To answer Kat’s question regarding whether Neff and Blight’s conception of post-Civil War reconciliation and remembrance can coexist: “No, absolutely not.” Blight’s entire argument hinges on the power of forgetting and creating a fiction from which people can move forward by seeing the past through rose-colored glasses. Neff begins his book with gruesome depictions of Civil War death and its impact on soldiers and Americans alike, essentially saying that, while it may be possible to forget or downplay some of the causes of the war, the vast number of horrific deaths would serve as a constant reminder of how bloody and gruesome a conflict it actually was.
For Neff, it was not just that a large number of soldiers died, it was that they died in a way that was completely foreign to Americans prior to the Civil War. Thus, not only did Americans have a completely different concept of the death toll a war could cost a population, they also had a completely different understanding of how death took place, as they had seen countless friends and loved ones die alone and away from any friends or family. This new form of death was so shocking to Americans, Neff says, that it is impossible to forget or move past. Particularly indicative of the unreasonable impact these deaths had on the American post-war psyche was the obsession with essentially digging up graves and reburying them in a more dignified manner. It was almost as though since Americans did not feel like their Civil War dead had found a proper resting place the first time around, they saw it as an almost noble cause to disturb the remains of the dead in hopes of laying them to rest somewhere more dignified. Neff puts it most succinctly, saying “the dead were the measures of the living.” (207) The living hoped to find peace by ensuring that the dead were properly and appropriately commemorated in keeping with their understanding of the war and its causes.
To further drive home his point, Neff questions many of Blight’s statements regarding reconciliation. Instead of focusing on events that demonstrate reconciliation, as Blight did, he highlights the fights over where bodies should be laid to rest, the segregation of Confederate and Union graves, and the discrepancies in the ways in which great war figures such as Lincoln and Davis’s deaths were commemorated in the North and South. He directly attacks Blight’s example of the epitome of reconciliation—the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg—saying that while it was well attended by Civil War veterans, the vast majority were Northern soldiers (215). This was not just a one-time occurrence, Neff said, but rather a repeating pattern where even where there were events that may appear to be examples of reconciliation, they still were far better attended by one half of the nation than by another. Neff also points to discrepancies between the numbers of monuments built at Gettysburg, saying that the North again invested far more money and resources into commemorating this battleground than their southern counterparts. (213)
One of Neff’s arguments that I found most interesting was the one centering around the treatment of black soldiers, and how that played into the North concept of the Cause Victorious. Neff mentions that, during the war, there was a great deal of contradiction in the rhetoric of soldiers and generals regarding black soldiers. Despite the fact that the war was being front to improve the condition of blacks in America by emancipating huge numbers of them from slavery, blacks were treated very unequally during the war. They were pushed out into battle first, received worse medical treatment, and, after the war, they frequently received far less commemoration than white graves. These contradictions were, according to Neff, very difficult for Northerners to handle, because these realizations contrasted so sharply with the sentiments of the Cause Victorious, that they were fighting for a noble cause and achieved this goal. This led to people such as Meigs attempting to justify things such as the segregation of black and white graves by saying that it would be unfair to black soldiers to honor them in the same place as white soldiers because they had clearly sacrificed so much more (199). Debates such as these are one of the reasons Civil War cemeteries were some of the first nationally-sponsored integrated cemeteries in American history.
Of all the points Neff makes, though, the one which I found most interesting was one he left completely unexplored. He notes that one of the most ignored reasons for reconciliation was the Spanish-American War, where American soldiers were once again fighting, dying and being buried side-by-side. (221) This argument seems to make logical sense, but it is an idea I would like to see further qualified, explored, and justified.