Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause

by Caroline E. Janney

Overview

Immediately after the Civil War, white women across the South organized to retrieve the remains of Confederate soldiers. In Virginia alone, these Ladies' Memorial Associations (LMAs) relocated and reinterred the remains of more than 72,000 soldiers. Challenging the notion that southern white women were peripheral to the Lost Cause movement until the 1890s, Caroline Janney restores these women as the earliest creators and purveyors of Confederate tradition. Long before national groups such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the United Daughters of the Confederacy were established, Janney shows, local LMAs were earning sympathy for defeated Confederates. Her exploration introduces new ways in which gender played a vital role in shaping the politics, culture, and society of the late nineteenth-century South.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807882702
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/01/2012
Series:	Civil War America
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Caroline E. Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction
1 Patriotic Ladies of the South: Virginia Women in the Confederacy
2 A Fitting Work: The Origins of Virginia's Ladies' Memorial Associations, 1865-1866
3 The Influence and Zeal of Woman: Ladies' Memorial Associations during Radical Reconstruction, 1867-1870
4 A Rather Hardheaded Set: Challenges for the Ladies' Memorial Associations, 1870-1883
5 The Old Spirit Is Not Dying Out: The Memorial Associations' Renaissance, 1883-1893
6 Lest We Forget: United Daughters and Confederated Ladies, 1894-1915
Epilogue: A Mixed Legacy Appendix Table A.1. Confederate Burials in LMA Cemeteries from Five Virginia Communities Table A.2. Number of LMA Members in Five Virginia Communities, 1860s Notes Bibliography Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Janney has performed a valuable service in restoring the importance of the Ladies' Memorial Associations as instrumental to the Lost Cause. The LMAs were at this game much earlier than the better-known United Daughters of the Confederacy. More significant, Janney has shown how the memorial associations figured prominently in postwar political struggles. This book is a valuable resource for students, scholars, and the public.—William Blair, The Pennsylvania State University, editor of Civil War History

This smart, well-researched, well-written, and well-argued book addresses an important problem within Civil War studies: the tendency of scholars to ignore the central role of women's contributions to the making of Civil War memories within American culture. Janney's analysis helps us to rewrite and reshape our understandings of the making of the Lost Cause from 1865 through 1915.—Alice Fahs, University of California, Irvine, coeditor of The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture

Editorial Reviews

“This excellent and well-written book illuminates the work of an important group in the South’s Lost Cause movement.” — American Historical Review

“[This] excellent study speaks to a significant gap in the literature of southern cultural memory, gender, and Reconstruction. Not only is it a must-read for anyone working in those areas, but it is a key contribution to the study of women and gender in this period.” — Journal of American History

“[An] impressive book. . . . Highly recommended.” — CHOICE

“Janney’s fine monograph is grounded in an impressive body of archival material supported by a very strong command of a wide array of secondary source literature.” — Southern Historian

“Janney’s thoughtful study helps the Ladies to claim their rightful place in the history of Confederate memory making. Her lively stories of their hard-fought campaigns to build some of the most notable monuments of the state likewise make this an entertaining and valuable addition to the history of southern women’s activism after the war.” — Virginia Magazine

“Sheds light on a previously obscure part of southern women’s history. . . . Convincingly demonstrates that women continued to participate in a civic role after the fall of the Confederacy.” — Virginia Quarterly Review

“This clearly written and well-researched book definitely deepens our understanding of the earliest roots of Confederate memorialization and the Lost Cause.” — Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

“An elegant, informative study that restores these forgotten women to postwar southern history and successfully challenges important scholarly arguments.” — The Alabama Review

A well-documented study of this unique women’s movement after the Civil War. Any serious student of the Civil War or Reconstruction should be aware of the powerful arguments extended by Janney." — On Point

“Janney has succeeded in crafting a thoughtful study that illuminates a little known area of the formation of the Lost Cause ideology.” — South Carolina Historical Magazine

From the Publisher