The Civil War in Popular Culture: Memory and Meaning

Introduction

1 1 Introduction Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr. and Randal Allred Perhaps no other event has captured the national imagination to the extent the Civil War has. Portrayals of the war in songs, books, and movies, among other cultural and media outlets, continue to draw widespread attention. Gone with the Wind, the 1939 epic that follows Scarlett O’Hara through the tragedies and triumphs of the Civil War era, remains one of the top-grossing and most influential films of all time.1 More books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other figure in world history, with the exception of Jesus Christ. In 2012 historians constructed a tower consisting of books on Lincoln; it rose three and a half stories tall and contained fewer than half the published titles on the sixteenth president.2 Type “Civil War” into an Internet search engine, and nearly 24 million results are returned—nearly double the results from the nation’s three other major nineteenth-century conflicts combined .3 In a “meditation” published in 2002, Kent Gramm, a nationally recognized novelist with a focus on Abraham Lincoln, offers a frank but not surprising confession on behalf of all who are absorbed by the Civil War: “Presumably we are not sociopathic maniacs. Many of us—probably most of us—abhor war. Yet we love this one. And ‘love’ is not too strong of a word. We pretty much give ourselves to this war. We spend not only our leisure on it, but also all our spare change. And we think about it all the time, even when we are with someone else. You might even say that the Civil War itself is somebody’s darling: ours.”4 Attention has increased all the more during the sesquicentennial celebration . Two reenactments during the spring of 2012 marked the fighting at Shiloh , Tennessee, and the commemoration at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 2013 is expected to draw record crowds. Not all the highlighted events are connected to the battlefield. A ball held in Charleston in late 2010 celebrated the secession of South Carolina, while a series of operas commemorated the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation. As reenactors and musicians memorialize 2 Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr. and Randal Allred the past, the New York Times hosts a website with firsthand accounts and modern-day analyses of “the Civil War as it unfolded.” Readers of the Disunion blog can access a treasure trove of articles covering soldiers’ motivations and experiences to life on the home front. Historical societies and professional organizations are keeping pace, with lectures and conferences abounding . Some of these meetings are televised (and posted to the Internet), with American History TV on C-Span devoting several hours each week to the Civil War.5 Despite the considerable attention, the memory of the Civil War remains a disputed landscape. Virginia governor Robert McDonnell created a furor in 2010 when he declared April “Confederate Heritage Month,” encouraging Virginians to honor the “sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens” who had defended the state. He made no move to honor the slaves, who numbered as many as 500,000 people in 1860, noting that the institution of slavery was not “significant” to Virginia. Critics countered that McDonnell’s view of the past was “offensive” and “mind-boggling” and claimed this narrow perspective reduced “slaves and their descendents to invisibility once again.”6 Another controversy involves the ongoing dispute in Selma, Alabama, over whether to construct a monument to Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest in a city park. Forrest led the unsuccessful Confederate defense of the city in the spring of 1865. Supporters of the statue claim they simply want to honor an important figure in Selma’s history. Critics counter that a monument to the postwar founder of the Ku Klux Klan in a city so strongly associated with the civil rights movement would be needlessly provocative. Regardless of whether the statue is ever constructed, many residents bemoan the seeming lack of progress since Forrest surrendered the city. “Here we are on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War,” one frustrated onlooker declared, “and we’re still having the same fights.”7 Clearly, the memory of the Civil War stirs many different responses among the public, making it all the more surprising that, until recently, scholars have neglected the field of popular culture. Several titles on the Civil War in the larger culture have appeared in recent years—two by nationally known scholars: Gary Gallagher’s Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How...