Civic Monuments of the Civil War and the Reconstruction of American Memory

FAIN: FA-54065-08

Thomas Joseph Brown
University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC 29208-0001)

I am applying for a fellowship to support the writing of a book about the civic monuments to the U.S. Civil War dedicated from the 1860s into the 1920s. My work focuses on memorials located in communities across the North and South, though I examine the relationship between those initiatives and federal battlefield parks. The book centers on the ways in which Civil War monuments addressed fundamental humanities themes that have defined war memorials for centuries: death, citizenship, leadership, and victory. I attend to ideas expressed through monument designs, inscriptions, dedicatory ceremonies, and other means. Comparative contextualization will culminate in a chapter examining the influence of Civil War monuments on American responses to World War I. The project will illuminate a vital form of American memory and reinterpret a variety of works of American art, including mass-produced soldier statues and masterpieces by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French.