Sacred Ground: Americans and Their BattlefieldsUniversity of Illinois Press, 1991 - 227 pages Americans have persistently expressed fascination with the nation's most famous battlefields through patriotic rhetoric, monument building, physical preservation, and battle reenactment. But each site is also a place where different groups of Americans come to compete for ownership of cherished national stories and to argue about the meaning of war, the importance of martial sacrifice, and the significance of preserving the nation's patriotic landscape. From the anniversary speeches at Lexington and Concord that shaped the image of the minuteman to Alamo Day speeches invoking the Texas "freedom fighters" of 1836 in support of the contras in Nicaragua; from passionate arguments over the placement of Confederate monuments at Gettysburg to confrontations between militant American Indian Movement and "Custer loyalists" during the Little Bighorn centennial in 1976; from the treatment of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor to continuing attempts to maintain the purity of these places in the face of commercialization---Sacred Ground details the ongoing struggles to define, control, and subvert patriotic faith as expressed at these ceremonial sites. |
From inside the book
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Page 1
Americans and Their Battlefields Edward Tabor Linenthal. Introduction This book is about the processes of veneration ... American peoples , Americans are not used to classifying their land as " sacred . " Holy land is elsewhere , usually ...
Americans and Their Battlefields Edward Tabor Linenthal. Introduction This book is about the processes of veneration ... American peoples , Americans are not used to classifying their land as " sacred . " Holy land is elsewhere , usually ...
Page 2
... American Mecca for " pilgrimage on behalf of the American polity . " Certainly , the monuments and memorials and the neoclassical ar- chitecture of the capital express the grandeur of the American experiment and the power of patriotic ...
... American Mecca for " pilgrimage on behalf of the American polity . " Certainly , the monuments and memorials and the neoclassical ar- chitecture of the capital express the grandeur of the American experiment and the power of patriotic ...
Page 3
... American domestic and commercial space - the places where people do their daily living - are saturated with various kinds of patriotic symbols , including the widespread display and enduring veneration of the American flag , which ...
... American domestic and commercial space - the places where people do their daily living - are saturated with various kinds of patriotic symbols , including the widespread display and enduring veneration of the American flag , which ...
Page 5
... American history ? Or , as critics argue , are they activities that continue to present the dangerous illusion that war is glamorous activity ? These forms of veneration are both an articulation of patriotic ortho- doxy and a symbolic ...
... American history ? Or , as critics argue , are they activities that continue to present the dangerous illusion that war is glamorous activity ? These forms of veneration are both an articulation of patriotic ortho- doxy and a symbolic ...
Page 6
... Americans reject the heroic creation myth of Texas as an Anglo - American gloss over imperialistic acts , while others seek to restore to their rightful place the Tejanos ( Mexican Texans ) who fought in the Alamo . At Gettysburg ...
... Americans reject the heroic creation myth of Texas as an Anglo - American gloss over imperialistic acts , while others seek to restore to their rightful place the Tejanos ( Mexican Texans ) who fought in the Alamo . At Gettysburg ...
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Common terms and phrases
Alamo heroes April 19 Army Association attack battle reenactments Bearss Billings Gazette Booher Boston CBNM CBNM files celebration Cemetery centennial ceremonies CFPL Cheyenne Civil commemorative Confederate controversy Crow cultural Custer Hill declared dedication defilement Delgado director display erected Express-News fiftieth anniversary fighting film fought George George Armstrong Custer Gettysburg GNMPL files heroic historian Historical honor ican interpretation Japanese John July June June 25 land landscape Last Stand LBHA letter Lexington and Concord Little Big Little Bighorn martial Mexican military minutemen museum name change National Park Service Native Americans navy North Bridge noted Pacific war patriotic orthodoxy patriotic rhetoric peace Pres preservation quoted reconciliation Republic of Texas reunion Russell Means sacred sacrifice San Antonio Seventh Cavalry shrine Sioux soldiers speech story superintendent symbol Tejanos Texans Texas town Union USS Arizona Memorial USSAMA Utley veneration veterans visitors center World wrote
Popular passages
Page 4 - If our love of country is excited when we read the biography of our revolutionary heroes, or the history of revolutionary events, how much more still the flames of patriotism burn in our bosoms when we tread the ground where was shed the blood of our fathers, or when we move among the stones where were conceived and consummated their noble achievements.