1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910457800103321

Autore

Blight David W

Titolo

American oracle [[electronic resource] ] : the Civil War in the civil rights era / / David W. Blight

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Mass., : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, c2011

ISBN

0-674-06270-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (321 p.)

Disciplina

973.70072

Soggetti

HISTORY / United States / 20th Century

Electronic books.

United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Historiography

United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Influence

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Prologue. "Five Score Years Ago" -- Chapter one. "Gods and Devils Aplenty" -- Chapter two. A Formula for Enjoying the War -- Chapter three. "Lincoln and Lee and All That" -- Chapter four. "This Country Is My Subject" -- Epilogue. "The Wisdom of Tragedy" -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared, "One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free." He delivered this speech just three years after the Virginia Civil War Commission published a guide proclaiming that "the Centennial is no time for finding fault or placing blame or fighting the issues all over again."David Blight takes his readers back to the centennial celebration to determine how Americans then made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation that had wracked the United States a century earlier. Amid cold war politics and civil rights protest, four of America's most incisive writers explored the gulf between remembrance and reality. Robert Penn Warren, the southern-reared poet-novelist who recanted his support of segregation; Bruce Catton, the journalist and U.S. Navy officer who became a popular Civil War historian; Edmund Wilson, the century's preeminent literary critic; and



James Baldwin, the searing African-American essayist and activist-each exposed America's triumphalist memory of the war. And each, in his own way, demanded a reckoning with the tragic consequences it spawned.Blight illuminates not only mid-twentieth-century America's sense of itself but also the dynamic, ever-changing nature of Civil War memory. On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the war, we have an invaluable perspective on how this conflict continues to shape the country's political debates, national identity, and sense of purpose.