Colors and Blood (eBook)

Flag Passions of the Confederate South

Robert E. Bonner (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2018
240 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-18657-3 (ISBN)

Infos

As rancorous debates over Confederate symbols continue, Robert Bonner explores how the rebel flag gained its enormous power to inspire and repel. In the process, he shows how the Confederacy sustained itself for as long as it did by cultivating the allegiances of countless ordinary citizens. Bonner also comments more broadly on flag passions--those intense emotional reactions to waving pieces of cloth that inflame patriots to kill and die. Colors and Blood depicts a pervasive flag culture that set the emotional tone of the Civil War in the Union as well as the Confederacy. Northerners and southerners alike devoted incredible energy to flags, but the Confederate project was unique in creating a set of national symbols from scratch. In describing the activities of white southerners who designed, sewed, celebrated, sang about, and bled for their new country's most visible symbols, the book charts the emergence of Confederate nationalism. Theatrical flag performances that cast secession in a melodramatic mode both amplified and contained patriotic emotions, contributing to a flag-centered popular patriotism that motivated true believers to defy and sacrifice. This wartime flag culture nourished Confederate nationalism for four years, but flags' martial associations ultimately eclipsed their expression of political independence. After 1865, conquered banners evoked valor and heroism while obscuring the ideology of a slaveholders' rebellion, and white southerners recast the totems of Confederate nationalism as relics of the Lost Cause. At the heart of this story is the tremendous capacity of bloodshed to infuse symbols with emotional power. Confederate flag culture, black southerners' charged relationship to the Stars and Stripes, contemporary efforts to banish the Southern Cross, and arguments over burning the Star Spangled Banner have this in common: all demonstrate Americans' passionate relationship with symbols that have been imaginatively soaked in blood.

Autor

Robert E. Bonner is Assistant Professor of History at Michigan State University.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.6.2018
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► 20. Jahrhundert bis 1945
• Schlagworte: abolitionism • African Americans • American Civil War • american nationalism • American Patriotism • Barbara Frietchie • Barbara Fritchie • Battle Cry of Freedom • benedict arnold • Benjamin Butler (politician) • Black Patriot • Border states (American Civil War) • Compromise of 1877 • Confederate States Army • confederate states of America • Congress of the Confederate States • Copperhead (politics) • David Brion Davis • decisive victory • Deo Vindice • Dixiecrat • Earl Van Dorn • Ellen Key • Emancipation Proclamation • Emblem • federal union • First appearance • Five-pointed star • Flags of the Confederate States of America • Foray • Fort Sumter • Francis Scott Key • Free negro • Grand Army of the Republic • guerrilla warfare • Henry Hotze • Henry Timrod • hostility • Iconoclasm • imperialism • Insurgency • James Henley Thornwell • Jews • John Bell Hood • John Brown Gordon • John Brown's Body • john greenleaf whittier • joshua chamberlain • Julia Ward Howe • Louis Wigfall • Mail • Manifest Destiny • Medal of Honor • Modern display of the Confederate flag • Motto • national flag • national Symbol • Neo-Confederate • New Departure (Democrats) • newspaper • Nullification Crisis • on war • Origins of the American Civil War • Patriotic Gore • Patriotism • P. G. T. Beauregard • Plantation era • Poetry • political revolution • Prisoner of War • Pro aris et focis • Puritans • Racism • rebel yell • Religion • Reprisal • Second Reconstruction • Seeing the elephant • separatism • Slave Rebellion • Slavery • St. George Tucker • Superiority (short story) • The Battle Hymn of the Republic • The Conquered Banner • The Dozens • The Masses • The Passing of the Armies • the red badge of courage • Thomas Wentworth Higginson • trent affair • United Daughters of the Confederacy • Victory or Death • Violence and the Sacred • war • War Crime • warfare • white southerners • William Moultrie • William Porcher Miles
• ISBN-10: 0-691-18657-X / 069118657X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-18657-3 / 9780691186573