Four Major Interpretive Traditions of the American Civil War

Four Interpretive TraditionsDr. Bruce Clary

Thursday, January 3, 2013

The Lost Cause

Northwest Ordinance1787

•Established territory west of the Appalachians and north of the Ohio River as free territory

Romanticizes the Old South

Slavery a benign institution

Secession was the second American

Revolution

Suffering South

Honor retained

Saintly heroes

This replica of a slave trade ship moored by Tower Bridge in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Slave Trade Act.

Reconstruction as revenge

The Union Cause

The world’s last, best hope

“A more perfect Union”

A powerful force for good

The Emancipation Cause

Four million freed

Slave power conspiracy

Emancipation as military necessity

Black emancipators

The noble enterprise

Opposition to Lost Cause

The Reconciliation Cause

Effacement of Emancipation

Celebration of both Blue and Gray

Appomatox: Where it began

Capitulation to the Lost Cause

Sources

Gallagher, Gary W. Causes Won, Lost, & Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2008.

Goldfield, David. Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2002.

McCurry, Stephanie. Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2010.