The Visible Confederacy - by Ross A Brooks (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The Visible Confederacy is a comprehensive analysis of the commercially and government-generated visual and material culture of the Confederate States of America. While historians have mainly studied Confederate identity through printed texts, this book shows that Confederates also built and shared a sense of who they were through other media: theatrical performances, military clothing, manufactured goods, and an assortment of other material. Examining previously understudied and often unpublished visual and documentary sources, Ross A. Brooks provides new perspectives on Confederates' sense of identity and ideas about race, gender, and independence, as well as how those conceptions united and divided them"--

Book Synopsis

Featuring 92 images and line drawings

The Visible Confederacy is a comprehensive analysis of the commercially and government-generated visual and material culture of the Confederate States of America. While historians have mainly studied Confederate identity through printed texts, this book shows that Confederates also built and shared a sense of who they were through other media: theatrical performances, military clothing, manufactured goods, and an assortment of other material. Examining previously understudied and often unpublished visual and documentary sources, Ross A. Brooks provides new perspectives on Confederates' sense of identity and ideas about race, gender, and independence, as well as how those conceptions united and divided them.

Brooks's work complements the historiography surrounding the Confederate nation by revealing how imagery and objects offer new windows on southern society and a richer understanding of Confederate citizens. Brooks builds substantially upon previous studies of the iconology and iconography of Confederate imagery and material culture by adding a broader range of government and commercially generated images and objects. He examines not only popular or high art and government-produced imagery, but also lowbrow art, transitory theatrical productions, and ephemeral artifacts generated by southerners. Collectively, these materials provide a variety of lenses through which to explore and assay the various priorities, ideological fault lines, and worldviews of Confederate citizens.

Brooks's study is one of the first extensive academic works to use imagery and objects as the basis for studying the Confederate South. His work provides fresh avenues for examining Confederate ideas about race, slavery, gender, independence, and the war, and it offers insight into the intentions and factors that contributed to the creation of Confederate nationalism. The Visible Confederacy furthers our understanding of what the Confederacy was, what Confederates fought for, and why their vision has persisted in memory and imagination for so long beyond the Confederacy's existence. Visual and material culture captured not only the tensions, but also the illusions and delusions that Confederates shared.

Review Quotes

A fascinating exploration of the visual and material culture of the Confederacy and why the imagery associated with it has managed to endure to this day.-- "Military History Quarterly"

Brooks comprehensively explores not just the obvious sources like published images, and flags, but sheet music, theatrical performances and exhibitions, uniforms and material culture. His work deftly shows a Confederacy struggling to imagine itself, producing a tangle of messages about masculinity, loyalty, and race, and makes a valuable contribution to the study of Confederate nationalism and its endurance.--Anne Sarah Rubin, author of A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868

Brooks' close analysis provides keen insights into how the southern insurgents imagined themselves, represented their revolutionary government, and made their 'southern way of life' visible to the world. Their iconology matters not just in understanding the Confederacy's rise and fall, but in grasping Lost Cause mythology and its impact on contemporary American life.--John David Smith, author of An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918

Ross Brooks has given us an innovative and multifaceted portrayal of the material world of the Confederacy. Integrating cartoons, photographs, currency, paintings, and clothing, he captures people trying to fashion a nation out of few materials and limited time.--Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America

About the Author

Ross A. Brooks is a research associate at La Trobe University and head of visual arts at a leading independent school in Melbourne, Australia.