1. Final Essay One
Lynda Balloni
HIST 379: The Civil War and Popular Culture
May 18, 2015

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For the last 150 years since the conclusion of the Civil War, and even in the years during
and preceding the war, generalizations about the war – its causes, reasons, events, players, and
consequences – started to take form. All of these memories-in-the-making were unequal parts
fact, fiction, myth, satire, and simplification, optimistically with a little bit of truth in every one.
These reminiscences about the war can be grouped into categories based off of their time period,
location of origin, medium, the economic or ethnic backgrounds of their creators, and the
ideology they inevitably try to sell to their audience. The three most prominent constructs of
Americans’ memory of the Civil War were the Emancipationist (black people, abolitionists,
Radical Republicans), Reunion or Reconciliation (dominant version of the end of the war – most
white Northerners and much of the South), and “Lost Cause” (white Southerners, especially
wealthy slave owners) versions of the war. The most common vehicle to “educate” the majority
of the American public on these conflicting rhetorics has been popular culture. Although pop
culture can appear benign since one of its primary functions is entertainment, not just instruction
(or propaganda, depending on one’s perspective), it has at least as much power to influence the
public’s mindset as actions taken by the government and/or academics in a conscious effort to
guide Americans’ understanding of their history. There are copious examples of specific people,
battles, and cultural works that were crucial to the progression of the Civil War and still impact
its legacy today, and popular culture has been the most effective tool to ensure some version of
Civil War history would reach the American masses.
The first aspects of the Civil War memory Americans twisted and oversimplified even
before the war broke out were its causes and reasons. If you asked any American today to boil
down why so many people fought and died in the Civil War to one word, the answer would vary
greatly based off of where that person was from, what school they went to, their race, economic

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background, and innumerable other factors. Some of the most common answers one would
receive would probably be slavery, states’ rights, preserving the Union, spreading the right to
“free labor” practices, and property rights. All of these answers have some merit to them, but the
point of listing all of the (at times contradictory) reasons for going to war is mainly to illustrate
that there was clearly no one event or even concept that started the war; its roots can be traced
back to the poorly-thought-out Kansas-Nebraska Act and Missouri compromise, the ambiguity
regarding slavery in the language of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, and the
start of the Afro-Euro-American slave trade almost four centuries prior to the war’s start with
North taking Fort Sumter.
There were certain events that happened during the Civil War and Reconstruction which
have taken on legendary qualities in the realm of American history and identity. Personally, the
Battles of Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg stick out in my mind when I try to think of
particular Civil War battles, but my military history is so lacking that I could not properly
explain to you why these battles were so important to the war, if they even were. Gettysburg
(/Vicksburg) is without a doubt the most talked-about Civil War battle, and understandably so
since the most people died and it marked the farthest the Confederate army managed to move
into Northern territory, but there are several other battle which marked very significant turning
points that just never get as much credit e.g., Shiloh, Antietam, Chattanooga, Atlanta and the
battles at sea, but Gettysburg remains the turning point of the war. The Emancipation
Proclamation is the most memorable shift in policy that occurred during the war, and for good
reason, but playing up Lincoln’s proclamation is problematic for at least two reasons: it
disregards the much more moderate view of slavery that Lincoln held for the majority of his time
as a politician as well as the amount of time that would pass (two years, three months, and nine

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days) and number of lives that were lost before the war ended and the Proclamation could
actually come into effect. The memory of Reconstruction has been tainted just like that of the
war. The hardships Southerners faced under Radical Reconstruction are played up as much as
possible in accounts of the period told from the “Lost Cause” perspective, while the much more
perhaps overly) forgiving era of Presidential Reconstruction immediately following in the war is
oftentimes completely ignored.
The way the war is remembered is dependent upon a plethora of factors that were listed
previously, but one factor that has been pivotal to the development of the memory of the Civil
War and Reconstruction after the fact is the time period from whence it came. Everyone and
everything is a product of its time. The first era that occurred during and after Reconstruction
was the Progressive Era. It lasted from until the beginning of the First World War, and it marked
a period of confusion, mourning, and rebuilding in the United States. The memory of the war
was still fresh, many of its veterans were still alive (and in some cases, writing memoirs), and the
country was struggling to pull itself back together. The Progressive Age bread the
Emancipationist, Reunion, and Lost Cause ideologies. Popular works from this period focused
on death above all else, since its shadow was hard to escape during the decades following the
bloodiest war in American history. The Progressive Age came to a close only when the country
had another war to focus on for a few years, and the success on the American side in World War
One and the “Roaring Twenties” that followed it changed the mood of the American public.
Movies were more common and while one of the first feature-length films, The Birth of a Nation,
was a product of the Progressive Age and told a story of the Civil War, they started to move
away from these narratives for a few years, more or less until 1939. When the Great Depression
hit the United States, the mood changed again and as the decade finally came to a close, Metro-

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Goldwyn Mayer released the “greatest Civil War film of all time” as adapted from a popular
novel written three years previously, Gone with the Wind. The book and film used “Lost Cause”
ideas to compare the “tragedy” the South had to endure under the Northern death grip during the
war and Reconstruction with the American experience during the Depression. It also took a
social approach to the history of the war by focusing mostly on the home front and using a
woman protagonist, other methods characteristic of its era. World War Two, the Civil Rights
era, and the Cold War would all do their part in shaping the memory of the war as well. The
significance and horrendousness of slavery and the role of black regiments in the war were
finally put on the table for the first time, at least in the film industry, with the release of Glory in
1989. Glory was a game changer that opened up a door to furthering the importance of African
American studies, through film as well as other mediums. The last 25 years between Glory and
today would see the dawn of some of the most popular documentaries of all time (about the Civil
War, created by Ken Burns) a revival of the “Lost Cause” memory through film (think Ted
Turner) and art (Confederate paintings and the flag phenomenon), and a renewed interest in
Lincoln’s role as President and as a human being (and even a vampire!). Clearly, Americans
have made a lot of progress in constructing their memory of the war since it finally came to a
close in 1865, but unfortunately, the memory will still never be fully factual or true.
Federal, state and local governments have, of course, done everything in their power to
shape Americans’ idea of their history, and even these bodies understand the power of popular
culture as tool for changing the status quo. The construction of monuments, holidays, and a
“consensus” version of American history have shaped Civil War memory as much as the
aforementioned events, people, books, movies, and eras. Political monuments are noteworthy
since they are generally enacted in public spaces, so although their reach is limited by location

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(at least to some extent), they still hold some clout in influencing the public eye by glorifying
specific people and events over others. The development of Memorial Day (formerly Decoration
Day) also had a serious impact on Civil War memory since much like enacting monuments, it
focuses on the purely military aspects of the war and honors this part of the war above anything
else. Its origins are controversial since it started in May of 1865, fresh after the end of the war,
when approximately 10,000 free blacks and white Northerners marched through Charleston,
South Carolina and decorated the graves of their fallen soldiers. By 1873 the federal government
shut down for the day to honor Civil War veterans and in 1890 it had become a legal holiday in
every Northern state. Last but not least, academia has of course played a role in constructing
Civil War history, and the educational trends follow similar patterns of the other cultural vehicles
of memory referred to. The “Dunning School” dominated Civil War history during the
Progressive Era, and if favored the “Lost Cause” and Reunion ideologies of its age while
condemning anyone and anything Emancipationist. Social history was popular during the
Depression era but it also emerged during the Civil Rights era and alongside Revisionist history
which was always popular amongst black and abolitionist historians such as W.E.B. Dubois, but
it did not fully take off until Glory’s release in 1989. Textbooks and peer-reviewed journals are
as subjective as any other means of documenting and interpreting the past.

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Bibliography
Ayers, Edward L. America’s War: Talking About the Civil War and Emancipation on their 150th
Anniversaries. United States: Library of Congress, 2012.
Bierce, Ambrose. Civil War Stories. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1994.
Brown, Thomas J. The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief History with
Documents. United States of America: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.
Chadwick, Bruce. The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film. New York: Random
House, Inc., 2001.
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. London: CRW Publishing, 1895.
Griffith, D.W. The Birth of a Nation. 2012. United States: Epoch Producing Company, film.
Fleming, Victor. Gone with the Wind. Produced by David O. Selznik. 1939. United States:
Metro–Goldwyn-Meyer, film.
Masur, Louis P. The Civil War: A Concise History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Zwyck, Edward. Glory. Produced by Freddie Fields. 1989. United States: Tristar Pictures.