Hillyer Reiko
Big Onion Walking Tours, New York, New York, USA.
Public Hist. 2011 Nov;33(4):35-62. doi: 10.1525/tph.2011.33.4.35.
This article examines the Confederate Memorial Literary Society (CMLS), an organization of elite white women in Richmond, Virginia who founded the Confederate Museum in the 1890s. Faced with the plunder of Civil War relics and cultural homogenization on northern terms, the CMLS founded the Confederate Museum to document and defend the Confederate cause and to uphold the antebellum mores that the New South's business ethos threatened to erode. In the end, however, the museum's version of the Lost Cause served the New South. By focusing on military sacrifice, the Confederate Museum aided the process of sectional reconciliation. By depicting slavery as benevolent, the museum's exhibits reinforced the notion that Jim Crow was a just and effective means of managing postwar southern society. Lastly, by glorifying the common soldier and portraying the South as "solid," the museum promoted obedience to the mandates of industrial capitalism. Thus, the Confederate Museum both critiqued and eased the economic transformations of the New South.
本文考察了南部邦联纪念文学协会（CMLS），这是一个由弗吉尼亚州里士满的精英白人女性组成的组织，她们在19世纪90年代建立了南部邦联博物馆。面对内战遗物被掠夺以及按照北方条件实现文化同质化的情况，CMLS建立了南部邦联博物馆，以记录和捍卫南部邦联事业，并维护战前的习俗，因为新南方的商业精神有可能侵蚀这些习俗。然而，最终，博物馆对失败事业的呈现却服务于新南方。通过关注军事牺牲，南部邦联博物馆推动了地区和解进程。通过将奴隶制描绘成仁慈的，博物馆的展品强化了这样一种观念，即种族隔离法是管理战后南方社会的一种公正且有效的手段。最后，通过颂扬普通士兵并将南方描绘成“团结的”，博物馆促进了对工业资本主义指令的服从。因此，南部邦联博物馆既批判了新南方的经济变革，又缓和了这些变革。
