audiobook Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw by Robert Shaw in History

Description

In the aftermath of the Civil War; the Lost Cause gave white southerners a new collective identity anchored in the stories; symbols; and rituals of the defeated Confederacy. Historians have used the idea of civil religion to explain how this powerful memory gave the white South a unique sense of national meaning; purpose; and destiny. The civil religious perspectives of everyone else; meanwhile; have gone unnoticed.Arthur Remillard fills this void by investigating the civil religious dis­courses of a wide array of people and groups―blacks and whites; men and women; northerners and southerners; Democrats and Republicans; as well as Catholics; Protestants; and Jews. Focusing on the Wiregrass Gulf South region―an area covering north Florida; southwest Georgia; and southeast Alabama―Remillard argues that the Lost Cause was but one civil religious topic among many. Even within the white majority; civil religious language influenced a range of issues; such as progress; race; gender; and religious tolerance. Moreover; minority groups developed sacred values and beliefs that competed for space in the civil religious landscape.