Remembering the Civil War - (Littlefield History of the Civil War Era) by Caroline E Janney (Paperback)

About the Book

Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation

Book Synopsis

As early as 1865, survivors of the Civil War were acutely aware that people were purposefully shaping what would be remembered about the war and what would be omitted from the historical record. In Remembering the Civil War, Caroline E. Janney examines how the war generation -- men and women, black and white, Unionists and Confederates -- crafted and protected their memories of the nation's greatest conflict. Janney maintains that the participants never fully embraced the reconciliation so famously represented in handshakes across stone walls. Instead, both Union and Confederate veterans, and most especially their respective women's organizations, clung tenaciously to their own causes well into the twentieth century.
Janney explores the subtle yet important differences between reunion and reconciliation and argues that the Unionist and Emancipationist memories of the war never completely gave way to the story Confederates told. She challenges the idea that white northerners and southerners salved their war wounds through shared ideas about race and shows that debates about slavery often proved to be among the most powerful obstacles to reconciliation.

Review Quotes

"Remembering the Civil War offers important insights and demonstrates without a doubt that memory studies are far from exhausted. Whether a readership beyond the academy that continues to embrace reconciliation -- as evidenced by the ongoing Civil War 150th commemoration -- has yet to be seen."--Virginia Magazine

"[This] revisionist study argues that the Lost Cause mythology and rush to reconciliation was much less pervasive than previously thought."---Civil War Times

"A beautifully written and superbly researched book."--Public Historian

"A book that will be useful to scholars and casual readers for many years to come."--Civil War Book Review#

"It deserves its place as a leading work in the historiography on war and memory."--North Carolina Historical Review

"Janney emphasizes, as do other scholars of remembrance, that the memory of Civil War and Reconstruction was not merely an exercise in nostalgia. Rather, these memories had major policy implications."--American Historical Review

"Janney has significantly extended our understanding of memory and reconciliation (or lack thereof) and the anger and pain associated with forgiveness that resonated from the most cataclysmic event in U.S. history."--Journal of American History

"Splendidly written. . . . Recommended. All levels/libraries." --CHOICE

"This perceptive study should caution those who have embraced the reconciliationist interpretation to proceed with discernment."--Civil War Monitor

"Whether traversing familiar or unfamiliar ground, Janney writes elegantly and with impressive command of her subject. Remembering the Civil War now takes its place as the best single work on the memory of the Civil War. " --W. Fitzhugh Brundage, in the Journal of Southern History

About the Author

Caroline E. Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia.