In the midst of a relatively calm Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the historiography on the memory of the war has become increasingly contested. Ten years ago in a book on Civil War cemeteries, John R. Neff emphasized persisting sectional tensions, and more recently Barbara A. Gannon, in a study of the Grand Army of the Republic, and Caroline E. Janney, in a comprehensive examination of Civil War memory into the late 1930s, have stressed how both the North and South continued to believe their cause right and just—and the other side wrong and either traitorous or barbarous or both.Footnote 1 Gannon and Janney also conclude that Northern veterans continued to maintain that they had fought to end slavery, not just to preserve the Union. Together, these books make a strong case that, during the first 75 years or so after the war, resentments against former foes festered and, if they did not stop reunion, certainly restrained reconciliation between the sections. They thereby challenge David W. Blight's influential Race and Reunion, which argues that reconciliation overcame sectional differences and facilitated the establishment of white supremacy, and a host of earlier and later studies that also found considerable evidence for reconciliation and a converging memory of the war. These earlier studies often focused on the same subjects and drew on similar evidence as the new ones do, and the resulting stark differences in interpretation testify to the vigorous debate within the discipline, though hardly to the reliability of its methodology.
M. Keith Harris completed the dissertation out of which Across the Bloody Chasm developed before Gannon's and Janney's books appeared, and he thanks both in his acknowledgments. His book fits squarely within the new interpretive paradigm that stresses continued sectional tensions and resentments. Harris looks only at the attitudes of veterans, Union and Confederate, through an examination of what he calls “the culture of commemoration,” by which he means “speeches, parades, monument dedications, and literature reflecting on the war” (3). He has examined an impressive array of manuscripts, newspapers, and other printed sources in search of veterans' views. He concludes that the “former soldiers of the Union and Confederate armies commemorated national memories denoting American valor and fealty. But more important, they worked tirelessly to preserve sectional memories that advanced one side over the other and conjured fear, anger, and resentment among formerly warring parties” (1–2). In the process, reunion was achieved but never true reconciliation, much less forgiveness.
Veterans of the Union army, Harris shows, celebrated their achievements, preserving the Union and freeing the slaves. Although Northern veterans accepted the “marginalization of black people” in the postwar period, they still saw emancipation as central to the war and stressed its importance (5). And they adamantly maintained that Southerners had fought for slavery and to destroy the Union, in the process committing treason. They condemned their former foes for their barbaric mistreatment of prisoners of war, their destruction of property, their ill treatment of civilians, and their abuses of black troops. Union veterans also criticized Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.
That Confederates remained unapologetic long after Appomattox probably did nothing to improve their former foes' attitudes toward them. Southern veterans, Harris writes, did not seek “to reestablish the Confederacy as they had once envisioned it: an independent nation.” They did seek, though, to prove “the rightness of their principles in direct contention with northern commutations” (89). Southerners therefore portrayed themselves as fighting for true constitutional principles, local self-government and states’ rights, and blamed the Yankees for destroying the Union. A few acknowledged that the war was about slavery: most denied it. But since Northern veterans put slavery at the center of the conflict, even they sometimes addressed it as a means to condemn Northerners for “suppression of rights, jealousy, vindictiveness, abuses of power and other wicked deeds. … They exposed northerners as fanatics determined to use emancipation as a tool to punish the South” (115). Southerners, too, pointed to the destruction of property and treatment in prisons, although Harris has less to say about Southern condemnations of the Yankees than about their defense of themselves.
Despite emphasizing the “bloody chasm” that persisted, indeed widened, as veterans aged, Harris rightly acknowledges reunion. He observes that what made it and a degree of reconciliation possible was a common sense of identity as Americans, rooted in tying the wartime cause to “the original intentions of the founders” (3). He shows how Southerners drew on the revolutionary tradition, more so than Northerners; this important insight might have been better developed. In other places, in a sophisticated reading of the evidence, Harris acknowledges moves toward and rhetoric of reconciliation among the veterans, but argues that they often turned on themselves. For example, the “recognition of southern courage—a prominent refrain in reconciliatory rhetoric—did not preclude the acknowledgement of southern treachery” (51).
Even though he stresses “contention and continuity among former enemies” (14), Harris refers to a national reconciliation culture, created primarily by people born after the war, which “embraced a celebratory message speaking to the power of progress and unity” (9). The focus of his book—the veterans—prevents a full exploration of that culture, but its existence does raise the interesting if never really addressed question of why veterans did not prove more influential. In an epilogue, Harris offers an arresting observation on the current state of Civil War memory, that today the issue of slavery remains prominent and its role in the war widely (though not universally) acknowledged, but that the issue of treason has faded from view. He attributes that to a Confederate “interpretative victory” (143).
Across the Bloody Chasm raises many such interesting points. It is a thoroughly researched, well-argued, nuanced treatment that will quickly establish itself as an important work in what might be termed “the persisting resentment and sectionalism” school of interpreting Civil War memory. Whether the view of Civil War memory it so ably presents will win the emerging historiographical battle remains to be seen.
