To Die For: The Paradox of American Patriotism (review)

BOOK REVIEWS283 that slaves comprised "a majority of nine million in a population of five million residents" in the South (117). The standard is usually the reverse of this figure. As a general overview of the press in this period, The Popular Press, 18331865 allows readers access to some ofthe highlights ofthe era. As a synthesis of journalistic developments, however, it simply tries to do too much in too little space. Huntzicker's bibliography and bibliographic essay demonstrate strong research, as well as a good grasp of the literature. The book, however, will disappoint readers seeking a comprehensive and coherent examination of the mass media in the antebellum and Civil War periods. Robert Page Floyd College To Die For: The Paradox ofAmerican Patriotism. By Cecilia Elizabeth O'Leary. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xiii, 365. $29.95.) To Die For: The Paradox ofAmerican Patriotism enters the growing scholarship on postbellum society's redefinition of patriotism and what it meant to be a good American. Cecilia Elizabeth O'Leary considers "the consolidation of patriotic cultures" (4) through the voluntary associations, memorials, and holidays that shaped the country after the Civil War. She argues that the construction of patriotism came out of "fiercely contested debates" (3) between the "nationalist movement" (98), which defined patriotism as loyalty to nation above all else, and black rights advocates. The Grand Army of the Republic and its auxiliary Women's Relief Corps (WRC) laid the foundation for this new outlook. Particularly in the 1890s, the veterans redefined manhood and constructed patriotism in terms of valor, rather than victory, so that former Union and Confederate soldiers bonded through their shared experiences as men. The WRC led the charge to control cultural memory through nationalizing the Memorial Day holiday. These cultural constructions caused historical revisionism in which textbooks and memorials erased blacks and black rights from discussions ofthe war and society, in what O'Leary calls "the racialization of patriotism." At the end of the nineteenth century, the Spanish-American War solidified militaristic patriotism and national reunion. O'Leary further illustrates that nationalists in the Americanization movement encouraged the same patriotism. Educators promoted the pledge of allegiance, written for the 1 893 Columbian Exposition, while schools became "machines for political socialization" (171). The first half of O'Leary's work shows that these organizations successfully promoted mass identification with the nation over other loyalties. By the start ofWWI, government and business unified the public, progressives and the right wing alike, behind an antiliberal 100 percent Americanism. Each chapter's short sections provide engaging vignettes but lead to a collage of evidence not always unified behind her larger claims. O'Leary concentrates 284CIVIL WAR HISTORY on associations that actively identified with the "nationalist" interpretation of patriotism and minimizes cultural debate outside of them. Despite her concentration on conflict within the groups, including the GAR's and WRCs debates over black membership, she concludes that a unified patriotic culture existed for a limited time by WWI. The lack of dialogue outside of the associations derives from a scarcity of alternative voices, most notably immigrants and the working class. O'Leary presents blacks who spoke against, but could not halt, their exclusion from the new construction of patriotism. The lower class status of the GAR's black members could have been underscored to illustrate the elite hegemony she presents in the final chapters. To Die For's interdisciplinary approach highlights a wide variety of sources, including music, speeches, newspaper articles, and institutional records. This work has many thought-provoking insights, including discussions ofpublic statuary to illustrate changes in the meaning of liberty orAmerica (13, 29, 196). The best chapters in O'Leary's synthetic work are those on the Americanization of children and the detailed description of the GAR and WRC, in which soldiers and the women who nursed, fed, and sewed for them readjusted to the Union. Jennifer R. Green Boston University Lincoln 's Journalist: John Hay 'sAnonymous Writingsfor the Press, 1860-1864. Edited by Michael Burlingame. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998. Pp. xxviii, 393. $49.95.) Unbeknown to the readers of one of Missouri's leading Democratic newspapers , many of the anonymous dispatches appearing in it during...