The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause (Civil War America) - Hardcover

Neely Jr., Mark E.; Holzer, Harold; Boritt, Gabor S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807817422 ISBN 13: 9780807817421

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987

Synopsis

First published in 1987, The Confederate Image examines the popular lithographs and engravings cherished by Southerners during and after the Civil War. These images helped sustain and revive Southern identity following the collapse of the Confederacy. (Though, ironically, most were actually crafted by Northern artisans.) The book focuses on prints of the three most prominent Southern figures of the conflict ― Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson ― but also discusses prints of other important Confederates as well as the contributions of the short-lived Southern Illustrated News.

“A well-researched and interesting sidelight into a world of illusion.” ― New York Times Book Review

“More than just a picture book. . . . [It] tells a fascinating story of the creation of these images and how they added to or, at times, ran counter to the creation of the myth that is known as the Lost Cause.” ― Chicago Tribune

About this title

About the Authors

Mark E. Neely Jr. is McCabe-Greer Professor of Civil War History at Pennsylvania State University.

Harold Holzer is vice president for communications at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, with Neely, author of The Union Image: Popular Prints of the Civil War North.

Gabor S. Boritt is Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College and director of the Civil War Institute.

Reviews

In part because historians have preferred to use photographs to illustrate the Civil War and partly because the South's heat and humidity destroyed many extant copies, the popular lithographs and engravings of the "Lost Cause" have been neglected, even by museums, where they frequently were stored unframed, uncatalogued and unrepaired. Here print historians Neely, Holzer and Boritt offer a wide selection of such prints (141 in total), which, ironically, mainly were produced by Northern printmakers for Southerners who wanted to revive and sustain the region's identity after the Confederate defeat in 1865. Images include heroes, martyrs and emblems of the Confederacy and are presented in varying size and quality"beautiful pictures, crude and ugly ones, large ones and small, maudlin scenes and inspiring ones." In this pioneering study, the authors provide an extensively researched, scholarly text that places this popular art in its cultural and commercial context.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Southerners provided a ready market for those who made inexpensive prints of Confederate heroes. Ironically, the authors find that most of these surviving pictures produced from 1865 to the early 1900s were manufactured in the North by profit-seeking businessmen, including Currier and Ives. Lost Cause prints were both mementos of past loyalty and inspirational icons for future generations of southerners. This book is imaginative, insightful, and well written. It crosses several fields: analysis of art, printing, 19th-century popular culture, and Civil War history. Highly recommended for university libraries and for others having collections on the Civil War or popular art. Joseph G. Dawson III, History Dept., Texas A&M Univ., College Station
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0807817422
• ISBN 13: 9780807817421
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288