Interpreting Sacred Ground: The Rhetoric of National Civil War Parks and Battlefields by J. Christian Spielvogel (review)

J. Christian Spielvogel’s volume on the National Park Service (NPS) and its interpretation of the Civil War sites under its purview offers a number of thoughtful arguments that will be sure to provoke productive discussion on the nature of American Civil War memory. His concise and unique approach to a relatively untapped subject area provides an excellent examination of the effects of differing prevailing interpretations that have emerged at NPS sites, predominantly through wayside signage.

Spielvogel asserts that the NPS remains the leading interpretive force behind the Civil War and thus dictates much of the public memory of the conflict. This task becomes more complicated as it attempts to remain objective, and virtually impossible given the proponents of various ideologies and commemorative traditions constantly attempting to exert influence on interpretive efforts. Here, Spielvogel can blur the lines between reconciliationist and Lost Cause memory, occasionally making them seem virtually interchangeable, but his arguments regarding these fights over interpretation remain convincing. His task is establishing that these commemorative traditions displayed in interpretation are in fact deliberate efforts by stakeholders and not simply “a seemingly natural part of the landscape preserved to its wartime appearance” (152).

The first part of the book explores how Gettysburg National Military Park and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park each seek to incorporate an emancipationist memory of the war in an attempt to dislodge the reconciliationist tradition that often dominates public memory of the conflict. Using the Gettysburg Address as an example, Spielvogel states that the document has traditionally been interpreted as an acknowledgement of universal white heroism and masculinity. At the new facility at Gettysburg, however, it has been transformed into a spot of contested memory, as the NPS seeks to expunge the traditional narrative of reconciliation by instead interpreting the speech as a crucial piece of a more historically accurate emancipationist memory. Conversely, at Harpers Ferry the NPS has had mixed results attempting to integrate emancipationist memory into interpretation. Efforts to incorporate John Brown’s raid into a context of seemingly inexorable American racial progress are, in the author’s estimation, somewhat muddled first steps, as this implies a realized vision of a postracial America.

Spielvogel then shifts his focus to questions of the portrayal of violence at Gettysburg and Cold Harbor via the language of the NPS’s wayside markers. His contention is that by viewing Civil War battlefields as sites of sacred and pure sacrifice on pastoral landscapes, the NPS interpretation contorts the collective memory of the conflict and naturalizes heroic masculinity. Only by acknowledging that the war was a source of killing and violence and not just valorous deeds and passive death can we begin to deemphasize prewar masculine ideology and move away from the war’s glorification. Additionally, Spielvogel argues that Gettysburg occupies a unique space as an almost mythologized site of public memory and a dominant reconciliationist interpretation there served to restore racial hegemony in the aftermath of the war.

In contrast, he asserts that Cold Harbor is a site where the brutality of war is emphasized to a great extent due to its small size, which renders large-scale strategic discussions unfeasible. Spielvogel contends that since neither reconciliationist nor emancipationist memory can gain a foothold at a site that is relatively constricted, these commemorative traditions in turn “[give] way to a more savage interpretation of the battle,” which he considers to be a successful outcome (133).

Spielvogel’s book offers a thought-provoking critical approach to the NPS’s interpretive framework of Civil War memory. Occasionally, the reader is left curious as to the evolution of these wayside markers over the decades, as they have surely transformed due to changing popular memory traditions and NPS directives. Additionally, at times it seems as though Spielvogel is ascribing intent to the NPS’s actions, when it would have perhaps been sufficient to analyze...