Southern Cultures: Remembering the Civil War Issue

Our Fall 2013 special issue commemorates the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War. Featuring essays on the birth of photojournalism at the Battle of Antietam, the struggle over history and memory in the pages of Confederate Veteran Magazine, a historians-eye-view of Charlestons Secession Ball, poetry from the Poet Laureate of the United States, Civil War remembrances from the Southern Oral History Program, and much more.ContentsFront Porchby Harry L. WatsonThe most powerful memories of the Civil War continue to be the personal stories, and while the transmission may be sputtering today, they remain the most evocative, both of the winners frail victories and the losers human pain.Uncovering the Confederacy of the MindOr, How I Became a Belle of the Ball in Denmark Veseys Churchby Blain RobertsWe started to wonder: did twenty-first-century Charleston have separateeven segregatedtourism industries, one that focused on the citys white history and another that told of its black past?The Great Weight of ResponsibilityThe Struggle over History and Memory in Confederate Veteran Magazineby Steven E. SodergrenIn the name of the future manhood of the South I protest. What are we to teach them? If we cannot teach them that their fathers were right, it follows that these Southern children must be taught that they were wrong.The Revenantphotographs by Matthew P. SheltonI drilled until the book was lace.Rebecca Harding Daviss Human Stories of the Civil Warby Mark CanadaThe war is surging up close about us.O . . . if I could put into your and every true womans heart the inexpressible loathing I have for it! If you could only see the other side enough to see the wrong the tyranny on both!Maffitt, May 1861September 1862An excerpt from Two Captains from Carolina: Moses Grandy, John Newland Maffitt, and the Coming of the Civil Warby Bland SimpsonNo war? I have come to you directly from Washington City, where the caissons are rolling, where a great army has been gathering, where Lincoln is planning for war. Whether you are or not.Truthful as the Record of HeavenThe Battle of Antietam and the Birth of Photojournalismby John M. HarrisLet him who wishes to know what war is look at this series of illustrations. These wrecks of manhood thrown together in careless heaps or ranged in ghastly rows for burial were alive but yesterday.Mississippis Greatest HourThe Mississippi Civil War Centennial and Southern Resistanceby Alyssa D. WarrickFrom the outset, Mississippis commission had a clear goal, evinced by its name. The Mississippi Commission on the War Between the States was unapologetically pro-Confederate, though willing to acknowledge, however begrudgingly, the Union victory.Voices from the Southern Oral History ProgramI Know It by HeartThe Civil War in the Memories of John W. Snipes, Ralph W. Strickland, EdithMitchell Dabbs, and Reginald Hildebrandinterviewed by Brent Glass, Lu Ann Jones, Elizabeth Jacoway Burns, and Rob Stephenscompiled and introduced by Rachel F. SeidmanWhen my husband James was growing up, there was no race question. They assumed that was settled by the war. The Negroes were slaves and then they werent. That settled it.Mason-Dixon LinesElegy for the Native Guardspoetry by Natasha Trethewey. . . 2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx.What is monument to their legacy?About the ContributorsSouthern Cultures is published quarterly (spring, summer, fall, winter) by the University of North Carolina Press. The journal is sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hills Center for the Study of the American South.