Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause (Civil War America) [Hardcover]

Janney Caroline E. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 24, 2007 | ISBN-10: 080783176X | ISBN-13: 978-0807831762

Immediately after the Civil War, white women across the South organized to retrieve and rebury the remains of Confederate soldiers scattered throughout the region. In Virginia alone, these Ladies' Memorial Associations (LMAs) relocated and reinterred the remains of more than 72,000 soldiers, nearly 28 percent of the 260,000 Confederate soldiers who perished in the war. Challenging the notion that southern white women were peripheral to the Lost Cause movement until the 1890s, Caroline Janney restores these women's place in the historical narrative by exploring their role as the creators and purveyors of Confederate tradition between 1865 and 1915.

Although not considered "political" or "public actors," upper- and middle-class white women carried out deeply political acts by preparing elaborate burials and holding Memorial Days in a region still occupied by northern soldiers. Janney argues that in identifying themselves as mothers and daughters in mourning, LMA members crafted a sympathetic Confederate position that Republicans, northerners, and, in some cases, southern African Americans could find palatable. Long before national groups such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the United Daughters of the Confederacy were established, Janney shows, local LMAs were earning sympathy for lost Confederates. Janney's exploration introduces new ways in which gender played a vital role in shaping the politics, culture, and society of the late nineteenth-century South.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[An] impressive book. . . . Highly recommended."
-Choice

"This excellent and well-written book illuminates the work of an important group in the South's Lost Cause movement."
-American Historical Review

"A well-documented study of this unique women's movement after the Civil War. Any serious student of the Civil War or Reconstruction should be aware of the powerful arguments extended by Janney."
-On Point

"Janney has succeeded in crafting a thoughtful study that illuminates a little known area of the formation of the Lost Cause ideology."
-South Carolina Historical Magazine

"This clearly written and well-researched book definitely deepens our understanding of the earliest roots of Confederate memorialization and the Lost Cause."
-Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

"[This] excellent study speaks to a significant gap in the literature of southern cultural memory, gender, and Reconstruction. Not only is it a must read for anyone working in those areas, but it is a key contribution to the study of women and gender in this period."
-Journal of American History

"Janney's fine monograph is grounded in an impressive body of archival material supported by a very strong command of a wide array of secondary source literature."
-Southern Historian

"Sheds light on a previously obscure part of southern women's history. . . . Convincingly demonstrates that women continued to participate in a civic role after the fall of the Confederacy."
-Virginia Quarterly Review

"Janney's thoughtful study helps the Ladies to claim their rightful place in the history of Confederate memory making. Her lively stories of their hard-fought campaigns to build some of the most notable monuments of the state likewise make this an entertaining and valuable addition to the history of southern women's activism after the war."
-Virginia Magazine

[S]mart, well-researched, well-written, and well-argued . . .
-Alice Fahs, University of California, Irvine, coeditor of The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture

From the Inside Flap

Immediately after the Civil War, white women across the South organized to retrieve the remains of Confederate soldiers. In Virginia alone, these Ladies' Memorial Associations (LMAs) relocated and reinterred the remains of more than 72,000 soldiers. Challenging the notion that southern white women were peripheral to the Lost Cause movement until the 1890s, Caroline Janney restores these women as the earliest creators and purveyors of Confederate tradition. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (December 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080783176X
• ISBN-13: 978-0807831762
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #477,859 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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