They Are Dead and Yet They Live

Civil War Memories in a Polarized America

John M. Kinder, Jennifer M. Murray

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496245663
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020 reignited a passionate nationwide debate over Confederate memorials and flags as symbols of white supremacy in our public landscape. Controversies about Confederate monuments, however, have overshadowed more consequential battles over Civil War memory taking place in American politics, popular culture, and civil society today.

Integrating the voices of Civil War historians, public historians, and scholars of contemporary America, They Are Dead and Yet They Live explores the use (and abuse) of Civil War memory in the modern era, from the Civil War Centennial and the civil rights era through the political turmoil of the present day. Moving the conversation of Civil War memory beyond Confederate monuments to crucial debates about the Civil War’s usefulness as a frame for understanding America’s recent struggles, these essays show how Civil War memory is as politically urgent and socially relevant today as it was a half century ago.
 

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Studies in War, Society, and the Military
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Governor and the Palmetto Patriots
• Part 1. Lost Causes
• 1. To Understand Where You Are Going, Remember Where You Have Been: Reconstruction’s Reverberations in Twenty-First-Century America
• 2. The Republican Party, the Lost Cause, and the Transformation of American Politics
• Part 2. Reclamation Projects
• 3. The Politics of Civil War Memory in America’s Military: The Battles to Rename Nine U.S. Army Bases
• 4. Freedom on the Fringes: Interpreting the Civil War and Relevancy at Camp Nelson
• 5. Ghosts of Atchison: The Lynching of George Johnson
• Part 3. Consuming Memory
• 6. Confederates in the Record Cabinet: Civil War Memory and the Historical Turns in Modern Country Music
• 7. Love Is a Battlefield: Civil War Memory in Modern Romance Novels
• 8. Dixie Chic: Hoodies and Embodying Confederate Exceptionalism
• Part 4. Civil War Memory in the Age of Black Lives Matter
• 9. “This Battle Was Fought Because Black Lives Matter”: How Black Lives Are (or Aren’t) Remembered at Gettysburg
• 10. The Black Confederate Myth and Civil War Memory in the Trump Era
• Part 5. The Next Civil War
• 11. The Confederate Battle Flag’s Symbolic Shorthand: Appropriation, Dissemination, and Proliferation by U.S.-Based White Supremacists in Post–Civil War America
• 12. Dylann Roof’s Civil Wars
• Epilogue: “Wow, That Was a Big Mistake”
• Timeline of Key Events from the Civil War Centennial to 2025
• Contributors
• Index