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Theodore Roosevelt and the Unionist Memory of the Civil War: Experience, History, and Politics, 1861–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2023

Benjamin J. Wetzel Open the ORCID record for Benjamin J. Wetzel [Opens in a new window]
Benjamin J. Wetzel*
Affiliation:
Taylor University, Upland, IN, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: ben_wetzel@taylor.edu
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Abstract

The meaning of the Civil War, America’s most violent experience, continued to be debated well into the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The long shadow cast by David Blight’s influential Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001) has meant that debates about the impact and prevalence of reconciliationist rhetoric dominate the literature. This paper adds to a growing body of scholarship that questions the reconciliationist narrative and stresses instead the partisan understanding of the Civil War still prevalent into the twentieth century. In particular, this article uses Theodore Roosevelt’s “memory” of the Civil War to explore the linkages between the Civil War Era and the Age of Empire. It makes two arguments: 1) that in an era when a “reconciliationist” understanding of the Civil War was becoming more prominent, more often than not Roosevelt used his voice as a historian and political figure to assert a “Unionist” interpretation; and 2) that Roosevelt used this memory of the Civil War to advocate for three specific political causes: American empire, the New Nationalism, and American entry into World War I. The paper’s argument and historiographical intervention help scholars of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era to re-imagine the role of Civil War memory in the half century following Appomattox Courthouse.

Keywords

Theodore RooseveltCivil War memoryimperialismWorld War INew Nationalism
Type
Article
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , April 2023 , pp. 184 - 203
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE)

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References

Notes

1 Blight, David W., Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 1–5, 383CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Buck, Paul H., The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1937), vii–xiGoogle Scholar; Silber, Nina, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993)Google Scholar, 2, 5, 11.

3 Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991), 101–31; Prince, K. Stephen, Stories of the South: Race and the Reconstruction of Southern Identity, 1865-1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 8–9 Google Scholar; Janney, Caroline E., Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 5–6 Google Scholar; Neff, John R., Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 6–7 Google Scholar; Robert J. Cook, “Review Essay: The Quarrel Forgotten? Toward a Clearer Understanding of Sectional Reconciliation,” Journal of the Civil War Era 6 (Sep. 2016): 414, 413; Cook, Robert J., Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States Since 1865 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 4, 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gallagher, Gary W., Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008)Google Scholar, 2. Others seeking to complicate the reconciliationist narrative include Blair, William A., Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 3–4 Google Scholar; and Silber, Nina, “Reunion and Reconciliation, Reviewed and Reconsidered,” Journal of American History 103 (Jun. 2016): 65–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 9–10.

6 Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 8–9; TR, Autobiography, 20:9.

7 Dalton, Kathleen, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Knopf, 2002), 34 Google Scholar.

8 Recognizing his vast national influence, the literature on the memory of the Civil War often touches on Roosevelt’s commentary on the war. Yet, most of these works distort his careful thinking about the conflict by portraying him as a garden-variety reconciliationist. Blight quotes some of Roosevelt’s reconciliationist utterances while Gary Gallagher cites Roosevelt as one of three early-twentieth-century presidents who promoted “the Reconciliation Cause.” Although Blight and Gallagher certainly quote Roosevelt accurately enough, they do not do justice to the complexity of Roosevelt’s interpretation of the Civil War and thus misrepresent his quite extensive writings and speeches on the topic. Blight, Race and Reunion, 356; see also Blight, David W., Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 98–99 Google Scholar; Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten, 38.

9 Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 115–376, 834 n.21.

10 TR, Thomas Hart Benton, in Works, 7:102, 176, 189, 105; Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 7:332–33.

11 TR, Thomas Hart Benton, 7:104.

12 Cook, Robert J., “‘Not Buried Yet’: Northern Responses to the Death of Jefferson Davis and the Stuttering Progress of Sectional Reconciliation,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 18 (Jul. 2019): 328–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 TR, Thomas Hart Benton, 7:106, 141–42. When Roosevelt’s historical works came under closer scrutiny during his presidency, Mississippians took him to task for unfairly associating Davis with state debt repudiation. See, for example, John Sharp Williams to TR, May 24, 1902, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, Dickinson State University, https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record?libID=o38057 (accessed on April 4, 2023). Modern investigations acquit Davis of the repudiation charge. See Cooper, William J. Jr. Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Knopf, 2000), 87–88 Google Scholar.

14 TR to George Brinton McClellan Harvey, Sep. 19, 1904, in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison [hereafter Letters] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951–54), 4:948.

15 TR, Gouverneur Morris, in Works, 7:466, 467; William A. Dunning, review of Gouverneur Morris, by Theodore Roosevelt, Political Science Quarterly 10 (Jun. 1895): 348–50; Dunning, review of Thomas Hart Benton, by Theodore Roosevelt, Political Science Quarterly 2 (Jun. 1887): 343–45. Ironically, Dunning would be Roosevelt’s successor as president of the American Historical Association.

16 What many regard as his greatest historical work, the four volume Winning of the West, covered only the colonial and early republic periods, and thus did not feature the conflict at any length.

17 TR, New York, in Works, 10:506–07, 529, 530, 535.

18 Henry Cabot Lodge and TR, Hero Tales From American History, in Works, 10:103, 148.

19 TR, Thomas Hart Benton, 7:156, 102–03; Lodge and TR, Hero Tales, 10:103.

20 Lodge, Henry Cabot, Historical and Political Essays (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892)Google Scholar, 3, 7, 8.

21 TR, “The Fifty-First Congress,” in Works, 14:126–27, 130–31; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 254–55.

22 Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 494–780.

23 Blight, Race and Reunion, 347–54. Although the conflict helped cement reunion, white Southerners as a rule had been hesitant to volunteer to serve in the Spanish-American War. See Turpie, David C., “A Voluntary War: The Spanish-American War, White Southern Manhood, and the Struggle to Recruit Volunteers in the South,” Journal of Southern History 80 (November 2014): 859–92Google Scholar.

24 E.g., Millard, Candice, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (New York: Random House, 2005), 40–41 Google Scholar; Evan Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010), 22–23.

25 TR to Winthrop Chandler, Mar. 23, 1899, in Letters 2:969; TR to Winston Churchill, Jul. 20, 1901, in Letters, 3:126; TR to Rudyard Kipling, Nov. 4, 1914, in Letters, 8:829. Parentheses in original.

26 TR, “The Strenuous Life,” in Works, 13:319–31; quotations from 329.

27 TR, “The Strenuous Life,” in Works, 13:321–22, quotations from 321. Roosevelt also enlisted tropes of gender and race to support war. See Bederman, Gail, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 170–215 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hoganson, Kristin L., Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 174–75, 199Google Scholar.

28 TR, “At the Tomb of Grant,” in Works, 14:331, 332. While Grant had earned the nickname “Unconditional Surrender Grant” earlier in the war, his terms to Lee in 1865 were very liberal. See Guelzo, Allen C., Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 478 Google Scholar. On the GAR and imperialism, see Holtby, David V., “Connected Lives: Albert Beveridge, Benjamin Tillman, and the Grand Army of the Republic” in Reconstruction and Empire: The Legacies of Abolition and Union Victory for an Imperial Age, ed. Prior, David (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022), 191–213 Google Scholar.

29 TR, “The Copperheads of 1900,” in Works, 14:334–36; see Beveridge, Albert J., “The March of the Flag,” in An American Primer, ed. Boorstin, Daniel J. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 2:624–25Google Scholar.

30 TR, “Expansion and Peace,” in Works, 13:335.

31 TR, “Grant,” in Works, 13:430–41; quotations from 435, 436, 440.

32 The classic portrayal of the war-mongering Roosevelt is Thomas, War Lovers.

33 On Lincoln, see, e.g., “‘Spot’ Resolutions in the United States House of Representatives,” Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:420–22; on Roosevelt, see Bederman, Manliness & Civilization, 170–215.

34 Burns, Adam D., “‘Half a Southerner’: President Roosevelt, African Americans, and the South” in A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Ricard, Serge (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 209–12Google Scholar.

35 TR, “The Reunited People,” in Works, 16:26–31.

36 TR, “Labor and Brotherhood,” in Works, 16:156–68; TR, “North and South,” in Works, 16:32–35. For other examples, see Goldberger, Sarah, “An Indissoluble Union: Theodore Roosevelt, James Bulloch, and the Politics of Reconciliation” in Forging the Trident: Theodore Roosevelt and the United States Navy , eds. Hattendorf, John B. and Leeman, William P. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2020), 14–15 Google Scholar, 21–23, 26–27.

37 Blight, Race and Reunion, 3–5.

38 Morris, Edmund, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), 52–59, 198–99Google Scholar.

39 Morris, Edmund, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001),198 Google Scholar; Wetzel, Benjamin J., Theodore Roosevelt: Preaching from the Bully Pulpit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 99–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wang, Xi, The Trial of Democracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860-1910 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 262–63Google Scholar.

40 Morris, Theodore Rex, 198; Robert J. Cook, “‘Hollow Victory’: Federal Veterans, Racial Justice and the Eclipse of the Union Cause in American Memory,” History & Memory 33 (Spring/Summer 2021):16–17, 19; Justesen, Benjamin R., Forgotten Legacy: William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggle for Black Equality (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020), 3, 76.Google Scholar But note that McKinley did make reconciliation part of his 1896 campaign. See Kelly, Patrick, “The Election of 1896 and the Restructuring of Civil War Memory” in The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, eds. Alice Fahs, and Waugh, Joan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 171 Google Scholar. This article is not the place to discuss Roosevelt’s treatment of African Americans and his views of race at any length; for more on that important topic, see Burns, “‘Half a Southerner,’” 198–215; Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980); and Dorsey, Leroy G., We Are All Americans, Pure and Simple: Theodore Roosevelt and the Myth of Americanism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

41 TR to Harvey, in Letters, 4:947.

42 George Francis Robert Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898), 1:110; TR to George Francis Robert Henderson, Feb. 14, 1899, in Letters, 2:944–45.

43 TR to Owen Wister, Apr. 27, 1906, in Letters, 5:225; TR to George Otto Trevelyan, Nov. 23, 1906, in Letters, 5:500; Cook, “‘Not Buried Yet,’” 340–44; M. Keith Harris, “Slavery, Emancipation, and Veterans of the Union Cause: Commemorating Freedom in the Era of Reconciliation, 1885-1915,” Civil War History 53 (Sep. 2007): 268; Gannon, Barbara, The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldberger, “An Indissoluble Union,” 22, 27.

44 TR to James Ford Rhodes, Nov. 19, 1904, in Letters, 4:1049.

45 Parish, Peter J., “Abraham Lincoln and American Nationhood” in Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance of the American Civil War , eds. Grant, Susan-Mary and Parish, Peter J. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), 13 Google Scholar. See also Jividen, Jason, Claiming Lincoln: Progressivism, Equality, and the Battle for Lincoln’s Legacy in Presidential Rhetoric (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 TR to Rhodes, in Works, 4:1049–50.

47 TR to John Hay, Mar. 3, 1905, in Letters, 4:1131 and n1; TR to George Otto Trevelyan, Mar. 9, 1905, in Letters, 4:1132.

48 On this period, see Morris, Edmund, Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2010), 3–252 Google Scholar.

49 TR to William Allen White, Aug. 9, 1910, in Letters, 7:108, n1; TR to Lyman Copeland Draper, Dec. 28, 1910, in Letters, 7:193.

50 TR, “The New Nationalism,” in Works, 17:5–8; quotations from 5, 6.

51 TR, “The New Nationalism,” in Works, 17:9, 10, 8.

52 TR, “The New Nationalism,” in Works, 17:21.

53 TR, “The Heirs of Abraham Lincoln,” in Works, 17:360, 361.

54 TR, “The Heirs of Abraham Lincoln,” in Works, 17:362–77.

55 TR, America and the World War, in Works, 18:60–61.

56 TR to James Bryce, Mar. 31, 1915, in Letters, 8:916.

57 TR, Fear God and Take Your Own Part, in Works, 18:189; Gamble, Richard M., A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 TR, Fear God, 18:272–73, 254–55, 316–17.

59 TR, Fear God, 18:442, 447.

60 TR, The Foes of Our Own Household, in Works, 19:41; TR, Fear God, 18:297.

61 Tucker, William Jewett, My Generation: An Autobiographical Interpretation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919), 10–11 Google Scholar.

62 Gamble, Richard M., The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (Dover, DE: ISI Books, 2003), 113 Google Scholar; “Christianity and War,” Outlook, Jan. 13, 1915, 62; Lyman Abbott, “An International Battle Hymn,” Outlook, June 27, 1917, 321.

63 Wilson, Woodrow, “Remarks to Confederate Veterans in Washington,” in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 42:452 Google Scholar.

64 See, for example, Kazin, Michael, War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).Google Scholar

65 Silber, “Reunion and Reconciliation,” 77.

66 E.g., Silber, Romance of Reunion; Blight, Race and Reunion; Prince, Stories of the South; Blair, Cities of the Dead.

67 Richardson, Heather Cox, “Reconstructing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era” in A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , eds. Nichols, Christopher McKnight and Unger, Nancy C. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 7–20 Google Scholar; Wetzel, Benjamin J., American Crusade: Christianity, Warfare, and National Identity, 1860-1920 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022).CrossRefGoogle Scholar