Varina Davis, Beauvoir, and the Fight for Confederate Memory

dc.contributor.advisorHunt, Robert
dc.contributor.authorSpencer, Evan Ruark
dc.contributor.committeememberKolar, Kelly
dc.contributor.departmentHistoryen_US
dc.date.accessioned2015-12-18T19:09:14Z
dc.date.available2015-12-18T19:09:14Z
dc.date.issued2015-10-26
dc.description.abstractVarina Davis, the First Lady of the Confederacy, had a remarkably contentious relationship with southerners after her husband’s death in 1889. She conflicted with groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy [UDC] over Civil War memory in ways that now seem counterintuitive. These battles demonstrate a fundamental incompatibility between the UDC’s “Lost Cause” memory and the actual past as southerners like Varina experienced and remembered it. The Lost Cause did not serve as a ubiquitous memory, but constructed a past that supported the missions of the UDC in the present. Any person—southern or northern—who undermined Lost Cause mythology was a threat to the Daughters and their mission. Varina’s struggle with southern groups throughout the last years of her life illustrates the incompatibility between the Lost Cause and the actual history of the Civil War.
dc.description.degreeM.A.
dc.identifier.urihttp://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/handle/mtsu/4739
dc.publisherMiddle Tennessee State University
dc.subjectBeauvoir
dc.subjectCivil War
dc.subjectCivil War Memory
dc.subjectConfederate States of America
dc.subjectLost Cause
dc.subjectVarina Davis
dc.subject.umiHistory
dc.thesis.degreegrantorMiddle Tennessee State University
dc.thesis.degreelevelMasters
dc.titleVarina Davis, Beauvoir, and the Fight for Confederate Memory
dc.typeThesis

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