Civil War Centennial

In Troubled Commemoration, Robert J. Cook recounts the planning, organization, and ultimate failure of United States Civil War Centennial and reveals how the broad-based public history extravaganza was derailed by its appearance during the decisive phase of the civil rights movement.

In 1957, Congress voted to set up the United States Civil War Centennial Commission. A federally funded agency within the Department of the Interior, the commission's charge was to oversee preparations to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the central event in the Republic's history. Politicians hoped that a formal program of activities to mark the centennial of the Civil War would both bolster American patriotism at the height of the cold war and increase tourism in the South. Almost overnight, however, the patriotic pageant that organizers envisioned was transformed into a struggle over the historical memory of the Civil War and the injustices of racism. In Troubled Commemoration, Robert J. Cook recounts the planning, organization, and ultimate failure of this controversial event and reveals how the broad-based public history extravaganza was derailed by its appearance during the decisive phase of the civil rights movement. Cook shows how the centennial provoked widespread alarm among many African Americans, white liberals, and cold warriors because the national commission failed to prevent southern whites from commemorating the Civil War in a racially exclusive fashion. The public outcry followed embarrassing attempts to mark secession, the attack on Fort Sumter, and the South's victory at First Manassas, and prompted backlash against the celebration, causing the emotional scars left by the war to resurface. Cook convincingly demonstrates that both segregationists and their opponents used the controversy that surrounded the commemoration to their own advantage. Southern whites initially embraced the centennial as a weapon in their fight to save racial segregation, while African Americans and liberal whites tried to transform the event into a celebration of black emancipation. Forced to quickly reorganize the commission, the Kennedy administration replaced the conservative leadership team with historians, including Allan Nevins and a young James I. Robertson, Jr., who labored to rescue the centennial by promoting a more soberly considered view of the nation's past. Though the commemoration survived, Cook illustrates that white southerners quickly lost interest in the event as it began to coincide with the years of Confederate defeat, and the original vision of celebrating America's triumph over division and strife was lost. The first comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Civil War Centennial, Troubled Commemoration masterfully depicts the episode as an essential window into the political, social, and cultural conflicts of America in the 1960s and confirms that it has much to tell us about the development of the modern South.

In the tradition of the great regimental histories of the past, this book records the fire which seared the ranks of the Twenty-Four Michigan Regiment of the legendary “Iron Brigade.” Born as the result of a riot, led by a Virginian, met with coldness and hostility by the black-hatted veterans of the brigade, the Twenty-Fourth swore it would win their respect…and so they did with a vengeance. At Fredericksburg, in “artillery hell” and under a murderous crossfire from the guns of “Stonewall” Jackson and “Jeb” Stuart, they performed the manual of arms to stead the line. The first day at Gettysburg they sparked this remark from the confederate ranks…”That ain’t no milishy, there’s those damn black hats again.” With the immortal First Corps they were ordered west of the town to hold long enough for the army to occupy the strategic heights behind them. They held, and by evening they had lost more men than any of the 400-odd Union regiments engaged in the battle. Still later they marched down “that crimson strip across the maps,” which marked Grant’s Wilderness Campaign; they bled at Petersburg and then, their ranks almost decimated, were sent to guard bounty jumpers. The last tribute to their gallant service came as they were chosen the Guard of Honor for Lincoln’s funeral. In a little more than two years of bloody fighting they found their way to nineteenth place on the list of “300 Fighting Regiments.” To read this book is to consort with heroes who, 100 years ago, stood watching their world writhe in agony. It gives hope that in matching their courage, our country will emerge from the cauldron triumphant.