Download (3483kB) - Greenwich Academic Literature Archive ...

The Civil War and popular cultureJust as the political landscape continuously references back to the Civil War so too haspopular culture used and reused the war. 34 Immediately after the war the South sought tojustify its defeat by inventing the Confederate tradition around the myth of the Lost Cause.This helped to explain to nineteenth century Southerners how and why they lost and helpedthem to cope with the cultural implications of defeat.35 Southerners also found other waysof dealing with their loss through Confederate Memorial Days and erecting statues andmemorials to remember and honour the Confederate dead. Confederate veterans met inlocal 'survivors' associations' and formed a 'national' organisation in 1889 - the UnitedConfederate Veterans (UCV). 36 The UCV had support organisations - the UnitedDaughters of the Confederacy (UDC) founded in 1894 and the United Sons of ConfederateVeterans (USCV) founded in 1896 - which were dedicated to ensure that the Confederatetradition would live on, as well as the magazine, the Confederate Veteran, established in1893. 37What developed in the South in the years following the Civil War was a new culture thatembraced all levels of white society in its attempt to control both the past and the future.As the historian Ray Browne says, '(p)opular culture is the way of life in which and bywhich most people in a society live.....It is the every day world around us.....It is the wayof living we inherit, practice and modify as we please.....it is the dreams we dream whileasleep.' 38 Jim Cullen comments that thepower of popular culture is to offer large numbers of people explanations of why thingsare the way things are - and what, if anything can be done about it. Infuse this powerwith history - explanations of how things came to be the way they are - and you have apotent agent for influencing the thinking, and thus the actions, of millions of people....Popular culture has played a critical role .....[in] remembering the Civil War. 39The way the South established a memory of the Civil War shows how collective memorycan be moulded and the past distorted. Southerners realised that the right education wasessential for the Confederate memory to continue. The UCV and the UDC establishedhistorical committees to promote a 'proper' appreciation of the war by establishing a 'true'history and to see that children were taught only a Southern understanding of the war.40The UCV also proposed that the term 'Rebel' should no longer be used and the Civil Warcalled The War Between the States.'29