Changing views of gender, as well as fluctuating race relations -
as evidenced in society and culture both north and south when Civil
War chaos gave way to efforts toward reconciliation - form the crux
of Boston University historian Silber's provocative study. In
Silber's analysis, northern postwar derision of southern
masculinity arose from a victor's mentality, given form in cartoons
and dubious anecdotes that had Jefferson Davis trying to escape
capture by dressing in skirts, while southern women were similarly
slighted as unrepentant, vengeful harridans. More romantic notions
eventually held sway in which the regions were symbolically
reunited through marriages between men of the North and women of
the South, with increasing economic and social hardship spawning
movements - such as the Populists and the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union - that provided political impetus for a national
identity. Labor unrest and waves of immigration prompted a renewed
appreciation of autocratic southern slaveholders; indeed, the
ethnic influx and limited, often negative exposure of white
northerners to black culture prompted a valorization of Anglo-Saxon
purity in Appalachia, exacerbating racial tensions - especially
fears of miscegenation - and fostering acquiescence when the number
of lynchings in the South rose as the century drew to a close. By
the time of the Spanish-American conflict, the tarnished image of
southern chivalry and gracious, submissive femininity had been
restored almost entirely - a process, Silber contends, that added
significantly to America's imperialistic impulses and full-blown
patriotism. Informative, persuasively argued, and offering valuable
insight into cultural shifts that helped shape the US at a critical
moment in its history. (Kirkus Reviews)
The reconciliation of North and South following the Civil War
depended as much on cultural imagination as on the politics of
Reconstruction. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Nina Silber
documents the transformation from hostile sectionalism to
sentimental reunion rhetoric. Northern culture created a notion of
reconciliation that romanticized and feminized southern society. In
tourist accounts, novels, minstrel shows, and popular magazines,
northerners contributed to a mythic and nostalgic picture of the
South that served to counter their anxieties regarding the
breakdown of class and gender roles in Gilded Age America. Indeed,
for many Yankees, the ultimate symbol of the reunion process, and
one that served to reinforce Victorian values as well as northern
hegemony, was the marriage of a northern man and a southern woman.
Southern men also were represented as affirming traditional gender
roles. As northern men wrestled with their nation's increasingly
global and aggressive foreign policy, the military virtues extolled
in Confederate legend became more admired than reviled. By the
1890s, concludes Silber, northern whites had accepted not only a
newly resplendent image of Dixie but also a sentimentalized view of
postwar reunion. |Working with personal papers and diaries and
contemporary reports, historian William Marvel interweaves the
stories of these two celebrated Civil War battleships, from their
construction to their climactic encounter off Cherbourg. Just as
importantly, he illuminates the day-to-day experiences of their
crews, from cabin boys to officers.
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