A Reasoned Reconstruction Of The Past

Memories are important, they are a personal record of our past experiences, and could be called the history book for our life. In the poem "The Heroes You Had as a Girl", author Bronwen Wallace tells the story of a woman who meets her high school hero later in her life, reflects on her memories of him, and ultimately decides not to talk to him. The effect that this topic has on everyone is the knowledge that we can be captivated and let our memories control us, and by knowing that our memories hold that much power, it may make it more mentally efficient to make accurate, and personal decisions in a fraction of the time. The topic and overall meaning that this idea holds convey a message that resonates with the idea that memories are in fact the central hub of our decision making. People remembering memories can affect their perspective on their lives to such an extent, that they prefer to immerse their mind in their past memories rather than the current reality.

The theme of race and reunion had become a competition for memories with vastly different aspirations between the north and the south. Striving for a reunion, a majority of American white communities close obscure the civil war racial narrative would only fade. In race and reunion: The Civil War in American memory, by David Blight, represents how Americans chose to remember the Civil War conflict, from the beginning of the turning point of the war. The two major themes race and reunion, demonstrate how white Americans adjusted and altered the causes and outcomes of the Civil War to reflect their particular ideas regarding this catastrophic conflict between Northerners and Southerners era. Blight, addresses how these differences in cultures collided in the visions that they saw America becoming when reunited as a union after the Civil War, reconciliationists, White supremacy and emancipationist. Blight does an excellent job of showing the arguments between all three versions of the Civil War. As the emancipationist image kept a firm hold amongst ex-slaves, it lost much of its white support and political power. Reconciliation became more about healing, allowing racial injustice of the supremacist movement to seep into the landscape of national healing. why do Union veterans allow the real cause of the war, slavery, to disappear from the memory of the war – Blight strives to answer. Through a culture of remembrance, veterans looked back at their experience with a sort of

The tensions of the Civil War are very much still alive in the Southern United States one hundred and fifty years after the Confederacy surrendered to Union forces to end the war. While the tensions may have mitigated away from full-fledged war between North and South, there still remain tensions along racial and cultural lines well beyond the war. In Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic these long standing tensions left over from the war are delved into by Horwitz as he makes his way across the south to see how the old Confederacy is viewed in the modern world of the United States. What Horwitz found was a dualistic society differing views on the Confederacy and the events of the Civil War. Dualities left from the war in aspects such as racial tensions, the meaning of the Confederate flag even between North and South entirely. Those living in the South can be seen holding a resonating connection to the Civil War. It becomes clear in Confederates in the Attic the Civil War not only became the catalyst of such dualities in Southern society, but still further shape and perpetuate these dualities long after the Civil Wars conclusion.

As a result the Civil War, had taken a devastating toll on the country, with 620,000 deaths, destruction of the southern states, and extreme economic costs. Even after Lincoln's speech that pledge to free all slaves, there was sectional and racial hatreds that could not be easily erased. Whites in the North and the South found it difficult to come to terms with an end to slavery, because some could not see blacks as their

The excerpt The Ending the War: The Push for National Reconciliation by David Blight, edited by Hoffman, Elizabeth Cobbs, Edward Blum and Jon Gjerde, in Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays (Wadsworth, Cengage Leaning 2012) Blight argues historical memory that holds more importance than that of the Civil War. Like the Revolution, the memory of the Civil War played a role after the conflict. The concurrent issues in American society after the Civil War and against legislation to increase not decrease the racial problem in the South. Newly freed African Americans struggling to assimilate to society and be accepted as equal citizens in the reconstruction of the Union. This excerpt is rhetorically effective with statements on

As David Blight says in his novel, Race and Reunion, after the Civil War and emancipation, Americans were faced with the overwhelming task of trying to understand the relationship between “two profound ideas—healing and justice.” While he admits that both had to occur on some level, healing from the war was not the same “proposition” for many whites, especially veterans, as doing justice for the millions of emancipated slaves and their descendants (Blight 3). Blight claims that African Americans did not want an apology for slavery, but instead a helping hand. Thus, after the Civil War, two visions of Civil War memory arose and combined: the reconciliationist vison, which focused on the issue of dealing with the dead from the battlefields, hospitals, and prisons, and the emancipationist vision, which focused on African Americans’ remembrance of their own freedom and in conceptions of the war as the “liberation of [African Americans] to citizenship and Constitutional equality” (Blight 2).

It is known that as time passes by humans tend to change the meanings of certain events that have occurred in the past, they add a new connotation to it. This isn’t much different when regarding U.S History. Every time we go through a tragedy or something we aren’t specifically proud of we try to see the positive side of it in order to not be ashamed of ourselves just like Blight’s prologue states a quote by William Dean Howells, “What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.” Moreover, through the Civil War and the years it follow we see how the idea of what the Civil War means is revolutionized. At the beginning when the Civil War broke out many thought that they were fighting the South because they seceded from the Union. However, towards the end like Blight states, “In the final months of the Civil War, all participants knew they were living through transformations” (23). One needed to know what the far was going to be about in order to make it clear of the coming steps that would be developed after the Civil War. Just on key Lincoln gives the war a new meaning, the war was fought to emancipate slaves and to bestow upon them their basic rights. Blight states in his The Dead and the Living, “Lincoln seemed to see fitfully that rebirth would be rooted in the challenge of human equality in a nation” (13). This became the most reasonable meaning to the Civil War since it was one of the main reasons that tension continued to grow. Moreover, it was

The Civil War: one of the most pivotal and significant moments in the history of the United States of America. The dividing of a newly birthed nation upon itself - the turmoil created threatened to collapse a unified yearning for independence. A nation once united by the solace of solidarity, once tread on by the tyranny of a motherland, once triumphant in a fight for freedom, became segregated by principle. Power and greed fueled a dichotomy between color and people which repercussions' lingered in the air of America for the better part of two centuries, and quite possibly more to come. The civil war has left its mark on American society, and its damage is still crippling a social zeitgeist that has the potential to flourish in harmonic

Blight’s argument presents numerous examples of how memories can alter history in favor of a particular point of view. In examining his first vision of

African Americans were a very important addition to the American Civil War such as fighting and spying for both the north and the south sides. The American Civil War was a war fought in the United States between the North and South states. The war was from 1861-1865 and was because the South wanted to establish itself as a separate nation. The northern states were called the Union and the southern states were called the Confederate. Between the north and south states were the Border States, which did not belong to either of the sides. The Border States included Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri. In the north, slavery did not exist but the south was the opposite. In the war, the north and south states fought against each other while the Border States were neutral. Before the war and during the war, African Americans were treated very unfairly compared to white people. This essay will examine how African Americans were treated before, during and after the Civil War.

The position of blacks in America had long been a point of debate, both ethically and politically. Many Northern people before the Civil War sympathized with African slaves and recognized that slavery might be morally wrong, but could not care less when it came to doing something about it; slavery, for the most part, was a Southern tradition and not their issue. However, as more states were being admitted to the Union, the issue of slavery became politically important for the North when maintaining the balance of “slave states” and “free states.” With the release Uncle Tom’s Cabin, causing more Northern people to join the abolitionist movement, and the election of the slavery-opponent Abraham Lincoln, the South felt

The Civil War was arguably one of the greatest wars in American history. It tore the country in half and brought it back together again, it set precedents for human rights, and also tore families apart. As husbands went off to fight in the war, the wife and children were left at home, fatherless. Throughout this wartime, children began to absorb information about the war, whether it be from letters they received from fathers fighting in the war, bias stories told from people in their community, or even from firsthand experiences. The children of the civil war developed opinions and biases from the war that affected how they acted when they grew up in a rebuilding America.

The South wanted to free the slaves, however, they understood the “negative” political impacts. The North wanted to free the slaves, but they were very divided within themselves. Once ex-slaves gained the right to vote as a full human being (Black Suffrage), the Republican party arose to shape our country. (Roark, 471) With ex-slaves gaining the highly deserved power, the Ku Klux Klan (K.K.K.) was developing to support the democrats and restore “White Supremacy”. (Roark, 471) The political division raised what I would call a second Civil-War within the American government.

We take a look at David blight's book Race and Reunion, which is based directly after the civil war, we see more of the direct effects of the civil war outcome. There was a bigger effect in the country directly after the war, but within 10 years of the end of the civil war things reverted back to the way they were before. Then come reconstruction where we see probably the biggest change in the country, people actually try and revert back to before the civil war in the antebellum period. White southerners actually try and ignore that the civil war, even happened and why it happens. We see more of the complete denial of the civil war in Lillian Smith book Killers of a Dream, based early 1900s follows the life of a white southern girl and how she saw the south. Even though she told us a side of the south many southerners would die before admit to it still was not the real south, she was blinded by her upbringing. Like many of the people in the south they knew something was wrong, but chose to ignore it. We then venture to Pete Daniels Lost Revolutions, which hit directly in the 50s and 60s and told an unbiased look at the south and all the wrongdoing going on not only in the south but all over the country. Based on the book we can take a look into the racial tensions going on, the events which led to the rioting, and the effects it had on the actual outcome of the civil rights

First I shall discuss the reasons behind the necessity for a “historical memory” in the European context. I will then give an overview of current European Union practices on establishing a pan-European historical memory and of the existing political initiatives regarding a common European historical memory. The main emphasis shall be on the Europe for Citizens