The Ku Klux Klan in Western Pennsylvania, 1921-1928 by John Craig (review)

Abstract

SPRING 2016 91 Battle of Vicksburg especially. The General Lloyd Tilghman Monument captures the instant that the Confederate general received a mortal bullet wound (59). Tilghman extends his arms in agony, holding his sword upward, while his horse rears back from the shock of the blow. This bronze in particular serves as a vivid and powerful reminder that Vicksburg claimed the lives of men of all ranks and reputations. The Cavalry portion of the Wisconsin Monument, meanwhile, shows the urgency of being called upon to make split-second, life-or-death decisions (19). A cavalryman leaps from his dying horse in order to confront and return fire at his opponent. And the relief panels of the Iowa Monument portray with unrelenting accuracy and detail Union soldiers aiding and comforting their dying comrades (50). There is a vital and unmistakable sense of both humanity and tragedy in each of these works of art. We are being asked to recall over and over again that the inferno that was the Battle of Vicksburg consumed thousands indiscriminately. Most monuments at Vicksburg are devoted to the reality of war, but perhaps the most important and moving of all is one based upon a fiction. It envisages a meeting of reconciliation between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis that did not and could not have taken place given the tragedy of Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865. The monument is inspired by the compelling and ironic fact that both leaders were born in the commonwealth of Kentucky. According to Panhorst, the original design was to show the Lincoln and Davis bronzes shaking hands, but apparently that notion was subsequently discarded (107). I wonder if it is time to re-evaluate that decision and consider resetting the two figures in closer proximity to one another. At a time when the nation is struggling anew with the legacy of that awful war fought against the terrible evil of slavery, we might do well to attempt to fulfill, even if only symbolically, Lincoln’s call to “bind up the nation’s wounds.” If Lincoln, the man who put slavery on the road to abolition, toiled so painfully and relentlessly to rescue and strengthen a union of American people that was even more fundamental than the one that exists among the states, then who are we not to continue to try to do the same? Michael L. Carrafiello Miami University