Book Description

This dissertation examines the evolution of Civil War memories in Rutherford County, Tennessee from the 1860s to the present. It explores how race, gender, and regional identities shaped individuals' perspectives on the war, commemorative events and organizations, and the development of historic sites such as Stones River National Battlefield. This study demonstrates how civilians and soldiers began to understand and commemorate this war before the conflict ended. It discusses the two main local commemorative groups, Union and Confederate, and how they evolved over time. This dissertation complicates the history of Civil War battlefields managed by the federal government by investigating the relationships between Stones River National Battlefield, African American landowners and park neighbors, and local white Confederate sympathizers. ...Investigating Confederate memory on a local level exposes the unequal struggle for leadership of this movement between white women and men. Although women largely created and sustained Confederate commemoration in the county, men usurped their projects and positions of authority during times like the 1890s and 1960s when political and social developments menaced white male supremacy. Gendered disputes between white men and women helped transform Confederate commemoration over time from a culture of mourning to a celebration of white soldiers' heroism and finally into a form of entertainment that glorified the Confederate past and white male supremacy."-Abstract, pages vii-viii.