[Blight examines] discordant chords of memory about the Civil
War...in this incisive discussion of how the conflict was popularly
remembered in the half-century following Appomattox...Blight
recounts the strong tide in the post-war years for 'reunion on
Southern terms'...Freed blacks suffered the consequence of the
ascendance of a sentimental view of the war and amnesia about its
central issue.--Gilbert Taylor"Booklist" (02/15/2001)
[Blight] begins and ends his "tour de force" study of America's
memory of the [Civil] War at the Gettysburg reunion and notes that
black veterans were virtually invisible on that occasion--the black
presence at Gettysburg in 1913 was as menial laborers--and that
while Wilson spoke, his administration was aggressively segregating
federal agencies in Washington...This is a story of mammoth and
tragic sweep, with consequences that are very much alive in
present-day America. David Blight tells it with a passionate,
soulful voice, a voice of conviction based on an intimate knowledge
of a sweeping array of sources. "Race and Reunion" is a brilliant
book.--Mark Dunkelman"Providence Sunday Journal" (04/01/2001)
As Blight conclusively demonstrates, the [post-Civil War] United
States was caught up almost immediately in a 'tormented
relationship between healing and justice, ' and the abolitionist,
emancipationist view of the war's aims quickly receded into the
background...African Americans kept alive their own memories of
slavery, the war and Reconstruction...but not until long after
World War I did they begin to find a hearing for their grievances
and yearnings.--Jonathan Yardley"Washington Post Book World"
(02/04/2001)
Blight demonstrates how, in the aftermath of the war, the needs of
memory and the excessive focus on battlefield experience all but
obliterated the role played by African Americans, and the promises
made them. All told, this thoughtful, timely study presents a
somewhat pessimistic view of the role played by the memory of this
key conflict in the making of American's self-image, which, in the
turn to sentiment rather than fact, lost much of its ideological
integrity.--Fionghuala Sweeney"History" (10/01/2004)
Blight traces America's tragic pursuit of national reunification
and reconciliation after the Civil War at the expense of the
conflict's emancipationist legacy. He ponders such threats to this
legacy as Lost Cause myths, fading and sometimes revisionist
veteran recollections, financial panics and commercial greed,
political scandals, 'loyal' slave narratives, urbanization and
industrialization, and the emotionally charged rituals of
war-related celebration days among others. The author resurrects
the voices and prose of African American activists who fought to
preserve the emancipationist legacy in an indifferent, even
hostile, milieu.--John Carver Edwards"Library Journal"
(12/01/2000)
Blight's analysis is compelling. His writing has a lyrical quality
that underscores the tragic story he has to tell. This is an
important book that should command a wide readership among those
interested in race relations in the US. It should be required
reading in Mississippi.--Francis D. Cogliano"Times Higher Education
Supplement" (06/14/2002)
Blight's eclecticism and erudition make this sweeping historical
saga a pleasure to read...This powerful book is a part of [an]
intellectual and political tradition. "Race and Reunion" challenges
us to take seriously the clashes over the Civil War's contested
legacies and symbols, which Americans continue to debate into the
twenty-first century.--Catherine Clinton"American Prospect"
(06/18/2001)
David Blight's "Race and Reunion" is one of the most fascinating
and rewarding scholarly books of the past few years for the general
reader with an interest in American history...Blight describes
clearly the ways in which the culture of commemoration related to
the politics and social struggle of Reconstruction. His haunting
account of violence in the post-war South is only one example of
the eloquence that characterizes the book...Blight is scrupulously
fair in his judgments. He is equally alert to the Northern white
self-congratulation that inflated the legend of the Underground
Railroad and the racist pretension that shaped the version of
history peddled by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. He is
especially alert to the way that even-handedness has served as a
tool for suppressing memory of the moral issues at the heart of the
Civil War by turning attention to the spectacle of combat and the
bravery of the soldiers on both sides. This sensitivity to social
values makes "Race
David W. Blight's book, published in 2001, explores how the past is
connected to the present by looking at the ways in which Americans
have remembered the Civil War. His deeply researched and carefully
crafted study argues that after the war white veterans, Union and
Confederate, facilitated the reconciliation of the two sections by
consciously avoiding the fact that slavery had brought on the
sectional conflict, choosing instead to celebrate the courage that
they and their comrades had brandished in battle. Less consciously,
they and their fellow Americans found this new narrative--this
rewriting of history based on a kind of historical
amnesia--comforting and restorative. Reunification became a joyful
event, but it came at a steep price. After Reconstruction,
Northerners and Southerners alike took hold of a "Lost Cause"
ideology that showed pity toward the South in its defeat, accepted
Jim Crow policies that deprived blacks of their civil rights, and
pushed for policies and practices
Denying that the South fought for slavery [in the Civil War] was a
key element in a decades-long ideological battle eventually settled
in a devil's bargain: reconciliation between whites North and
South, purchased at the price of racial segregation. The story of
how that bargain was struck is told by historian David Blight in
"Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory"..."Race and
Reunion" is a deeply unsettling, pioneering work that raises far
more questions than it can possibly answer: questions that should
continue to trouble us...The myths and lies forged over a century
ago still have us locked in their chains.--Paul Henry
Rosenberg"Philadelphia City Paper" (03/22/2001)
In "Race and Reunion", David W. Blight demonstrates that as soon as
the guns fell silent, debate over how to remember the Civil War
began...Blight's study of how Americans remembered the Civil War in
the 50 years after Appomattox exemplifies these themes. It is the
most comprehensive and insightful study of the memory of the Civil
War yet to appear...Blight tells this story in a lucid style and
with an entirely appropriate measure of indignation..."Race and
Reunion" demonstrates forcefully that...it still matters very much
how we remember the Civil War.--Eric Foner"New York Times Book
Review" (03/04/2001)
The immensely important but neglected story of 'the Civil War in
American memory' is the subject of David W. Blight's "Race and
Reunion"...[This book] will strongly influence the writing of
post-Civil War history for decades to come. Indeed, "Race and
Reunion" is surely one of the four or five most important works in
American history written in the past decade. More convincingly than
any other historian I know of, Blight explains one of the most
troubling questions for the understanding of American history: why
it became accepted wisdom from the 1870s to the 1960s, among
American historians as well as white students from grade school
through college, that states' rights, not slavery, was the cause of
the Civil War or, as many Southerners have long insisted on our
calling it, 'the War Between the States.'--David Brion Davis"New
York Review of Books" (07/18/2002)
Blight describes how Americans decided to remember the devastation
of the Civil War during the decades that followed...[He] has
distilled a mass of historical material into an impressive, clearly
written volume that...reads well and rings true.
ÝBlight examines¨ discordant chords of memory about the Civil
War...in this incisive discussion of how the conflict was popularly
remembered in the half-century following Appomattox...Blight
recounts the strong tide in the post-war years for 'reunion on
Southern terms'...Freed blacks suffered the consequence of the
ascendance of a sentimental view of the war and amnesia about its
central issue. -- Gilbert Taylor "Booklist" (02/15/2001)
ÝBlight¨ begins and ends his "tour de force" study of America's
memory of the ÝCivil¨ War at the Gettysburg reunion and notes that
black veterans were virtually invisible on that occasion--the black
presence at Gettysburg in 1913 was as menial laborers--and that
while Wilson spoke, his administration was aggressively segregating
federal agencies in Washington...This is a story of mammoth and
tragic sweep, with consequences that are very much alive in
present-day America. David Blight tells it with a passionate,
soulful voice, a voice of conviction based on an intimate knowledge
of a sweeping array of sources. "Race and Reunion" is a brilliant
book. -- Mark Dunkelman "Providence Sunday Journal"
(04/01/2001)
As Blight conclusively demonstrates, the Ýpost-Civil War¨ United
States was caught up almost immediately in a 'tormented
relationship between healing and justice, ' and the abolitionist,
emancipationist view of the war's aims quickly receded into the
background...African Americans kept alive their own memories of
slavery, the war and Reconstruction...but not until long after
World War I did they begin to find a hearing for their grievances
and yearnings. -- Jonathan Yardley "Washington Post Book World"
(02/04/2001)
Denying that the South fought for slavery Ýin the Civil War¨ was a
key element in a decades-long ideological battle eventually settled
in a devil's bargain: reconciliation between whites North and
South, purchased at the price of racial segregation. The story of
how that bargain was struck is told by historian David Blight in
"Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.."."Race and
Reunion" is a deeply unsettling, pioneering work that raises far
more questions than it can possibly answer: questions that should
continue to trouble us...The myths and lies forged over a century
ago still have us locked in their chains. -- Paul Henry Rosenberg
"Philadelphia City Paper" (03/22/2001)
In "Race and Reunion," David W. Blight demonstrates that as soon as
the guns fell silent, debate over how to remember the Civil War
began...Blight's study of how Americans remembered the Civil War in
the 50 years after Appomattox exemplifies these themes. It is the
most comprehensive and insightful study of the memory of the Civil
War yet to appear...Blight tells this story in a lucid style and
with an entirely appropriate measure of indignation..."Race and
Reunion" demonstrates forcefully that...it still matters very much
how we remember the Civil War. -- Eric Foner "New York Times Book
Review" (03/04/2001)
This book effectively traces both the growth and development of
what became, by the turn of the twentieth century and the debut of
"The Birth of a Nation," the dominant racist representation of the
Civil War. A major work of American history, this volume's
documentation of the active and exceedingly articulate voices of
protest against this inaccurate and unjust imagining of history is
just one of its accomplishments.
David Blight's "Race and Reunion is one of the most fascinating and
rewarding scholarly books of the past few years for the general
reader with an interest in American history...Blight describes
clearly the ways in which the culture of commemoration related to
the politics and social struggle of Reconstruction. His haunting
account of violence in the post-war South is only one example of
the eloquence that characterizes the book...Blight is scrupulously
fair in his judgments. He is equally alert to the Northern white
self-congratulation that inflated the legend of the Underground
Railroad and the racist pretension that shaped the version of
history peddled by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. He is
especially alert to the way that even-handedness has served as a
tool for suppressing memory of the moral issues at the heart of the
Civil War by turning attention to the spectacle of combat and the
bravery of the soldiers on both sides. This sensitivity to social
values makes "Race and Reunion more than an achievement of
scholarship. It is a contribution to contemporary politics and
culture that deserves a wide audience.
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