They Are Dead and Yet They Live

John M. Kinder is a professor of history and American studies at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of Paying with Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran and World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age. Jennifer M. Murray is an assistant professor of history and the director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War at Shepherd University. She is the author of On a Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933–2013 and The Civil War Begins: Opening Clashes, 1861.

“This is a book of history like few others-a bold step in the evolution of our understanding of the Civil War. Courageous and sometimes provocative, these essays push us to consider the past in the present-how the tendrils of myth and memory have touched every corner of our social and political community and shape the everyday conversation we have about the nature and future of our nation.”-John Hennessy, National Park Service historian (retired) and author of Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas “Filled with extraordinary research and superb writing, They Are Dead and Yet They Live provides a necessary reckoning with the power the American Civil War still holds over contemporary politics. Moving beyond the well-trod subject of Confederate monuments, the essays cover a range of topics, from renaming U.S. military bases to romance novels, reminding us along the way that the battles to control and leverage the war’s meaning continue to have profound and sometimes even deadly consequences.”-Caroline E. Janney, author of Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation “Brilliantly argued with passion and conviction, They Are Dead and Yet They Live is a timely and provocative reminder of the profound ways the memory of the Civil War influences present-day America. A powerful and riveting read, the book helps explain our recent political and cultural life.”-Ty Seidule, author of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Governor and the Palmetto PatriotsJohn M. Kinder and Jennifer M. MurrayPart 1. Lost Causes1. To Understand Where You Are Going, Remember Where You Have Been: Reconstruction's Reverberations in Twenty-First-Century AmericaBrooks D. Simpson2. The Republican Party, the Lost Cause, and the Transformation of American PoliticsTim GalsworthyPart 2. Reclamation Projects3. The Politics of Civil War Memory in America's Military: The Battles to Rename Nine U.S. Army BasesJennifer M. Murray4. Freedom on the Fringes: Interpreting the Civil War and Relevancy at Camp NelsonSteve T. Phan5. Ghosts of Atchison: The Lynching of George JohnsonJoshua WolfPart 3. Consuming Memory6. Confederates in the Record Cabinet: Civil War Memory and the Historical Turns in Modern Country MusicJoseph M. Thompson7. Love Is a Battlefield: Civil War Memory in Modern Romance NovelsSarah Handley-Cousins8. Dixie Chic: Hoodies and Embodying Confederate ExceptionalismNicole MaurantonioPart 4. Civil War Memory in the Age of Black Lives Matter9. "This Battle Was Fought Because Black Lives Matter": How Black Lives Are (or Aren't) Remembered at GettysburgScott Hancock10. The Black Confederate Myth and Civil War Memory in the Trump EraKevin M. LevinPart 5. The Next Civil War11. The Confederate Battle Flag's Symbolic Shorthand: Appropriation, Dissemination, and Proliferation by U.S.-Based White Supremacists in Post–Civil War AmericaBrett A. Barnett12. Dylann Roof's Civil WarsJohn M. KinderEpilogue: "Wow, That Was a Big Mistake"Jennifer M. Murray and John M. KinderTimeline of Key Events from the Civil War Centennial to 2025ContributorsIndex