“‘Combining Our Mutual Interest, Knowledge, and Abilities’: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and Civil War Reenactments, 1980-2017”

• In Event: What We Do With What Remains: The Politics of Reimagining the Past and Resignifying the Present

Abstract

In the midst of the late-20 th century, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) attended
and participated in Civil War reenactments across the nation. In a 1990 article published in the
United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, Florida UDC member Cynthia Loveless
Harriman argued that the UDC could stand to benefit from the “excitement of reenactors by
actively becoming involved with them,” particularly because the organization was struggling
financially and consistently hemorrhaging members. At the same time, the Daughters in Arizona
became involved with a yearly reenactment of the Battle of Picacho Pass, held at the state park of
the same namesake. The UDC’s participation in Civil War reenactments in the late-20 th century
served as a way for them to achieve their larger “educational, historical, and patriotic” goals
without the high financial and labor costs of other activities, such as memorial building,
particularly because the nature of reenactments made the promotion of the Lost Cause an easy
task.
         By drawing on visual and documentary evidence, this interdisciplinary paper will argue
that the contributions to these reenactments not only took advantage of popular conceptions of
the Civil War which promoted the Confederates as the brave underdogs, but also reflected a
particular moment in U.S. history when the nation was entering a new stage of imperialism
focused on wars in the Middle East, leading to new ways in which the Civil War was a useful
form of memory for contemporary Americans. Although scholars such as Christopher Bates and
Tony Horowitz have written about the modern Civil War reenactment craze from the perspective
of reenactors, the critical role played by modern U.S. imperial aims paired with Confederate
heritage organizations such as the UDC has not yet received adequate attention. By considering
the use of reenactments and living history demonstrations as forms of pedagogy, this paper will
interpret ideas concerning empire, race, and belonging encoded within these events.

Author

• Anne Boyd, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley