Civil War History

In Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and the Reconstruction-Era South, Jack Noe adds to the small but growing body of literature on the 1876 World’s Fair. Just in the last few years, scholars (especially art historians) have broken new ground in exploring how the visual culture of the first world’s fair in the United States reflected the conflicted world of the post–Civil War era. Noe expands on this theme by looking at how Reconstruction politics were integral to understanding the Centennial Exhibition, as well as Fourth of July celebrations in the years after the war. He correctly observes that “the commemorative activity of the Reconstruction era was inseparably intertwined with its politics, and ostensibly unifying and celebratory commemorations of the nation’s founding served as arenas for reflecting the deep sectional, partisan, and racial divisions of an unreconciled nation” (13). While he claims that “this book zeroes in on this particular moment” of the 1876 Fair, the work misses opportunities to offer more groundbreaking interpretations (13).

This volume is divided into six chapters, with the first two and the last looking at Fourth of July celebrations in the South. The early parts of the book examine how white Southerners rejected the Fourth of July during and after the Civil War, as such celebrations “were symbolic of nationalism and an identity that white southerners had rejected” (55). Meanwhile, African Americans embraced the holiday, as a way to “articulate their claim to the rights of citizenship” (48). [End Page 119] However, as Redemption became reality by 1876, white Southerners began to lose some of their ”antipathy” to Independence Day celebrations, although such festivities continued to be “politically charged” (171–72).

The middle of the book explores various facets of the Centennial Exhibition, with a focus on how Southerners, white and Black, reacted to the event. White Southerners often discussed the fair with derision, but African Americans, in contrast, looked at the exhibition as a place to prove their belonging to the nation. This is where Noe misses significant opportunities, as the book really does not present much evidence of African Americans discussing the fair. His best example, on the planned monument to Richard Allen, was an initiative of the African Methodist Episcopal Church headquartered in Philadelphia. Noe is much stronger in showing the various ways white Southerners reacted to the fair, with some linking it to Radical Reconstruction and others seeing it as an opportunity to advance the economic interests of the region, the state, or the local area in which they lived. This is something he terms the “New Departure approach” to the Centennial (75).

The controversies over who would represent each Southern state on the Centennial Planning Committee is well covered here, especially the details of the story in Texas. However, it appears the author has mistaken the Louisiana commissioner, John C. Lynch, with Mississippi’s Black representative, John R. Lynch, an understandable mistake, given that the newspaper source he cites made the same critical error (137).

In suggesting that the Centennial was “designed to heal the wounds of the Civil War,” Noe perhaps takes its planners too much at their word, given that he also points out that works of art depicting the war abounded, in particular the controversial pro-Union painting Battle of Gettysburg (131). It is in this section that the book would have greatly benefited from some photographs or illustrations, as it is difficult for a reader to understand the analysis without seeing the visual image. The book’s organization breaks down as well. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that the Centennial Exhibition included local, state, and national components and that the book also tries to cover decades of Independence Day celebrations in the entire South, meaning that there is too much to analyze in one volume. It seems it would have been better to focus on one...