The United States in comparative and transnational perspective and it contributor to buying and selling the civil war her first book american slavery and russian surfdom in the post emancipation imagination was published in 2020 by the university of north carolina, press dr. Bellows is currently a lecturer at the new school in new york city. Next to amanda. Carrie. Genie is the john l. Now the third professor of the American Civil War and director of the john l now center for Civil War History at the university of virginia. She is the author editor or coeditor of seven books including buying and selling civil war memory in gilded age america. Her most recent book ends of war the fight of lees army after appomattox was the recipient of the 2022 gilder. Laraman lincoln prize. And finally jim martin is professor of history emeritus at Marquette University in milwaukee, wisconsin, and the author editor or coeditor of over 20 books including most recently buying and selling civil war memory in gilded age america, which he coedited with carrie janey and was published in 2021 by the university of georgia press. You may wonder why we titled this panel buying and selling the civil war. What does that mean part of what were doing here is trying to sell this book. Not to bring it too closely to market considerations, but the Big Questions of this book that that carrie and jim have edited that amanda has contributed an sa2 and i think there are 15 essays in total each essay gives readers a different Vantage Point on how the memory of the civil war intersected with associations with the market economy in the period after the civil war and before 1900. Its a book replete as you will see with fascinating images. And were going to use some of those images as kind of prompts for our for our discussion, but what wed like to the questions wed like to answer for you include the ones listed here on on this slide about the reasons that some entrepreneurs use to identify ways in which they could use the memory of the war to sell their products in its aftermath secondly, why would Consumers Want to buy stuff that was associated with with the war in some ways and then lastly wed like to wed like to venture some answers at the question of what is the what is the legacy of the longer impact of this intersection between memory and the market maybe even down to our own day . Okay, so thats where im we thats our starting place. I wonder maybe well well move to the to the first slide. But as i said to the to the speakers beforehand, they dont have to speak maybe directly to the images, but they could use the images if it seems useful to them to make the points that theyre making and maybe start with that first question about why how and why entrepreneurs try to sell the civil war in its aftermath i leave that up to any of you to start the conversation. Um, well thanks for coming everybody. Its fun to talk about this project. That was long and gestation and we had a lot hard time defining what we wanted to do for a while, but i think we arrived at a pretty good definition had great authors concurring to it, i think. You asked why i guess why wouldnt they you know, i mean its a big thing going on and what the essays . Each of their own way try to do is just show how an existing technology or cultural trend or whatever took advantage of this. New experience the country had just gone through. It to sell things and the way that consumers use those technologies and new Marketing Tools and so forth. To remember them for a long time. I always say this when youre talking about about this my folder for this said beyond memory. Thats what we were going to call it for a long time. And and what we meant by that. Is you memory not in the big picture political way that we tend to think about several memory, but memory in on an everyday. Very mundane level all of these things are just every day items for certain people or experiences and it is against nostalgia. Its a common history. Its a comfortable history that people want want to buy and is being sold to them. And so this is true of a big picture version of what we were trying to do. In terms of our working title of beyond memory we were i think were both consider ourselves gilded age scholars as much as civil war scholars and thinking about the ways in which the civil war continued to be a part of peoples lives. Well beyond memory, well beyond attending veterans reunions or raising money or or going to monument dedications or visiting battlefields, but the way in which it intersected in their everyday lives and the way in which as consumers or producers, they both took advantage of that or were sometimes taken advantage of by that and do we have the opium cure. Yeah. I love all of the essays in this book, but one of my favorite is jonathan joness essay about the ways in which veterans became addicted to opium. But really what his essay is about is the the efforts to help them get over that addiction and these fake. I dont even know what to call them right remedies that were created and sold to veterans in order to help them get over their addictions. And so this isnt about remembering the war for many of these veterans in many ways. Its about not remembering the war but the ways in which it continues to be part of their everyday lived experiences and the ways in which sometimes that is is manipulated and used by entrepreneurs. So theres theres no good guys or bad guys in this but theres a mix of people trying to profit or finding ways to profit or people that are finding themselves beholden to different objects different experiences that are again directly tied to the war in some fashion or another. This is the golden age of pad medicines and this is just one set of them. Subset of them and the rhetoric surrounding them is for veterans to kind of restore their manhood and become independent of opium. Habit as it was called and become soldiers again kind of we capture those values that they had demonstrated as soldiers. And i think one important thing to keep in mind about the process of buying and selling in this post civil war era is the fact that its an age of industrialization and urbanization in age of increasing literacy. So we have the rise of advertising as a strategy for selling goods in new and more sophisticated ways than ever before so new technologies were mentioned right for printing things and color making trade cards illustrated advertisements for products. So theres more buying and selling maybe going on and had been prior to the war. Yeah. Well we have it here. The other picture is both. These are director toward veterans, but this is from the national tribune, which is one of the leading veterans newspapers a national one. There were 20 veterans news. Is published after the war many of them just a state a geographically localized subscription basis based, but this is to get veterans to sell subscriptions. To the national tribune, which was published by one of the leading pension agents in the country george lemon and they if they had enough of them they theyd get a watch or they could just buy the watch with the with the gar emblem. And so he watches arent a new technology but using them in this way is kind of a new thing. Offering premiums for subscriptions isnt necessarily new thing. Theyve been doing that for a while, but it was a really big deal in the gilded age. We include the shop, eric, do i see you in the audience somewhere . Eric mink yes, shut up to eric for pointing out. Theres a picture that we use in the book of a an auction shovel. That was advertised to farmers to help them level field fortifications. So again something that was used. Was in existence before the war but has a new meaning and a new use if you are a farmer from Spotsylvania County and you might want to clear off all of those earthworks so that you can get back to farming. So the ways in which and the advertisement specifically says that that one of the things that can be used for is clearing field works, so not a new technology but in a new rationale or a new branding or a new way of advertising . A way of a reason to use something that had already existed that is a product of the war. Brian. Go back to the cover. We dont make sure people dont miss the thing in the cover. This was this was yours. So what thats not very good. How many of you were in sue boardmans talk to them just to go about cyclamaras. Okay, so my essay in this book, it is about cycloramas and the ways in which they were as she pointed out consumer ventures. They were entertainment ventures, but theyre also away for mccormick to sell their various different implements. This is from the painting the shiloh cyclorama, and obviously this nice little tool what is that . Exactly . So reaper thats not a reaper is it . I dont know. This farming implement. Down here in the shed was not in existence in 1862 and yet mccormick would buy the rights to the cyclorama painting in order to reproduce this and if you bought subscriptions you bought their catalogs or you bought calendars you could get a lithograph that was a portion of the cyclorama with the nice little mccormick implement there included so theyre both using the cycloramas popularity to sell their item, but also again, reflecting on the meaning of the war by encouraging you to buy this this this implement because of its association with the war in which did not exist. I saw this painting we used to illustrate something just about shiloh and they used this one with the reap around. Yeah. Or the whatever it is. Implement the implement one thing that carrie and jim talk about in the introduction of this book that i think is really revealing and and is a means im going to use just to reiterate whats and summarize whats just been said and how important this book is the often the products being sold two soldiers and other consumers were not new but as our panelists have shown you already the war gave some impetus created potential Consumer Groups that that these these priorities of these firms selling these goods could reach with a particular advertising strategy. That was that was new and in fact the structure of American Business was changing and and firms were getting larger and this is the era of the growth of the corporation. Even though many of these proprietors are actually quite kind of on a family firm sort of basis, but you see new ways of trying to reach people who might buy goods on the one hand some of these veterans needed these things or could conceive of themselves as needing these things or a farmer needing to plow plow up their fields needs these things whereas others are as i think jim said, um ways in which they can hold a good they bought and remember right so memory itself because becomes something that can be that can be bought through through consumer purchases. Im combination of the famous picture from the reunion. But also the ad for the uniform one of the essays by shea cox smith was about confederate veteran uniforms sold for the united veterans and theyre creating a memory of a uniform the uniform. I mean, these are very nice gray uniforms. Maybe maybe the way you might imagine them and paintings, but they never had them. I think its worth just stopping and pointing out the obvious here. And i think that we take for granted that in this picture those men. Theres veterans are not wearing their uniforms from the war. And and i know thats a very obvious point, but i think its worth stopping and thinking about so what are the uniforms . Yeah, and theyre a little different way the gir uniforms. I guess were closer to an actual, you know union reform then the confederacy was but better uniforms were but but the whole point of shays essay is that they created a need by needed to be dressed up, you know uniform uniform. Yeah, or the united confederate veterans and theyre not just produced and sold in the south. Yeah, theyre produced all over the country in the midwest and elsewhere. So this is not a regional. Buying and selling thats going and the same is true for advertisements. So my chapter in the book looks specifically at trade cards, but you know when you have printed colorful advertisements like those of found untrade trade cards, youll see that times, you know, the product could be made in the south and then the person that designed the image could be somewhere else maybe in the north and then the printer could be in them, you know the midwest so there could be a wide, you know, it was a National Effort in making advertisements talk about this one. Oh, yes. So this is um, well an interesting trade card that i found in the archives and yale, a really its a its a great ad that shows the process of reconciliation being used to market a good so this trade card was distributed at the 1876 centennial celebration in philadelphia. And you can see that there are three soldiers. One of them is a british soldier from the revolutionary war in the red coat one is a confederate soldier and one is a Union Soldier. And theyre dancing around the Bunker Hill Monument from the battle of bunker hill. And you can see that there are some tombstones and they say hatch it on them. And so the idea is that this is an image of reconciliation. And theyve buried the hatchet. So yeah, you understand the joke. So, how do you get them a trade cards could be handed out. So at this exhibition, i think they were different products on display and trade cards could be handed out. Sometimes theyd be given to you if you purchased the object. There are many uses for trade cards and people could collect them will probably talk later about different series where there are lots of different pictures and you would try to get them all and put them in your scrapbook and show them off. So theyre definitely an interesting type of primary source to look at for civil war. The this image was produced for philadelphia centennial exposition. Well, we know card, but we know from the stamp on it that it was distributed at the centennial exposition. Yeah, so it seems that you know one one way to tap into to veterans as a Consumer Group is to at this at this scientific expo that is that is meant to validate and valorize the nations kind of achievements to talk about the ways in which northerners and southerners white northerners and southerners could come back together again around and earlier National Heritage of of the war. So theres theres humor in and theyre all kind of i i what about the british soldier . I dont i dont know what to make. You know, why is he involved in this . Yeah, i guess thats right. Its reconciliation for the revolutionary era. So its the centennial right of the yeah, and if they made they made up once, you know, they could make up again and and newspapers. You know that were talking about the meaning of this exhibition. Were saying we really hope the south comes and it would be an act of goodwill of southerners came to the sex position in philadelphia. And so they were, you know conversations happening about reconciliation even in advance of the event as well as hard feelings between great. Really nice days from during the war. Thats the 1870s british soldier not a revolutionary soldier. Im just making that up right now, but i think it and so that brings me back to this our our clothing manufacturers and his carrie said these these these uniforms are not even principally. Made in the south are being made by northern northern firms many of them. But is this like i dont know like some fashionable in the 1910s and or is this is this a botched effort to try to replicate older style uniforms and and so why i guess what im wondering is is there any evidence of what these veterans thought about the cut of the of the garments they were wearing did they say . Well, this is all we can do and its not frayed so ill wear it. They thought they were kind of expensive. The only thing i remember theres all kinds of paraphernalia. You can buy. For ger especially but what ucb stuff as well . I didnt i dont remember every reading by anybody commenting on the clothes other than its kind of expensive to do you have to have it you didnt have to do it have one participate in the reunions and be part of this is an investment. Yeah. Okay, very good. There were a lot of efforts to sell the war not just a veterans but to a broader a broader public there of course were efforts to do that during the war to soldiers and and others, um, biographies of generals and and political leaders the republic during the war stationary sets pens and pencils that might be called the general mcclellan gold pen. So things things like this, that would connect people at the time to what was happening, but there are lots of lots of ways in which cultural producers entrepreneurs that that produced literature produced. Speeches and others in around the country to talk about their experiences, but also imagery to connect to a broader public. There are some new technologies or newer technologies like the stereograph that had come about in in the decades after the discovery of photography but a stereograph like this in the upper right hand corner could be used to to make these these images appear in three dimensions. And so would any of you like to comment on on this image or our barber gannons essay to elaborate on those issues we could also move on to to a neck to the next slide if theres anything more to say, what about what about this . Why would not a late 19th century folks want to look at images like this . They didnt thats her whole essay actually. It was very much a wartime and postwar media post war thing with barbara is barbara here . Shes in town. Shes here for a different thing, but was that reunion and so forth these these images fell out of favor. And as hysteroscopes up to a point and then when they published the 10 volume photograph history civil war these pictures are you know, there are pictures of fortifications and towns and ruins and you know, stuff like that, but they get less sanctuary, you know, they they have i dont know if its a matter of what does she says it . Is an effort not to blame the confederates, you know, because mainly union dead that they had in this pictures. No, its confidently mainly all right. I learned something. But anyway, so anyway, so it falls out of favor and the oliver optic chapter, which is by paul ringle, which is a childrens series books those fall out of favor too. Oliver optic was a big selling author for juvenile novels. He published magazines as well. And there was two trilogies. He published by two brothers when the army when the navy and their underage soldiers and they have quite the adventures and that sells really well till the 1870s. And then he tries it again in the 1890 the different set and theyre very different and they dont sell as well. And so there is a certain. Dwindling of interest in the blood of your versions of you know the war yeah. Okay,