Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

Regional identity and pride are a normal human condition. Right from the baby get-go we are shaped by our genetics, surroundings and experiences. We carry these attitudes into adulthood and are usually reluctant to abandon or revise them without a lot of effort. Significant events leave huge impressions on not only our identity but ripple through multiple generations. The Civil War is one of those affairs and it is still very much with us today in 2019. Mr. Blight explains how the war came to be perceived over the fifty years immediately following the end of the conflict.While the author’s work was highly informative, it was also quite dry in its presentation and friggin’ discouraging for this 58-year-old Mainer. He avoids using sarcasm. ‘Race and Reunion’ shows the regional and national evolutions in the explanations given by the South, the North, and African-Americans. There was plenty of myth-making, especially by the South. The author covers such things as the creation of Memorial Day, the Lost Cause’s delusional historical revisionism, Reconstruction, nostalgic heroism, the Ku Klux Klan, the Compromise of 1877, the denial or whitewashing of awful Civil War prisons such as Andersonville, the erecting of Confederate statues, the commercialization of the Civil War, how literature for whites presented such poppycock stereotypes as the happy loyal slave, lynchings, blackface minstrelsy, segregation, white supremacy, and the Supreme Court’s 1883 ruling which helped usher in Jim Crow. It includes many familiar names and quite a few others I had never heard. ‘Race and Reunion’ is about how national reunification came to trump African-American civil rights. The book ends with the release and huge success of D.W. Griffin’s racist movie ‘Birth of a Nation.’ There are about a dozen or so black-and-white photos scattered throughout the work.I did not expect to be so upset from reading ‘Race and Reunion.’ I’ve read much worse such as Leon Litwack’s ‘Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow.’ Mr. Litwack’s book had my blood pressure workin’ at unhealthy levels. ‘Race and Reunion’ was not as bad but it did give me a few cases of the grumpies. The book was published in 2001. It’s now 2019 and you don’t have to look very hard to see daily examples of racism and regional discrimination such as voter suppression by powerful whites against minorities, mass minority incarceration, blacks frequently being gunned down or assaulted with no justification except being “uppity,” and President Foghorn Leghorn’s race-baiting antics. ‘Race and Reunion’ gives a clear picture of where the Lost Cause beliefs originated and became gospel to many unenlightened individuals even today. That’s depressing.(If you do read the author’s book and like it, I suggest two other works about the effects of the Civil War. They are ‘Marching Home” Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War’ by Brian Matthew Jordan and ‘This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War’ by Drew Gilpin Faust.)

This book knocked me out. I could not put it down, and brought it on a 10 day backpack trip in the Sierras, reading every evening. After fairly extensive reading on Reconstruction while writing an academic paper, I discovered a youtube lecture by David Blight on the subject. He was so intelligent, expressive, fair-minded, and able to synthesize and explain diverse materials that I immediately googled him and discovered this book. Race and Reunion treats what happened after Reconstruction - in a nutshell (forgive me Professor!) in order to reunify the north and south, blacks were forgotten/ignored, allowing the country to be stitched back together, in a fashion. Had the North required the South to honor the Emancipation Proclamation and the 14th Amendment, unification would have been very difficult or impossible. But the North was exhausted by the war and distracted by other pressing matters, Lincoln was gone and had no comparable substitute, and the South was determined to continue to treat blacks as secondary citizens. In a delicate dance, separate memorial days gradually became joint memorial days, as white veterans from both sides began sharing tales of courage, honor, and battle together, and mutual forgiveness evolved. This required the north to look the other way as the South enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws. The book is meticulously researched, and approaches the problems from multiple different points of view, using a wide variety of evidence (such as popular literature of the time). It is clear and readable. This book made me wish that I had become a historian.

This excellent and incisive study by David Blight is so current with what we are experiencing now and why. He lays the groundwork for the racism that is so rampant today in the U.S.. The reason for the white supremacy movement of the South and its perpetuation. He traces the historical lineage of the Blacks and their struggle post Civil War for freedom and economic success. How the glorification of the Civil War in the South turned historical perspectives upside down. How traitors became heroes with statues erected in their honor. This is definitely a book worth reading, especially in light of today's racial climate.