History, Memory, and the Meaning of the American Civil War

This lecture attempts to address one of American historians’ major concerns over the problem of collective memory—the ways in which groups, peoples, or governments construct versions of the past and employ them to win power and gain control of the present. Memory is not history; it is a subjective account of the past. History is an evidence-based, analytical narrative constructed by historians. The most turbulent, controversial, and dangerous problem in American historical memory today is our Civil War: Who owns the memory of the war? Do those who emphasize the narrative of a shared white American identity and downplay the role of slavery and the fight for Black civil rights own the memory of the war, or do those who view the war as a complex story of sections and races and the debate over definitions of freedom, equality, liberty in our country’s efforts to move toward “a more perfect Union” in the future? Furthermore, whose collective memory of the war should make it into our textbooks, films, and in our memorial landscape? What impact does each of these interpretations of the past have on our nation’s understanding of who we are and where we are headed?

Tom Army, Ph.D., received a BA and MALS from Wesleyan University and for nineteen years was the head of a New England boarding school before going back to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2014. Tom has been an adjunct professor of history at Quinebaug Valley Community College in Danielson, Connecticut and adjunct professor of history at Quinnipiac University. In 2021, he was presented with the Excellence in Teaching Award from Quinnipiac. He was the first adjunct to receive this honor. In 2024, Tom received the Adjunct Teacher of the Year award from QVCC. His book, “Engineering Victory: How Technology Won the Civil War,” was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2016. He is the author and host of the YouTube series, U. S. History Online.