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Lesley Gordon

Lesley J. Gordon is associate professor of history at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio. She received her B.A. from the College of William and Mary, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Her publications include _General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend_ (Chapel Hill, 1998), _Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and their Wives_ (New York, 2001), and _This Terrible War: The Civil War and its Aftermath_ (New York, 2003).

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Remembering Our Bloodiest War

By Lesley Gordon

Spring 2002 | Criticism

Recently, historians have sought to understand how and why Americans continue to remember their civil war. Memory of the bloodiest conflict on U.S. soil remains fresh in popular imagination, kept alive by legions of Civil War buffs, reenactors, genealogists, and amateur writers, as well as scholars, who declare it to be the "Second American Revolution" or the watershed in our national history. Clearly, it was a significant event, but why does this war still resonate so strongly in our popular culture and national psyche? The answer, or answers, appears to be quite complicated.

 

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