ABSTRACT
The mystic chords of memory will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched by the better angels of our nature. Abraham Lincoln’s “mystic chords of memory” resonated in “every living heart.” The conflict in Charlottesville is an evident outgrowth of what Erika Doss has described as America’s “memorial mania: an obsession with issues of memory and history and an urgent desire to express and claim those issues in visibly public contexts”. The desire to make public claims over historical import and visibility cathects most saliently with questions of how, why, and to what effect the US commemorates the Confederacy. The use of Confederate symbols and white supremacist language at Charlottesville, for instance, belie claims that pro-monument factions are merely concerned with preserving the manifest narrative. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
