Remembering and Forgetting

                Throughout our class, the emphasis has not just been on the objective facts and statistics of what occurred during the Civil War, but instead how people viewed these events after the fact. This latter interpretation has not stayed stagnant either. Rather, each generation continues to re-interpret events from the past, and the mindset of the generation determines what major characters, lessons, and other normative values will be extracted from the historical events. This new model of time may create a convoluted and complex understanding of the nation’s past. However, it is a much preferable perspective than blindly accepting modern interpretations as a reified reality.

                This understanding of history has led to more analysis on how we implement our comprehension on old battlefields, cemeteries, and other places of remembrance. For instance, there are reasons why certain battlefields are well preserved, but others are vastly overgrown with foliage and mostly forgotten. Some, like Gettysburg, have numerous monuments that are scattered all across the landscape, but there are also battlefields, like Antietam, that mirror almost exactly how they looked during the Civil War. Each of these have their own story as to how they developed and changed over time.

                This new concept of analysis (historiography), which I acquired knowledge of through HST 494, piqued my interest enough that I decided to look further into the subject and find this new article by the Huffington Post. Essentially, it describes American citizens’ changing perspectives on cemetery and battlefield preservation, monumentation, and destruction, and how this has altered the United States’ landscape in the process. Even today, a multitude of different Civil War societies fight to purchase land away from developers for malls, suburbs, and other infrastructure. This is merely a new chapter in the long and winding history of deciding how to interpret and comprehend the loss, suffering, and emotion that comes with war. It is a truly fascinating article, and I suggest you all to check it out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-shifting-strategy-of-preservation-how-civil-war-battlefields-have-changed/2013/04/25/57b13f32-a5e2-11e2-8302-3c7e0ea97057_story_2.html.