Slave/free 1860
The political map that explains secession.
A map of slave and free states in 1860 explains more than a map of 1863 battles.
The NPS battlefield belt from Pennsylvania to Georgia is a memory infrastructure unique in this atlas for density.
Maps
Eastern theatre
Manassas to Appomattox.
Mississippi / west
The Anaconda's river arm.
Sherman's routes 1864-65
Atlanta to Savannah to the Carolinas.
Reconstruction South
Military districts and later Jim Crow states -- a political after-map.
Portrayals
Gone with the Wind
The most successful Lost Cause entertainment -- still a teaching problem.
Glory
54th Massachusetts as a popular correction.
Lincoln (2012)
Amendment politics as drama.
Ken Burns (1990)
The vernacular US textbook for a generation.
Birth of a Nation (1915)
A film that helped revive the Klan -- history of memory, not a source on 1863.
Battlefield parks
Landscape as the main American portrayal.
Rituals
Memorial Day origins
Decoration of Civil War graves -- later expanded to all US wars.
Gettysburg reenactments
A hobby and a memory argument in wool uniforms.
Juneteenth
Emancipation holiday, federal since 2021.
Sayings
Confederate battle-flag use after 1865 is a twentieth-century political history, not a soldier's grave marker history only.
Juneteenth parades are a newer official ritual layered onto older emancipation celebrations.