Countering the Lost Cause: Examining Civil War Commemoration in Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Abstract

The history of the Civil War has been a point of contention across the nation and in academia, regarding how it is remembered as well as who controlled this memory in years past. This thesis utilizes frameworks from regionalized studies of Civil War commemoration and applies it to a local scope, specifically Murfreesboro, Tennessee. How was Murfreesboro affected by the Civil War, and how might this have informed the way it was remembered on the landscape? How did Confederate groups affect Civil War memory and commemoration in Murfreesboro? Finally, how has the physical manifestation of this memory affected southern communities? The final chapter of this thesis focuses on African American commemoration in Murfreesboro, and how the African American Heritage Society of Rutherford County (AAHSRC) has worked to balance the narrative on the landscape. This thesis also explores a public history project with the AAHSRC which explores representing unmarked African American stories in digital form.