Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox by Caroline E. Janney (review)

Abstract

Between the 1850s and the 1880s, white men populated the pantheon of national heroes who were recognized by public mourning. Yet, the 1890s witnessed two unprecedented events. Upon the deaths of Frederick Douglass and Winnie Davis, a Black man and white woman were elevated into national symbols and mobilized in the cause of memory. As Purcell perceptively remarks, the mourning of Douglass signaled “that emancipationist memory of the Civil War had not faded away in 1895 and that the national identities created by public funerals had expanded enough to include an African American subject” (178). Davis’s memory proved deeply layered, as she was mourned at once as a symbol of the Lost Cause but also national reconciliation. Taken together, Purcell’s fifth chapter powerfully traces the lingering and overlapping strands of Civil War memory. Spectacle of Grief is a careful study of great nuance. Indeed, the book’s greatest strength is its multiplicity of perspective. Purcell carefully combines an array of voices that are woven into a seamless narrative. The work nonetheless rests heavily on the slippery term identity. Critics such as Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper have rightfully observed that the word can mean both too much and too little. Thus, sentences such as “Henry’s Clay’s funeral created national identity” tend to flatten, even confuse, the otherwise intricate arguments and discussions that underpin Purcell’s work (17). Furthermore, the author’s focus on funerary ritual raises questions about missed methodological opportunities such as a deeper consideration of material culture (essential to mourning rituals among middleand upper-class Americans) and visual culture (pervasive in public venues and front parlors). These comments notwithstanding, Purcell’s compelling study illuminates how culture worked to reconstitute a fractured nation during the Civil War era. Purcell’s work not only contributes to an important historiographical debate but also creates an innovative approach that will directly shape future scholarship. By creating a complex portrait of competing memories, Spectacle of Grief definitively establishes how the four prominent strands of postwar memory concurrently existed in the public discourse. In so doing, the author enhances our understanding of postwar politics, sheds new light on the work of mourning, and contributes to an ongoing conversation about the meanings of death. Spectacle of Grief is a remarkable achievement and an excellent model for future studies. James J. Broomall Shepherd University