Brian Tongier, "Imagined Community or Communities? Still others have examined the different manifestations and outlets of Confederate nationalism, be they economic, cultural, generational, familial, religious, literary, or military.[5]. In fact, some of Davis’s most vociferous critics were also the most ardent of Confederate nationalists, and their opposition to him did not mean that they did not desire a separate and independent southern nation—they just didn’t think that Davis was doing a good job of bringing it about. The literature on postwar American nationalism is simply too large and too important to treat adequately in this short piece. There has been a definite trajectory to the recent historical literature, and a spate of excellent studies on Civil War and mid-nineteenth-century American nationalism have provided fresh insights and opened exciting new areas for exploration. They defended the rights of the states, but they did not deny the authority of the Constitution or its government. Nationalism as a Contributing Factor in the American Civil War 2nd ed. They wrote, talked, sang, and painted about it and did so with their eyes wide open. That Lincoln’s vision of the nation and Union as presented in the Gettysburg Address, Second Inaugural, and elsewhere has wielded tremendous influence on subsequent generations is undeniable, but we must be careful not to assume a too direct and easy transference between Lincoln’s pen and the minds of Civil War Americans. Unlike historians of the Confederacy, historians of nationalism in the North are simultaneously blessed and challenged by the looming presence of the greatest and most articulate visionary of American nationalism that the country has produced, Abraham Lincoln; they are compelled to grapple with the role Lincoln and his ideas played in shaping wartime nationalism and our conception of American nationhood ever since. Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865–1898 (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War) By looking at Civil War nationalism as not simply an explanatory tool for defeat, victory, or persistence, and analyzing it within the context of broader nineteenth-century nation creation and theory, there are important lessons to be learned about what Americans thought nations were, why they thought they were important, and how they believed nations were to be constructed. Some neo-Confederate organizations such as the League of the South continue to advocate the secession of the former Confederate States. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window), Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window), Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window). Confederate nationalism gave Confederates a coherent set of ideas to explain and justify their independence. Rather, they consciously created, cultivated, and constructed it. The current conflict began in the 20th century (Vox 2018). Either way, they have been concerned primarily with the outcome of the conflict. [8] To track how these ideas were disseminated and interpreted and the extent to which they were accepted, absorbed and/or reflected by ordinary Americans, historians must resist, at least in part, the seductive siren’s song of Lincoln’s language. Recent work has also tried to extricate itself from some of the questions that so dominated the past scholarship on the subject. Indeed, such debates, such conflicts, are intrinsic to all nationalist projects, and flexibility within nationalist thought and ideology is as important as its constraints. In our own lives, of course, we understand that one need not support the current administration or the political party in power to have a nationalist outlook. See also David Williams, Rich Man’s War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998); Williams, Teresa Crisp Williams, and David Carlson, Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002); Brian Steel Wills, The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001); Jacqueline Glass Campbell, When Sherman Marched North from the Sea: Resistance on the Confederate Home Front (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865–1898 (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War) [Blum, Edward J., Stauffer, John] on Amazon.com. Northern nationalism? The civil war began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people. The regional conflict over slavery that culminated in the American Civil War forced them to confront difficult problems of nationalism, allegiance, and identity. The South, Confederates insisted, was the legitimate heir of American revolutionary tradition. [7] For an example of each, see Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002); Susan-Mary Grant, North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000); Gary W. Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). Southern nationalism allowed the Confederates to justify their secession and independence. The fruits of this ongoing debate have been many, and despite the inherent difficulties of measuring something as abstract and slippery as nationalism, scholars have employed great care and much analytical sophistication in delineating both what held the Confederacy together and what pulled it apart. While we must engage more directly with the contemporary theoretical models of nationalism, we need not be beholden to them. Modern white nationalism, which has spread across the world, first emerged in America after the civil war. They knew, or they thought they knew, what they were doing. On the centrality of “print capitalism” in the construction of national consciousness, see Anderson, Imagined Communities. [9] The literature on nationalism is immense, but the most influential figures remain Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, and Anthony Smith. Readers can comment on this article in the dialog box at the bottom of this page. Right click this link to download a pdf of this essay. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! He is the author of Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). American nationalism? I do not want to suggest, however, that nationalism studies have moved, or are doomed to move, in a circle. [4] On the conditional nature of Confederate loyalty, see David Brown, “North Carolinian Ambivalence: Rethinking Loyalty and Disaffection in the Civil War Piedmont,” in North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, ed. Nationalism and the Confederate States of America." In short, everyone agrees that nationalism is important and no one can agree on what we are really talking about. [7] The sectional nature of the antebellum northern vision of American nationalism has yet to be fully rectified with the narrower, but more specifically and politically defined, Union nationalism that was plainly evident during the war and at other moments of political crisis. [14] Thanks to the work of Don Doyle and others, the internationalization of Civil War‑era nationalism is well underway. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959–64). ed. We understand that disagreements are permissible, that there is no one single vision or platform of nationalism, and that it is not required that everyone march in lockstep for nationalism to exist. Comparative nationalism studies are nothing new, but until very recently, most of those that have included the United States have focused on initial American independence. But these are not the only questions we can ask, nor is this the only context within which to view the activities of American nationalists—be they northern or southern—and new questions and new contexts are some of the areas that recent studies have pursued or at least suggested. [5] Faust, Creation of Confederate Nationalism; Robert E. Bonner, Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Bonner, Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002); Anne Sarah Rubin, A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861–1868 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Paul Quigley, Shifting Grounds: Nationalism and the American South, 1848–1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); John D. Majewski, Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Peter S. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Victoria E. Ott, Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age during the Civil War (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008); Jason Phillips, Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007); Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2007); Michael T. Bernath, Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). Second, at the same time, no one seems to be able to agree on what nationalism is or, rather, how we should go about identifying, measuring, or mapping it. [3] Major works in this debate include Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978); Richard E. Beringer et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986); Wayne K. Durrill, War of Another Kind: A Southern Community in the Great Rebellion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); William W. Freehling, The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Armstead L. Robinson, Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005); Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); William Alan Blair, Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979); George C. Rable, Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Rable, The Confederate Republic: A Revolution against Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). In the midst of the religious rhetoric, many Baptists – especially in the South – hedged on their foundational principle of the separation of church and state and embraced Christian nationalism. Our perspective must be transnational because theirs was, and nineteenth-century Americans borrowed models and understandings of nationhood from others, even if they were not always consciously aware of it. However, both regions initially displayed nationalism in various ways at the beginning of the Civil War. In Lincoln’s America, declares Neely, nationalism was the opposite of pathological. Following Drew Gilpin Faust’s urging that we take Confederate nationalist ideology seriously, they have explored the substance, ideas, symbols, dissemination, duration, emotional touchstones, and concurrent resonances of Confederate nationalism without necessarily framing their studies within a strong versus weak dichotomy. Far from an exclusively domestic conflict, the Civil War had profound implications for the evolving nineteenth-century Atlantic World ideas of freedom, rights, citizenship, and nationalism. Ibid, 8 26. Like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, American nationalists were convinced of the centrality and modality of nationhood and that shared conviction demands our attention. [12] Here is a conflict fought explicitly over competing visions of American nationalism, by members of the most literate and politicized society (or societies) in the world, involving the raising of massive volunteer armies and the mass mobilization of civilian agricultural and industrial capacities, requiring the “imagining” of national communities of common causes and common interests across enormous distances and dispersed populations knitted together by modern mass communications and transportation networks. When viewed in this light, that there were disagreements and competing visions of the nation does not mean that nationalism did not exist or that it was necessarily weak. Others have pushed the chronology in a different direction to show how Confederate identity persisted beyond the war. The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

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