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Article Excerpt
The joy at this [1876 Centennial] event will be universal in this
favored land.... From ocean to ocean, by every valley and hillside and stream, and on every shore and sea where the flag of the Union floats, this celebration will take place; none so humble upon whom its sunlight will not fall; none so exalted as to be prouder than the rest of its glorious fruition. It will tell of a nationality won, of a republic vindicated, of long years of peace.... of humanity elevated, of progress unsurpassed; and finally, when internal strife arose from the only blot on our civilization, it will register the story of a people redeemed, reunited, and henceforth without a motive of discord. --Philadelphia congressman Leonard Myers
The triumphalist attitude that Philadelphia congressman Leonard Myers adopted in the planning stages of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition anticipated the widespread belief that the event, occurring at a critical moment in America's history when the nation was rebuilding itself after the Civil War, consummated the reconciliation of sections and restored the coherency of its population. Rhetoric of forgotten grief and dispelled animosity associated with the war consistently guided efforts by those associated with the Centennial--its organizers, administrators, advocates, and participants--to rouse public enthusiasm for the event, in accordance with the greater goals of demonstrating the unity, strength, and prosperity of the national community. Despite the insistence that Civil War memories must be buried and forgotten as the means to enact reconciliation, reminders of the war--in the exhibits, ceremonies, special events, and behavior of visitors--were noticeably present at the Centennial.
Nowhere within the fairgrounds, however, were such references as prevalent or explicit as in the American art exhibition, arguably the most prominent element of the Centennial, where paintings and sculptures referring to the Civil War repeatedly confronted the visitor. Although the Bureau of Art arranged objects by nation in the galleries, the United States faced considerable problems in forming a national collective memory. The nation was still divided psychologically and politically over the Civil War. By disseminating only those memories of the Civil War that would encourage Americans to unite in national brotherhood and proclaim to an international audience the hopeful future it envisioned for its once-divided citizenry, official Centennial culture fostered commitment to the national community and promised a stronger nation for its citizens.
My use of the term memory corresponds to the surge of scholarship over the past few decades that builds on French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs's contention that recollection is not dependent on an individual's unique experiences, but a social phenomenon generated by the relationships one shares within a particular community. Memory is a collective phenomenon that represents the agreed version of past events among the social, familial, religious, national, or other community from which it originates. (1) One must bear in mind, however, that memory is more a reflection of the present needs of the community than of real events, and that the function of memory is not to chronicle the past but to communicate ideas about it. Collective memories exist only insofar as they promote the interests of the group, and the memories which endure are those that work to preserve the community.
Collective memories, however, do not necessarily reflect the official versions of the past presented to the broad public. As W. Fitzhugh Brundage points out, discussion, negotiation, and conflict are a fundamental part of memory work, and memories necessarily vary according to the subjective experiences of any specific group. Michael Kammen agrees, citing that alternative narratives and countermemories necessarily accompany any official version of the past, and the resulting conflict of politics forms the basis of much of his scholarship on memory. (2) At the time of the Centennial, Americans had not yet been able to form a coherent group identity since the disruption of the war and therefore had difficulty agreeing on a collective memory of it. The debate over conflicting memories and the attending cultural tensions, otherwise unutterable within the self-assured official Centennial culture, were negotiated through visual articulation in the American art exhibition.
My focus on the art object as a site of memory production responds to and extends the discussion of the multiple forms of Civil War memory that have been recently examined in the current scholarly literature. Often recognized as leading the field, historian David Blight's 2001 Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory investigates the ways cultural memory is generated through, most notably, veterans' personal war recollections or obscured African American voices. His further discussion on the performative means of memory production in the establishment of Decoration Day and its related activities corresponds to both William Blair's and Kathleen Clark's work on memorial holidays, Emancipation Day, and other commemorative celebrations, as well as journalist Tony Horwitz's wildly popular nonfiction portrayal of contemporary Civil War reenactors, who recognize performance as a fertile site of memory. (3) Both Stuart McConnell and Karen Lynne Cox elaborate on Civil War memory as generated by the formation of social organizations in their respective studies on the Grand Army of the Republic and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, while Nina Silber investigates toward a similar end the more democratic forms of popular literature and illustration. W. Scott Poole extends the investigation of popular text and imagery in memory production with his analysis of iconic Confederate symbols such the flag; song lyrics; and Civil War monuments. These last are notably treated by Kirk Savage in Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Rave, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America as well as by a number of contributors to Cynthia Mills and Pamela Simpson's 2003 edited volume, Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory. (4)
Like those of these authors on the commemorative monument, my study also takes the visual object as its focus, but shifts attention from its public format to fine art. Scholars Juanjo Iguarta and Dario Paez describe such uniquely created art objects as "symbolic rituals of commemoration" that establish an external framework or location for the expression of collective memories. (5) Iguarta and Paez remind us that collective memories are not located simply in the minds of individual artists as community members, but in the form, function, and viewing circumstances of the object itself. My treatment of the fine art submissions to the Centennial demonstrates the ways the nation constructed its memories of the war by analyzing these objects and the methods through which Centennial authorities organized and administered the art exhibition.
The most dominant of over thirteen hundred objects in the American art exhibition was indisputably Peter Frederick Rothermel's Battle of Gettysburg: Pickett's Charge (ca. 1868-70), a colossal sixteen by thirty-two-foot painting of unrestrained and violent Civil War combat (see figure 1). (6) Its subject has become lodged in the American imagination as the turning point not only of the Battle of Gettysburg but also of the Civil War itself, when over twelve thousand Confederate soldiers confronted Union troops on the afternoon of July 3, 1863, only to be brutally defeated in violent bloodshed that left more than five thousand dead. (7) Depicting a sea of Rebel soldiers advancing from the right and colliding in deadly combat with their Yankee foes, The Battle of Gettysburg offers a muddled confusion of fighting and fallen bodies, raised rifles, ready cannon, and fiery blasts in a flat, barren landscape at the foot of low, rolling hills. Beneath the thick cloud of gun smoke that fills the air, these once gentle green hills resemble angry, active volcanoes echoing the hostile aggression of battle.
The painting's distinction as the exhibition's main attraction can be credited to both its visual prominence within the gallery and the intense controversy its inclusion in the art exhibition generated. Occupying an entire wall of the primary American exhibition space informally designated the Hall of Honor in Memorial Hall, the Centennial's principal art gallery, Rothermel's painting hung in what New York Tribune reviewer Clarence Cook described as "the most distinguished place," declaring the painting not only the "central object in the Art Gallery," but also the "central showpiece at the Centennial." Being the largest image in the American galleries, if not the largest in the entire exhibition, the monumental scale of the canvas alone would have demanded the immediate attention of the viewer above all other images in the gallery. In addition to its magnitude, Rothermel's Battle of Gettysburg garnered incessant and unrelenting criticism in the press, most notably for the impropriety of its subject. Cook clarified in his editorial describing Rothermel's painting that he regretted the painting's centrality to the art exhibition, elaborating that his objection was "not that the painting is to be made conspicuous; it is that it is to be exhibited at all" where "all the world must look at it. The North must look at it, and the South must look at it." Cook further questioned: "And do the Commissioners think that either the North or the South will take pleasure in the ghastly sight?" He described the painting as "one that will sow ill-will and discord, and re-open wounds once closed," its presence "insulting the South with the memory of her defeat, and calling back to her mind the bitter days." This same language of wounds healed and troubles passed can be found in many other reviews that questioned the propriety of Rothermel's painting at the Centennial. Canadian Monthly reviewer Fidelis explained that "Rothermel's 'Battle of Gettysburg,' a great work in point of size, is as painful as it was misplaced on an occasion of Centennial unity and rejoicing." Susan Nichols Carter, critic for the Art Journal agreed, complaining of the "ill-taste" of Rothermel's painting, calling it "an unsuitable reminder, at this Centennial time, of discords that are past and troubles which will scarcely be renewed." (8)
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Other scholars have been content to attribute this antagonism toward The Battle of Gettysburg to its conflict with the unwritten--but clearly understood--sanction against Civil War imagery at the Centennial. Relying on such evidence as a French art newsletter expressly cautioning exhibitors that "the commission is almost obliged to reject works which recall the events of the recent war in too direct a manner," and Centennial director-general A. T. Goshorn's "decided objection to all that class of pictures that were calculated to awaken ill feeling in our southern Visitors, such as the Battle of Gettysburg," these scholars seem to assume that the means by which Rothermel's painting could "awaken ill feeling" was simply with its Civil War subject. (9) The problem with this conclusion is that it does not address the presence in the galleries of a substantial number of depictions of Civil War soldiers and officers in uniform, battle-ravaged southern landscapes, vignettes of camp life, literal depictions of the conflict, as well as allusions to its violence and tributes to its martyrs. More importantly, it lacks a compelling justification as to how virtually all of these war-related images escaped similar attacks. A more satisfying explanation for why commentary in the press and by Centennial officials specified virtually no other image except The Battle of Gettsyburg as being inappropriate for exhibition lies in the painting's role in the formation of a collective memory of the war that was so critical to the endurance of...
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