Visions of Glory: The Civil War in Word and Image ed. by Kathleen Diffley and Benjamin Fagan

Abstract

Reviewed by: Visions of Glory: The Civil War in Word and Image ed. by Kathleen Diffley and Benjamin Fagan Tom Burden (bio) Visions of Glory: The Civil War in Word and Image. Edited by Kathleen Diffley and Benjamin Fagan. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2019. Pp. 245. $34.95 cloth) Images, as exemplars of memories, have a chance to move the viewer in a way that words alone cannot. In Visions of Glory: The Civil War in Word and Image, twenty-two images are featured alongside essays detailing the fundamental disruption to everyday life caused by the Civil War. Edited by Kathleen Diffley and Benjamin Fagan, Visions of Glory explores how ordinary Americans felt about, and made meaning of, the seismic shifts created by the Civil War (p. 4). Essay topics range from discussions of the apprehensions and hopes of African Americans at slavery's potential end, to the role of women as healers and advocates in hospitals. Organized into subsections covering each year of the war, Visions of Glory offers the reader the chance to see how the exigencies of wartime fundamentally altered life in Civil War America. Several of the essays relate to race, with African American agency in resisting slavery a paramount focus. Aston Gonzalez's discussion of Robert Small's escape from bondage by captaining the Confederate steamer Planter, and Benjamin Fagan's discussion of Black literary militancy in opposition to slavery in the newspaper Anglo African, demonstrates that African Americans were anything but passive in the face of slavery. Eric Gardner's discussion of African American resistance to attempts to exclude them from mass meetings commemorating [End Page 647] Abraham Lincoln in San Francisco demonstrates how the western states participated in "white washing" slavery from the war. Hope, anxiety, and a willingness to expedite the end of slavery among free and enslaved African Americans is discussed using newspapers and the writings of prominent abolitionists like Frederick Douglass. Through these and a variety of other monographs and primary documentation, Visions of Glory successfully demonstrates that African Americans were actively engaged in redefining the notion of race despite white resistance. Women also experienced firsthand the changes that wartime brought as exemplified by the prevalence of female authored hospital narratives. Jane E Schultz, building on her own research in Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America (2004), cites the narratives authored by nurses like Julia Dunlap and Emily Bliss Souder to conclude that women became the conduit for telling the national story of suffering. Each essay, though brief, is thoroughly documented, and the footnotes are easy to follow for readers seeking a greater understanding of the topics covered. Concluding with a look at the dichotomous relationship between Jefferson Davis's 1861 inauguration at the Alabama state house, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1965 speech in the same location, Diffley and Fagan argue that the American civil rights movement is the successor to the struggle for equality initiated by the Civil War. By placing race at the center of how Americans understood the changes and opportunities the Civil War brought, Visions of Glory joins its voice to the chorus of scholarship that refutes the "Lost Cause" mythos and brings the true nature of the war to light. Readers will feel how Civil War Americans grappled with the changes around them and be forced to confront the fact that much progress remains to be achieved. [End Page 648] Tom Burden TOM BURDEN is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Kentucky. His research interests include Civil War prisoner of war camps and the records of the Freedmen's Bureau. Copyright © 2020 Kentucky Historical Society