Caroline Janney's just published book, Remembering the Civil War, poses a major challenge to how we understand the process of reunification after the Civil War. Recall that David Blight argued in Race and Reunion that the process of reunion subordinated African Americans' rights to a narrative that the war was a mistake, that slavery was wrong, but that the war had been fought over states rights. Blight opened up the idea that reunion included subordinating African Americans. (This, of course, had been a theme in African American literature for decades. Ralph Ellison wrote about this in "Going to the Territory," his 1979 address at Brown about the significance of race and memory.)
Now Janney comes forward with what is in some ways a finer grained picture; she separates out the responses of the North as interest in reunion and the south as interest in reconicilation. There are obviously going to be situations of unreconstructed southerners -- such as monuments that talk about fighting for eternal principles -- and cases where Northerners were giving away a lot in the way of reconciliation.
But I think one way to reconcile Blight and Janney is by focusing on each's perspective. Blight is taking the temperature of the entire nation; Janney is often more more closely focused on the participants and their family members.
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