Civil War Memory: Essays from The Washington Post's "Made By History"

In 2017, Former Trump White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly claimed that a "lack of compromise" led to the Civil War. This false claim continued the Lost Cause belief that Northern pressure on the South, not slavery, was the cause of the conflict. This piece highlights the great lengths the North went to in order to avoid war, even if that meant the continuation of slavery.

During the same remarks, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly referred to Robert E. Lee as "an honorable man." This piece describes the "bloody honor culture" of the Antebellum South that was utilized by Southern planters to enlist non-slaveholding whites to fight for the continuation of slavery.

Confederate General James Longstreet, known as "Lee's Old War Horse" during the Civil War, was quickly removed from Confederate lore after supporting Ulysses Grant for President in 1868 and refusing to accept the white supremacy tenets of the Reconstruction Era South. What can this tell us about the meaning behind Confederate monuments?

For decades, children throughout the United States were taught a false message about the meanings behind the Civil War. The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville serves as a stark example of what is possible when these false messages are challenged.

False and misleading accounts of the Civil War and Reconstruction were not only maintained by those in the South. In the 1920s, Northern politicians helped block federal anti-lynching legislation while pushing false claims of a Northern "reign of terror" during the post-war period.

Confederate memory wasn't only expressed through monuments. 19th and 20th century American literature also preserved post-Civil War ideas of reconciliation between the North and South. One story, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, shows the reality of Northern and Southern relationships after the Civil War.

The Confederate Territory of Arizona was created in 1861 in the hope of extending slavery into the American West. This lesser known episode of the Civil War continues to play a role in Arizona politics as groups choose to display the Confederate flag in public.