Reviewed by: Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865 by Robert J. Cook Jennifer M. Murray Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865. By Robert J. Cook. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. Pp. xii, 273. $24.95, ISBN 978-1-4214-2349-4.) The current discourse about the place of Civil War symbols on the landscape of the United States has once again opened the vibrant, cacophonous chords of [End Page 1015] Civil War memory. Civil War scholars have explored these "'mystic chords of memory'" and America's contested narratives of the nation's most divisive event (p. 13). David W. Blight's Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Mass., 2001) has defined much of the historiographical conversation. Blight argues that Union and Confederate veterans willingly forgot the war's contested elements in order to promote sectional reconciliation. Recent scholars, including Caroline E. Janney and M. Keith Harris, have disputed Blight's thesis, suggesting a more contested process of reconciliation. Robert J. Cook's Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865 offers the most recent attempt to explore Americans' memories of the nation's defining conflict. Whereas most scholars of Civil War memory focus on the war's veterans, Cook also considers Civil War memory in the twenty-first century, thereby showing the continued relevance of the Civil War in modern politics and culture. The first section of the book covers familiar terrain. Cook challenges Blight's reconciliation thesis, arguing that Union and Confederate veterans did not forget the war's divisive aspects. Instead, he maintains, the veterans "played an active role in the reconciliation process, but not through any desire to forget on their part" (p. 97). Veterans advanced reconciliation through a deliberate recognition that their foes fought courageously for their respective causes. The process of forgetting came from subsequent generations who expressed no interest in widening the sectional chasm. Cook credits Gilded Age writers and publishers for having a hand in shaping Civil War memory. Through important publications in Century, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, and Annals of the War, readers were regaled with often-glorified tales of the war's soldiers and battles. The second half of the book, "The Modern Era," advances the conversation about memories of the Civil War into the twenty-first century. Moving beyond the traditional focus on the war's veterans, Cook explores how Americans have engaged with the war and molded it to suit contemporary political and social agendas. For example, World War II offered an opportunity for the federal government to use Abraham Lincoln and the rhetoric of the Gettysburg Address to foster patriotism. The Civil War centennial, in the midst of the civil rights movement, deepened sectional and racial discourse. Black activists had little interest in commemorating the Civil War. Indeed, Malcolm X discredited popular portrayals of Lincoln as the great emancipator. In the years after the Civil War centennial, the war received less attention, from both academics and popular audiences. Cook attributes this neglect to the "'post-heroic era'" when Americans "seemed to lose not only their faith in towering figures like Abraham Lincoln but also their psychological need for them" (p. 184). Americans in the twenty-first century continue to grapple with the Civil War's legacy. Barack Obama reenergized Lincoln's popularity through rhetorical appeal and by launching his presidential campaign on the steps of the Old State House in Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln had kicked off his senatorial race in 1858. The National Park Service's Civil War sesquicentennial theme of "Civil War to Civil Rights" offered an opportunity to explore racial accomplishments and the war's social and cultural legacies. Yet the overall public response to the war's 150th anniversary was anemic. [End Page 1016] Civil War Memories offers a comprehensive treatment of the memory of the nation's most enduring and contested event. In offering a study of Civil War memory since 1865, Cook underscores that memories of the war have never been monolithic. They have always been debated, politicized, and maligned. His attention to the war's differing memories...
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Jul 17, 2018
Małgorzata Łoboz 
Open Access
