Booknotes: Final Resting Places

New Arrival:

• Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves edited by Brian Matthew Jordan & Jonathan W. White (UGA Press, 2023).

From the description: Final Resting Places "brings together some of the most important and innovative scholars of the Civil War era to reflect on what death and memorialization meant to the Civil War generation―and how those meanings still influence Americans today."

In obvious ways, this volume reminds me of the 2019 book Civil War Places: Seeing the Conflict through the Eyes of Its Leading Historians (UNC Press), edited by Gary Gallagher and Matthew Gallman, itself inspired by the pair's 2015 book Lens of War: Exploring Iconic Photographs of the Civil War (UGA Press). In those books, contributors were invited to consider, through both professional and personal perspectives, the significance of the topic at hand, in their cases selected places and favorite photographic images. This volume, edited by Brian Matthew Jordan and Jonathan W. White, returns to the place theme, in particular Civil War-era graves and associated memorials.

More from the description: "In each essay, a noted historian explores a different type of gravesite―including large marble temples, unmarked graves beneath the waves, makeshift markers on battlefields, mass graves on hillsides, neat rows of military headstones, university graveyards, tombs without bodies, and small family plots. Each burial place tells a unique story of how someone lived and died; how they were mourned and remembered. Together, they help us reckon with the most tragic period of American history." The volume, handsomely presented (often in color) and printed on thick, glossy paper stock, is heavily illustrated with photographs and other illustrations.

In the book, twenty-eight chapters covering the same number of gravesites, the most afar located in Brazil, are organized into three main sections: "Common Soldiers and Sailors," "Generals and Their Steeds," and "Civilians." As noted in the introduction, each essay "features a leading scholar meditating on the long shadows cast by the Civil War dead." Each writer was encouraged to "tell compelling stories that take us to unexpected places." In doing so, contributors were further invited to "embrace the tool of autobiography if they felt it appropriate" (pg. 2).

As one example, William C. Davis's chapter takes readers to the side-by-side gravesite of Confederate general Gabriel Wharton and his wife Nannie. Their wartime marriage (made closer in many ways by the war's shared crises), family life, and postwar life are recounted. On a personal level, Davis relates that his own great-great-grandfather fought and died as a private in Wharton's regiment, the 45th Virginia, and Davis taught at the university that Wharton advocated for during his life. Additionally, Davis's own wife has connections to properties once owned by Nannie's family (the Radford's). Thus, in more than one way, Davis feels that the Whartons are connected across time to his own life and marriage.

As further explained in the introduction, Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves has two main themes. The first is the "power of place," and the second surrounds the enduring power of gravesites to serves as prisms "through which successive generations have viewed and understood the conflict" (pg. 9). The symbolism of both, of course, often evolves over time. Overall, Jordan and White "hope that taken together, the pieces presented here invite further reflection on the personal and political consequences of our nation's defining conflict" (pg. 11).