Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War<\/i> by Megan Kate provides an innovative and, in the scope of our class readings, a useful look at the environmental and psychological impact of the Civil War.\u00a0\u00a0 Nelson argues that the Civil War reshaped the physical landscape and in turn, the cultural landscape of a country that was not ready for such a great war.\u00a0 She examines the impact of both physical and abstract \u2018ruination\u2019 in the makeup of the Confederate and Union regional attitudes and psyches. Nelson strength and weakness is her vast and diverse analysis of the ruin of the war.\u00a0 She employs a wide variety of sources including accounts from Northerners, Southerners, slaves, soldiers and civilians.\u00a0 Not only are her sources vast, the themes she studies are as well.\u00a0 She looks at environmental, domestic, urban and bodily destruction.\u00a0 Ultimately Nelson argues that the concept of ruination is a concept that had lasting effects well beyond the Civil War.<\/p>\n
Before diving into her arguments, one must understand Nelson\u2019s definition of \u2018ruination.\u2019\u00a0 She first describes ruin as a \u201cmaterial whole that has violently broken into parts; enough of these parts must remain in situ, however, that the observer can recognize what they used to be\u201d (2). \u00a0\u00a0In other words the ruin must have some semblance of its former self, at least enough to be recognizable.\u00a0 \u2018Ruination\u2019 in short, is the process of something becoming a ruin.\u00a0 In the scope of the Civil War, it was the change from the antebellum whole past, to the fragmented present of the war.\u00a0 Nelson argues that ruins, unlike anything else, capture this \u201cmoment of transformation from one time to another, from one material from to another\u201d (3).<\/p>\n
Before examining the Civil War, Nelson provides a useful history about American\u2019s fascination with physical remnants of the past.\u00a0\u00a0 Specifically she looks at the curiosity surrounding the excavated earthworks of the \u201cMound Builders\u201d who resided in the Mississippi Valley (6).\u00a0 Even American\u2019s before the war understood or at least felt the power that ruins could have on people\u2019s emotions.\u00a0 They used these excavated sites as a way to build and strengthen their national identity at a time when that identity was clearly struggling.\u00a0 Archeologists argued that the mounds were evidence that North American was the \u201ccradle of the human race\u201d (7). Nelson analogizes these mounds to the Pantheon in Greece.\u00a0 It was proof for many Americans that they had a long and glorious past.\u00a0 \u00a0Not all of this fascination was positive, some ruins of villages, silver mines and missions were sobering reminders of a boom-bust economy, failure in the Southwest and an increasingly weak American character. These two examples are very effective because they setup on of her basic arguments that the war and \u2018ruination\u2019 have dualistic power.\u00a0 They can both create and destroy.\u00a0 She shows the war in the framework of a process of destruction and reconstruction.<\/p>\n
Nelson\u2019s first chapter may be the most useful one in comparing it to our other readings. She analyzes the effect of urban destruction on not just the South, but the North as well.\u00a0 She points out that the creation of more effective military technologies and changes in federal attitudes towards civilians led to massive destruction in cities (10).\u00a0 Nelson seems more interested in the effect this had on the psyche of the cities inhabitants. \u00a0This is an innovative approach we may have touched briefly on in class but not to this extent.\u00a0 When we look ant Environmental impact we tend to look at it from how humans impact the environment.\u00a0 We often forget that the environment can affect us as well.\u00a0 Nelson shows how the destruction of cities created discussion on the nature of modern warfare.\u00a0 The \u2018ruination\u2019 of cities was an equalizing force in many ways, blurring lines between soldiers and civilians, and giving all types of people the cause to express their fears about the war.\u00a0 For example, the first ruins of Hampton, Virginia prompted a national dialogue on \u2018civilized warfare\u2019 and what that term meant (11). \u00a0Even destruction in the north created rom for discussion.\u00a0 The burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 1864 created huge debates about the legitimacy of civilian retaliation and taking responsibility for the defense of your city (12).<\/p>\n
Nelson then turns her focus from cities to the destruction of the home.\u00a0 She points out how women were inherently connected to the home in the South in the nineteenth century.\u00a0 This was the one place where women had tremendous influence as the moral guides for their children and the preserves of a sacred household.\u00a0 Therefore, the physical destruction of these homes represented a much greater \u2018ruination\u2019 of Southern culture that was deliberately done by Union soldiers (66). She shows how the war reconfigured women\u2019s notion of the home through invasions into the sphere.\u00a0 The war redefined the Southern definitions of womanhood and domesticity (70).\u00a0 It destroyed the house physically but it also destroyed as a beacon of morality and escape.<\/p>\n
Nelson does not just look at the white planter perspective who saw the union as a villainous, immoral enemy that invaded their most private spheres and threatened their Southern way of life.\u00a0 She looks at accounts from slaves who saw the destruction of the home as a destruction of oppression and as liberation (75).\u00a0\u00a0 Along with the destruction of the houses came the destruction of the land they were on.\u00a0 Nelson points out that trees were targeted as resources for fuel or shelters (80).\u00a0 While this led to the ruin of many forests, Nelson argues that the \u2018ruination\u2019 of these landscapes represented the technological advancement of man.\u00a0 Again, \u2018ruination\u2019 deconstructed and reconstructed at the same time.<\/p>\n
The most innovative part of this book is when Nelson examines the \u2018ruination\u2019 of the body during the war.\u00a0 The dismembered bodies gave visual proof of a new type of warfare and new types of technologies.\u00a0 Photography became more prominent and brought these morbid images to the public (164).\u00a0 She also engages in a discussion of rape during the war.\u00a0 It is difficult to study this subject, as most women would not tell anyone if they were assaulted.\u00a0 Women were not the only ones to feel that their bodies were under attack.\u00a0 Men suffered a massive crisis of masculinity during and after the war.\u00a0 As they returned home they found that their wives were more independent and not confined to the traditional home (170).\u00a0 Many men were injured as well and could not take care of their families like they were used to.\u00a0 Nelson discusses the difference between the permanent physical and emotional scars that emasculated a man versus the governments attempt to anoint soldiers as brave.<\/p>\n
Nelson\u2019s conclusion is the most ambitious and as a result, the most troublesome part of her book.\u00a0 The vastness of her research is matched in her conclusion.\u00a0 She argues that a fascination about ruins and historical objects, combined with a failure to confront the ruins of the Civil War developed \u201ca tendency in American culture to consume rather than directly confront the past\u201d (229).\u00a0 She then attempts to link this problem with the consumption-oriented commemoration process today.\u00a0 She cites the designs of the Oklahoma City and September 11th<\/sup> memorials.\u00a0 While this link is thought provoking, it is a big jump to take.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think Nelson provides enough historical evidence to show a direct link between these ideas.\u00a0 The massive jump in time is also problematic.\u00a0 However, in the end this book adds further ways to define the term environment that we have discussed in class.\u00a0 Environment can be a way of life.\u00a0 Southerners had their physical environments destroyed by the war, but also their physiological environment.\u00a0 Women were especially susceptible to this type of \u2018ruination\u2019 as they watched their sphere of influence be invaded and destroyed.\u00a0 Environment can have as great an effect on us as we can have on it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War by Megan Kate provides an innovative and, in the scope of our class readings, a useful look at the environmental and psychological impact of the Civil War.\u00a0\u00a0 Nelson argues that the Civil War reshaped the physical landscape and in turn, the cultural landscape of a country that … <\/p>\n