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.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

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

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

Well-researched and compellingly written. . . . will appeal to a lay audience.--H-Net Reviews

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

Janney's Remembering the Civil War is an ambitious book that makes a bold argument, taking on the dominant themes in the growing historical field of Civil War memory.--Annals of Iowa

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

A landmark study. . . . Certain to be a standard-bearer in the field of Civil War memory for the foreseeable future.--Indiana Magazine of History

Review

With this beautifully written, deeply researched book, Caroline E. Janney has produced a magisterial survey of Civil War memory and memorialization that will surely be the standard volume for students, scholars, and interested readers to consult for years to come.--Joan Waugh, author of U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth

By making the crucial distinction between reunion and reconciliation, Janney offers a bold and persuasive reinterpretation of the Civil War's aftermath and its legacy. Reunion, the North's primary war aim and the fruits of its victory, came swiftly. But reconciliation--true sectional harmony and a spirit of mutual forgiveness--ran aground again and again on the shoals of pride, grief, and politics. Survivors of the war, soldiers and civilians, persisted in their principles, and in their bitter memories, and Janney skillfully maps their prolonged contest over the war's meaning.--Elizabeth R. Varon, University of Virginia

Thought-provoking. Janney engages with the important question of just how prevalent the culture of reconciliation was when it came to understanding the meaning and legacy of the Civil War.--Nina Silber, Boston University

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Product details

Series: Littlefield History of the Civil War Era
Hardcover: 464 pages
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; New edition edition (June 3, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1469607069
ISBN-13: 978-1469607061
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
Average Customer Review: 6 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #239,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #250 in Books > History > Americas > United States > Civil War > Campaigns & Battlefields
- #2506 in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources
- #2793 in Books > History > Military > United States

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Tara A. Norman

Did The Country Truly Reconcile After the Civil War?

August 19, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This insightful volume contains a wealth of information, but the text nevertheless keeps moving and therefore retains a high interest level for a truly complex topic. Ms. Janney has provided a deepened understanding not only of post-civil war America, but makes it clear that true, heart-felt reconciliation was a nearly impossible task.

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James R. Orr

A GREAT AND EDUCATIONAL READ

July 30, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I am an avid student of the Civil War and research and write papers to present to Civil War Round Tables. I have presented programs to the Civil War Round Table to which Caroline belongs in Lafayette, Indiana and she has presented a program to the Round Table to which I belong in Cambridge City, Indiana. Caroline's book is a most educational and easy read. The lengthy section of footnotes and bibliography reflects the fact that Caroline did an exhaustive job in researching this book.

James (Jim) Orr
Connersville, Indiana

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Examining the complex topic of how we remember

July 17, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

When you look through material on the end of the Civil War, usually there will be a coda showing clasping of hands between former enemies at one of the reunions on the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg and for many people this vision of reunion is the what they know about how the nation reacted and tried to "heal" in the years following Appomattox. Many people, especially the federal government seemed to want that vision of reconciliation to dominate and endure. The truth, however, was different. Caroline Janney delves into the more complex truth of the era between the Civil War and the subsequent 50 plus years afterwards. Recent scholarship has taken a harder look at how we remember the war and how the memories were shaped, rewritten and nudged into the still fractured message we hear today. Most notable among these is David Blight's "Race and Reunion" which Janney uses as a launching point for several chapters. But she goes beyond this work, and others, to try and mine new understandings of remembrance. The subtitle is "Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation" and this nicely summarizes her thesis - contrary to what many authors have written, the postwar era say reunion, but for many who lived through the era there was no ground for reconciliation. That the nation would, as far as they are concerned, remain two nations, grudgingly, made one again. Janney looks at various schools of thought on the war - emancipation and union, lost cause, slavery - and looks at how the message and actions of participants helped form, and belie the message of the Civil War. If the adage is that "history is written by the victors" the south tried it's best to make sure this didn't happen. One especially strong part of the book is where Janney builds upon her own prior work "Burying the Dead but Not the Past" and looks at the role women, both from the north and the south, we instrumental in shaping and controlling the postwar message and, to some extent, extend the hostilities on new non-shooting fronts. Extensively researched and footnoted, she builds upon primary sources as well as more recent scholarship to continue looking into this timely topic as the country will continue to wrestle with how we remember the war long after the current sesquicentennial is over.

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April 11, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Fantastic book! Janney truly captures the great divide between the North and South in post reconstruction america. Would love to read this book again.

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mspswanr

Remember the Civil War

December 31, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Haven't read it yet but have looked it over and it looks and from what I've have spot read it sound great.
Looking forward to reading.

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