Spectacle of Grief

This illuminating bookexamines how the public funerals of major figures fromthe Civil War erashaped public memories of the war and allowed a diverse set of people to contribute to changing American national identities.These funerals featuredlengthy processions that sometimes crossed multiple state lines,burial ceremoniesopen to the public, and other cultural productions of commemoration such as oration and song.As Sarah J. Purcell reveals,Americansparticipation in these funeral rites led tocontemplation and contestation over the political and social meanings of the war and the roles played by the honored dead.Public mourning for military heroes, reformers, and politicians distilled political and social anxieties as the country coped with the aftermath of mass death and casualties.Purcell shows howlarge-scale funerals for figures such asHenry Clayand Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson set patterns for mourning culture and Civil War commemoration; after 1865, public funerals for figures such as Robert E. Lee, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and Winnie Davis elaborated on these patterns andfosteredpublic debate about the meanings ofthe war, Reconstruction, race, and gender.