The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief History with Documents

In his intriguing examination of Civil War remembrance as a public art, Thomas Brown uses civic monuments, ceremonial oratory, historical reenactment, and other forms of commemoration to explore how Americans have addressed issues of nationhood, race relations, gender, and cultural continuity in periods of social and economic upheaval. Drawing on the latest scholarship, Brown provides an informative narrative frame for 24 rich primary texts that range chronologically from the Gettysburg Address to recent debates over display of the Confederate flag. The volume includes more than 30 illustrations of public monuments and mass-circulated prints to help students learn to interpret visual evidence. A chronology of Civil War commemoration, questions for consideration, and a bibliography provide strong pedagogical support.

• Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865
• Secession Debated: Georgia's Showdown in 1860
• After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War
• Occupied Women: Gender, Military Occupation, and the American Civil War
• Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World
• Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (New Perspectives on the History of the South)
• Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause and the Emergence of the New South, 1865-1913
• The Legacy of the Civil War
• The U.S. War with Mexico: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford Series in History and Culture)
• Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America, New Edition