Yale professor challenges rosy narrative

of Civil War history

by Kate Moore '12
NEWS EDITOR

Americans have no sense of tragedy, said David Blight, professor of American History at Yale University. On the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, Blight sought to highlight the way the bloody war has been incorporated into our historical narrative.
In his talk on “The Civil War in Modern Memory,” Blight analyzed the writings of Robert Penn Warren and James Baldwin to illustrate how Americans tend to misremember the details of this historic event.

“On some level, we all want to believe that the writing and learning of history can redeem us from the tragedy of the past,” said Blight. The authors of Blight’s focus, however, were dedicated to revealing a different side of Civil War history.
Warren grew up in Kentucky listening to his grandfather talk about his days as a Confederate soldier. Many of Warren’s later literary works address the enduring conceptions surrounding the war. According to Blight, Warren asserts in his novel Wilderness: A Tale of the Civil War that “the war was all about slavery and race and not much else.”

Baldwin also emphasized the relationship between the Civil War and African-American history. Born a generation after Warren, Baldwin became a key figure in the 1960s Civil Rights movement. In his nonfiction book The Fire Next Time, Baldwin underscored the potential for a racial revolution if America failed to change its approach to race relations. According to Blight, Baldwin even went so far as to claim he embodied the outcome of the Civil War.

Indeed, Blight sees a direct and enduring connection between the Civil War and Civil Rights historical narratives. Americans tend to view each as originating from a dark point in history, but evolving to become great national triumphs. Even Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the war in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech, lamenting the fact that 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, “the Negro still is not free.” The great Civil Rights leader saw that the supposed goals of the Civil War had yet to be realized, while many Americans celebrated Memorial Day without a single thought as to what exactly had been achieved. Blight and the writers he discussed believe that Americans either do not have, or refuse to embrace, a sense of tragedy in regard to national history.

“If the Civil War isn’t the stuff of literary and historical tragedy, what is?” said Blight. He concedes that in a sense, Americans have always loved tragedy, so long as it has a happy ending. But the popular narrative of America is of a country born perfect and only capable of improving.

“You shouldn’t read about the American Civil War for pleasure,” said Blight. “You shouldn’t read about the American Civil War to feel good. You shouldn’t read about the American Civil War to feel unified. You should read about the American Civil War and shudder.”