Beyond the Battlefield

Beyond the Battlefield

By David Blight

David W. Blight’s book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.

Memory plays a very important in how history is interpreted. As time goes on and an event slips further into the past some of the memory’s that are passed on are distorted and can change entirely. Things that happened during the Civil War that may have seemed important are replaced with things that may seem more important to us now. Blight states “History can be read by or belong to everyone; it assesses change and progress over time and is more relative, more contingent upon place, chronology and scale. Memory, however, is often treated as a sacred set of potentially absolute meanings and stories, possessed as the heritage or identity of a community.” (p.2) Blight traces the perception of the war back to those who were involved, both white and black, and then discuses how they have evolved. I found this point in the book most interesting because this way of thought is now only involved with the Civil War but can be seen when discussing most events in history.

Blight found that people after didn’t really care about the meaning of the war which was to free the slaves but rather focus more on the fact that it was just two groups of Americans fighting for what they believed in. The goal of many civil rights leaders was to bring the focus to the fact that the confederacy engaged in this war in order to keep ownership of their slaves. In one of Blight’s essays he describes the Civil War semicentennial. He describes