Rouviere Media

This week’s Republican presidential debates brought up two key points about the distance between us and the Civil War. The first is that not just the geographic borders but also the political and social borders of the United States have vastly expanded since the 1860s. The second is that states' rights are still a very contemporary issue in America.

As the 150th anniversary commemoration of the Civil War marches on, long-held views of the war are being redefined.

One thing about the Civil War, there’s something for everyone in it. As thousands of Americans flocked to Civil War cemetery commemorations in the past two weeks, many more tuned into Gettysburg, the History Channel’s gory depiction of the 1863 battle that was the turning point of the war. Death was in. Meanwhile, the Civil War Trust has named a dance group its Reenactment Unit of the Year. A dance group? That’s right – the Victorian Dance Ensemble of the Civil War Dance Foundation, a performing troupe that conducts Civil War balls, dances and dance classes in addition to theatrical performances in the mid-Atlantic region.

As many Americans head for Memorial Day reenactments of the Civil War, the West Virginia state commemorative body marches on after a battle over whether to support reenactment events with state funds. Historically accurate or not, it appears reenactments are here to stay. This entry looks at a variety of attempts to bring America's worst bloodbath back to life without hurting anyone.

One of the less visible but more positive aspects of the Civil War commemoration is the many research projects that are being done using primary sources. Local historians, museum curators and genealogists using these primary source records to learn about individual participants who fought in the war. Several projects, including an on-line database by FamilySearch and projects by the states of the Virginia and Tennessee, are aimed at helping with this effort.

Symbols of the Civil War from Robert E. Lee's sword to the Confederate flag continue to divide us as we move into the commemoration of its 150th anniversary. At their heart is not just slavery, but the symbolic and practical application of civil rights today. This week's blog looks at those issues as well as exploring how the war is being commemorated in technology and real life.

Civil War Historian Drew Faust said in a major lecture on Monday sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities that in attempting to impose an articulable structure on the experience of war, we lend it a significance and even a grandeur that belie the nebulous and devastating reality.

This blog is called the New Civil War blog because its purpose is not to revisit the war, but to look at how Americans are commemorating the 150th anniversary of the war and explore questions of how the United States has changed since the war.