. [End Page 343] Gaines M. Foster Louisiana State University Copyright © 2022 Trustees of Indiana University