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Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (Caravan Book)x$13.47
  (5 reviews)
Best Price: $28.00 $13.47
More than 60,000 books have been published on the Civil War. Most Americans, though, get their ideas about the war—why it was fought, what was won, what was lost—not from books but from movies, television, and other popular media. In an engaging and accessible survey, renowned Civil War historian Gary Gallagher guides readers through the stories told in recent film and art, showing how they have both reflected and influenced the political, social, and racial currents of their times. Too often these popular portrayals overlook many of the very ideas that motivated the generation that fought the war. The most influential perspective for the Civil War generation, says Gallagher, is almost entirely absent from the Civil War stories being told today. Gallagher argues that popular understandings of the war have been shaped by four traditions that arose in the nineteenth century and continue to the present: the Lost Cause, in which Confederates are seen as having waged an admirable struggle against hopeless odds; the Union Cause, which frames the war as an effort to maintain a viable republic in the face of secessionist actions; the Emancipation Cause, in which the war is viewed as a struggle to liberate 4 million slaves and eliminate a cancerous influence on American society; and the Reconciliation Cause, which represents attempts by northern and southern whites to extol "American" virtues and mute the role of African Americans. Gallagher traces an arc of cinematic interpretation from one once dominated by the Lost Cause to one now celebrating Emancipation and, to a lesser degree, Reconciliation. In contrast, the market for art among contemporary Civil War enthusiasts reflects an overwhelming Lost Cause bent. Neither film nor art provides sympathetic representations of the Union Cause, which, Gallagher argues, carried the most weight in the Civil War era. This lively investigation into what popular entertainment teaches us and what it reflects about us will prompt readers to consider how we form opinions on current matters of debate, such as the use of the military, the freedom of dissent, and the flying of the Confederate flag.
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Customer Reviews
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Filtering the past
By AYCJSA9HR7TKO on 2008-04-27
Different periods and different constituencies "remember" the past to be what they need it to be, and collective memories especially try to infuse a meaning into past events that are traumatic. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are a number of ways in which the Civil War, surely our single greatest national trauma, has been "remembered" by succeeding generations. In Causes Won, Lost, & Forgotten, Civil War scholar Gary Gallagher focuses on four filters through which we've remembered the Civil War and examines how popular film and art have expressed those memories.
Gallagher argues that the going four interpretive traditions when it comes to the Civil War are the Lost Cause (the Confederate army fought honorably against overwhelming odds), the Union Cause (the war was fought to preserve the American experiment in democracy), the Emancipation Cause (the war was fought to end the egregious injustice of slavery), and the Reconciliation Cause (the war, although tragic, brought together all Americans, northerners and southerners, each of whom had fought honorably). Three of these attempts to read meaning back into the Civil War--the Lost Cause, Union Cause, and Reconciliation--tend either to ignore or to trivialize African Americans.
Gallagher traces the presence of these four interpretations in both film and artwork that have the Civil War as their theme. Early cinema focused almost entirely on the Lost Cause filter, but more recent films move toward Emancipation and Reconciliation. The Union Cause seems not to resonate deeply with viewing audiences, although it was the paramount motivation for northern enthusiasm for the war. Traces of the Union Cause can be found in cinema--Gallagher especially notes its presence in Ron Maxwell's films--but it's certainly not dominant. In fact, post-Vietnam Civil War films tend if anything to portray Federal soldiers and anything smacking of nationalism in a harsh way.
Even as films have backed away from the Lost Cause romantization of the war, popular artwork--prints and statues--remains focused squarely on it. Confederate generals are the rage (with Lee head and shoulders above all others). An especially popular motif combines Christian and Confederate themes: Lee and Jackson praying with a couple of kids on either side of them, or Lee reading the Bible to a child. The Confederate battle flag is a favorite image in the prints, and Bedford Forrest is depicted more often than one would suspect (given his unsavory reputation). Hollywood may feel uncomfortable in touting the Lost Cause (although Maxwell's aesthetically abysmal "Gods and Generals" is an exception). But given the popularity of Lost Cause-themed artwork, it's a safe bet that this memory filter is alive and well.
A fascinating discussion by one of the nation's most respected Civil War scholars. Readers interested in the Civil War in popular memory might also find David Sachsman's Memory and Myth: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Cold Mountain (2007) and David Blight's Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001) helpful. Gallagher's earlier books and essays on the Lost Cause are also invaluable.
How we see the Civil War
By A32B6XWNR55SRL on 2008-04-24
The Civil War is one of the most important events in American history, generating tons of books, magazines, memorials, paintings and statuary. The day the war ended, participants seem to have started books on their experience. Publishing has not stopped and seems to be more active now than 100 years ago. Any large complex event is subject to interpretation. This interpretation creates opportunities for additional interpretations. In time, what happened is subject to various interpretations that are the history of the event. Starting in 1865, the American Civil War was interpreted to fit the needs of groups of people. This created what the author calls the four traditions of our understanding of the war.
Lost Cause; created by Southerners to come to grips with the results of the war.
Union; was what motivated Northerners to fight to maintain one nation.
Emancipation; developed after the war and cast the war as the finial act in the great struggle to end slavery in America.
Reconciliation; is the view that both sides were honorable and fought bravely for deeply held ideals emerging as a stronger united nation. This tradition grew after reconstruction ended and veterans started to establish the National Battle Parks.
Working with these four traditions, the author shows how movies and art portrays them. This can be unsettling. All the more so, if you have seen the movie and viewed the art. The book is similar to looking into a mirror. The reader's tradition(s) can be unsettling as you see their reflection.
The author makes few judgments, trying to be fair to all sides. He has strong feelings about some of the traditions. However, Gallagher refuses to condemn or applauded trends. What we get is an intelligent, very readable account of how we look at the American Civil War.
I have given this book five stars. I am an avid reader of ACW histories and very interested in the traditions on how we view the war. For an avid ACW person less interested in these traditions, this might be a four star book. For those interested in the impact of movies and TV on history, this might be a three star book. This book is an excellent companion to "The Legacy of the Civil War" by Robert Penn Warren. Many of Warren's ideas are supported and expanded on by Gallagher.
Contains a least one glaring factual error
By A3I95UNQOTB31O on 2008-03-30
This is an interesting study of how graphical images, espcially motion pictures, have effected our collective impressions of the American Civil War. However, Gallagher makes at least one glaring factual error which calls into question the thoroughness of his research.
When discussing the 1996 television mini-series "Andersonville" he states that the film follows the narrative of MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. This is not true. The film is not based on Kantor's novel, but Gallagher seems to casually make this assumtion because both book and film have the same title. Although both the book and the movie contain some of the same historical charactors and follow the same historical timeline, they are both seperate properties.
Perhaps calling out this mistake is a quibble, but it does a disservice to David W. Rintels who wrote the original screenplay which was based on his own research, not on the research of the late great MacKinlay Kantor. While Kantor did sell the film rights to his novel soon after it was published in 1955, it was never filmed.
Media and interpretations of the Civil War
By AQQLWCMRNDFGI on 2008-07-04
I have reviewed quite a few Civil War books before. This is another of the genre--but with an interesting difference. This is not so much about the conduct of the war itself as about how Hollywood and popular art have treated the Civil War and how their portrayals might be related to what people know about the Civil War. The methodology of this study is pretty straightforward: Gallagher explores a limited number of movies about the conflict--from "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone with the Wind" to "Gettysburg," "Glory," "Red Badge of Courage," "Cold Mountain," "The Horse Soldiers," with passing references to other movies such as "The Outlaw Josie Wales." In addition, he examines the art of such well known Civil War artists as Dan Troiani.
He begins by positing four images of the Civil War--(a) The Lost Cause (the Confederacy as doomed by superior Union resources, while fighting for Constitutional purity; (b) The Union Cause (the attempt by the North to preserve a national republic in the face of secession); (c) The Emancipation Cause (an interpretation of the Civil War as attempting to end slavery); (d) the Reconciliation Cause (emphasizing the common traditions and values of both parties in the struggle). In addition, he notes how coverage sometimes emphasizes heroes/actions that may overplay some actors and underplay the work of others.
This is an interesting book to consider. Gallagher does a nice job examining each of the movies that he discusses (and the art that he considers, many pieces of which are displayed in the penultimate chapter). He also makes a strong case that the recent focus on Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain may be explainable by three events: Ken Burns' PBS series on the Civil War, the book "The Killer Angels," and the movie "Gettysburg." He suggests that there were other Union units facing even more difficult circumstances at Gettysburg--and did not get half the acclaim as the stand of the 20th Maine. Indeed, there are those who claim that Chamberlain did a nice job of self-promotion with his various books and speeches after the Civil War (personally, given his entire body of work as an officer, I think he had an estimable record--but I do understand the argument very well, exemplified by his rather churlish response to his opponent, Colonel Oates, years later).
Still, how much can one claim based on a small set of movies? What is the evidence that these selected movies and objets d'art have had much impact on our view of the Civil War? I think that Gallagher raises important issues and questions. I'm not so sure that he attains the goals he set for himself. Nonetheless, an interesting view of the Civil War through the prism of popular art.
An Author With A Deliciously Dry Wit
By A28JSX99NK9MKH on 2008-07-18
This book is one of the most entertaining Civil War books I have ever read, and that includes the hilarious Confederates in the Attic. As a woman going into her last year before getting a BA in History and with plans to go for a graduate degree in the Civil War and American Studies, I am surprised at the dry-as-dust reviews this book has generated so far. All five reviewers pat themselves on the back for explaining the four main interpretations of the Civil War in the media, apparantly without realizing that this information is clearly spelled out in the Product Information section. I am hoping that a person who reads this review will see how much fun this book is. In once instance, the author describes the politically correct view of the Civil War (which he clearly does not agree with) in saying that a better name for The Last Samurai would be Dances With Wolves Goes To Japan. In describing the anti-war, feminist approach Cold Mountain takes, he wonders how such a Confederacy as portrayed in this movie could possibly LAST for four years. And in the begining of the book, in his description of the mini-series North and South, author Gallagher thinks the principle TV direction was probably "A little more over the top, if you please."
Aside from witticisms such as these, Gallagher is a first rate scholar of the Civil War and probes deeply into what the movie going public thinks it knows about the Civil War. The part about Southern feelings about affirmative action and the increasing secularization of America fueling a Lost Cause dominated artwork was particularly rewarding.
For a reader looking for either how popular culture affects what the majority of Americans think about the Civil War, or else just a highly entertaining and thoughtful study of the Civil War as reflected in film, this is a can't-put-it-down volume.
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