Important Book--Upcoming Civil War Sesquicentennial

Georgia, like a number of other states, is anticipating opportunities for public programming and cultural heritage tourism in conjunction with the upcoming Civil War Sesquicentennial. In light of this anticipation and planning, reading Robert J. Cook's Troubled Commemoration: the American Civil War Centennial, 1961-1965 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007) was quite timely.

The book looks at the story of the Civil War Centennial in light of two historical contexts: the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement. It also describes how differences in memory of the Civil War Civil War impeded establishment of consensus for the anniversary and negatively impacted the implementation of the commemoration. Points of contention included who should be involved, what specific events and people should be celebrated, and how the events and people should be remembered. Re-examining these events in this context suggests many lessons that can be helpful for planners working on future public commemorations.

As a state humanities council staffer, I was particularly interested in a gap that existed at the beginning of the commemoration. Scholars such as Bell Wiley and Allan Nevins believed that the commemoration should focus on documenting and preserving information about the Civil War; whereas members of the Civil War Roundtables (such as Ulysses S. Grant, the first chairman of the national commission) felt the commemoration should emphasize events that appealed to the public , such as "sham battles" or reenactments. The round table organizers, in particular Karl Betts, the first executive director of the commission, also valued the potential of the commemoration for economic development.

Another aspect of the story is the tension between the efforts of the Federal Commission (which was administered by the National Park Service) and the state and local commissions. While a Cold War consensus ideology enabled both groups to suggest that both northern and southern participants in the Civil war were "good people" (p. 41), different sectional perspectives came into play during the commemoration.

Ultimately, the efforts towards consensus contributed to the down-playing of connections between the Civil War and African-American freedom. Other books, such as David Blights Race and Reunion and Fitzhugh Brundage's The Southern Past, devote more attention to the specifics of how African Americans developed and maintained a counter-memory about the Civil War and Reconstruction. Yet Cook is clear that the Centennial's neglect of the African-American perspective led to problems, especially as the Centennial was occurring during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1961, a conflict arose over a national meeting of the Commission and their partner state commissions, to be held in Charleston, SC, for the Centennial of the firing on Fort Sumter. The host hotel denied accommodations to African-American members of state commissions. The conflict was resolved, partially through the intervention of members of the Kennedy administration. But it led to the replacement of the chairman and executive director of the Commission with Allan Nevins as chairman and James I. "Bud" Robertson as executive director. The involvement of Robertson is particularly significant, given that he is still active and respected in Civil War scholarship and programming.

Once the historians "took control" (as Cook entitles chapter four), the Commission was able to accomplish some significant tasks between 1962-1965. However public interest also decreased after the initial enthusiasm of 1961. The commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation, which took place on September 22, 1965, was particularly understated (with few African Americans on the podium besides Mahalia Jackson who sang). Cook draws an insightful contrast between this event at the Lincoln Memorial and the 1963 March on Washington.

With the sesquicentennial of the Civil War fast-approaching, Robert J. Cook's book is a must-read, if planners are to implement a less-troubled commemoration.

(this is adapted from a review published in the Georgia Historical Quarterly, Volume XCI, Number 4; Winter 2007).