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Passing as Gray: Texas Confederate Soldiers' Body Servants and the Exploitation of Civil War MemoryElliott, Brian Alexander 05 1900 (has links)
This dissertation is an examination of the interactions of enslaved body servants with their Texas Confederate masters from the American Civil War through the early twentieth century. The seven chapters of this study follows the story of these individuals from the fires of the Civil War, through the turbulence of Reconstruction in Texas, the codification of "Lost Cause" memory in the American South, and the exploitation of that memory by both former body servants and their ex-Confederate counterparts. This study demonstrates that the primary experience of blacks in the Confederate service was not as soldiers, but as enslaved laborers and body servants. Body servants, or camp slaves, were physically and in some cases emotionally close to their enslavers in this war-time environment and played an important part in Confederate logistics and camp life. As freed peoples after the war, former body servants found ways to use the bonds forged during the war and the flawed ideas of Lost Cause memory as a means to navigate the brutal realities of life in post-Civil War Texas. By manipulating white conceptions of former body servants as "black Confederates," some African Americans effectively "passed as gray," an act that earned money, social recognition, and a semblance of security denied to African Americans that did not have any association to former Confederates. This study further reorients how scholars in the twenty-first century examine the myth of the "black Confederate" from simply a lie propagated by whites to validate their memory of the Civil War to a lens that can reveal yet another avenue through which dauntless African Americans used to survive, and in some cases thrive, in the depths of Jim Crow rule in the American South.
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Dead but Sceptered Sovreigns: Johnson's Island and the American Civil War in Media and MemoryCarruthers, Jason Robert 02 August 2012 (has links)
No description available.
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Senator Oliver P. Morton and Historical Memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction in IndianaRainesalo, Timothy C. 02 1900 (has links)
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / After governing Indiana during the Civil War, Oliver P. Morton acquired great national influence as a Senator from 1867 to 1877 during Reconstruction. He advocated for African American suffrage and proper remembrance of the Union cause. When he died in 1877, political colleagues, family members, and many Union veterans recalled Morton’s messages and used the occasion to reflect on the nation’s memories of the Civil War and Reconstruction. This thesis examines Indiana’s Governor and Senator Oliver P. Morton, using his postwar speeches, public commentary during and after his life, and the public testimonials and monuments erected in his memory to analyze his role in defining Indiana’s historical memories of the Civil War and Reconstruction from 1865 to 1907. The eulogies and monument commemoration ceremonies reveal the important reciprocal relationship between Morton and Union veterans, especially Indiana members of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). As the GAR’s influence increased during the nineteenth century, Indiana members used Morton’s legacy and image to promote messages of patriotism, national unity, and Union pride. The monuments erected in Indianapolis and Washington, D. C., reflect Indiana funders’ desire to remember Morton as a Civil War Governor and to use his image to reinforce viewers’ awareness of the sacrifices and results of the war. This thesis explores how Morton’s friends, family, political colleagues, and influential members of the GAR emphasized Morton’s governorship to use his legacy as a rallying point for curating and promoting partisan memories of the Civil War and, to a lesser extent, Reconstruction, in Indiana.
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Kindling the Fires of Patriotism: The Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Indiana, 1866-1949Sacco, Nicholas W. January 2014 (has links)
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, thousands of Union veterans joined the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the largest Union veterans' fraternal organization in the United States. Upwards of 25,000 Hoosier veterans were members in the Department of Indiana by 1890, including President Benjamin Harrison and General Lew Wallace. This thesis argues that Indiana GAR members met in fraternity to share and construct memories of the Civil War that helped make sense of the past and the present. Indiana GAR members took it upon themselves after the war to act as gatekeepers of Civil War memory in the Hoosier state, publicly arguing that important values they acquired through armed conflict—obedience to authority, duty, selflessness, honor, and love of country—were losing relevance in an increasingly industrialized society that seemingly valued selfishness, materialism, and political radicalism. This thesis explores the creation of Civil War memories and GAR identity, the historical origins of Memorial Day in Indiana, and the Indiana GAR's struggle to incorporate ideals of "patriotic instruction" in public school history classrooms throughout the state.
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