Write a semi-formal essay response with your thesis, evidence, and significance explained clearly.
Your first set of videos(listed below) by the historian David Blight concerns how Americans have defined their identity through the experience of the Civil War and your additional short readings discuss todays debate over the meaning of Confederate monuments from that war. Consider and answer one or more of the following questions:
If national history in the US hinges on the Civil War, as Blight contends, then how did that war revise the meaning of the nations history?
What conflicts do we have over the memory of that war? Or, put differently, what does Blight mean by the conflict between healing and justice in remembering and resolving the Civil War?
What was the great tragedy in national memory that he saw as it relates to this war?
How do todays debates over Confederate monuments relate to this issue of national memory?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_7nDwCfNuE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v7t_tm_kkI
Creation of Confederate Monuments: https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments
David Blight on the Confederate Monuments: http://www.davidwblight.com/public-history/2017/8/25/stunned-historians-wrestle-with-calls-to-remove-confederate-statues-boston-globe
Opinions on Confederate Monuments: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html
