In comparison to the chapter, \u201cThe Burnt District: Making Sense of Ruins in the Postwar South\u201d by K. Stephen Prince in Gregory Downs and Kate Masur\u2019s\u00a0The World the Civil War Made<\/em>, which examined how northerners have turned to look at ruins and war-torn landscapes in order to make sense of the South after the American Civil War, Thomas J. Brown\u2019s \u201cMonuments and Ruins: Atlanta and Columbia Remember Sherman\u201d specifically looked at the burning of the cities in Atlanta and Columbia and how civic memories of the events eventually took on different shapes after the war. While Prince\u2019s chapter focused on the legacy of the Civil War through the use of images and discussions of ruination in postwar South, Brown\u2019s article discussed the ways in which American memory of the Civil War turned from monuments and ruins to other forms of commemorations instead. Despite their differences, however, by linking national memory of the war to the use of public spaces for mourning in order to commemorate the war dead, both Prince and Brown successfully argued their points while simultaneously showcasing the significance of monuments and ruins in their works.<\/p>\n As depictions of the ruined South became an integral part of northern print and visual culture, \u201csouthern ruins [soon] appeared in newspaper articles, speeches, sermons, travel narratives, photographs, and illustrations\u201d[1]<\/a> throughout the North. Instead of concentrating on the rebuilding of southern cities and its towns and plantations, K. Stephen Prince\u2019s chapter in The World the Civil War Made<\/em> looked at ways in which images and discussions of ruins have played significant roles in the legacies of the American Civil War. Furthermore, Prince asserted that the \u201ctreatment of southern ruins in the print and visual culture of the North\u2026 help capture the complex range of emotions\u2014pride, resolve, conceit, optimism\u2026 [And] as they gazed on images of southern ruination, northerners pondered the meanings of war, but they also looked to the future.\u201d[2]<\/a> After years of infighting and bloody war, northerners essentially saw themselves faced with an opportunity to fundamentally change and rebuild the South anew for the future. Prince further goes on to claim that by rebuilding the South\u2019s economic base, political structures, and even social order, \u201cthe South\u2014defined as a place\u2014would be re-created, but so would the South as an idea<\/em>. Out of the ashes of the Civil War, a new South would emerge.\u201d[3]<\/a> Similar to Brown\u2019s article, Prince also looked at the burning of Atlanta in November 1864 in addition to\u00a0the devastation that took place in the cities of Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond. As one of the first widely photographed conflict in American history, the ruinations of Southern cities were well depicted and featured throughout several illustrated weeklies including Harper\u2019s Weekly<\/em> and Frank Leslie\u2019s Illustrated Weekly.<\/em>[4]<\/a><\/p>\n Focusing on the fires that burned Atlanta and Columbia, Thomas J. Brown commendably highlighted the differences and similarities between the two cities during and after the Civil War. Brown stated that while \u201cAtlanta tended to build monuments to its renewal; Columbia preferred to highlight ruins of its lost glory\u2026 monuments of Atlanta [often] address national audiences while\u2026 ruins of Columbia appealed to local elites.\u201d[5]<\/a> He further pointed out in his article that the wartime experiences of Atlanta and Columbia differed significantly from one another as one hard-fought campaign became the Union goal while the other, a \u201cwhirlwind.\u201d While Atlanta brought forth fierce fighting between Union soldiers and Confederates along with many casualties, \u201cthe destruction of Columbia revolved around face-to-face encounters between Union soldiers and local residents. Confederate military and civilian casualties were minimal.\u201d[6]<\/a> In addition to including powerful images of the fire and its aftermath in both of Columbia and Atlanta, Brown also included diarists and letter writers who commented on what they saw. According to Brown, \u201cAtlanta had burned as Union soldiers left the city, but Columbia burned shortly after they entered the city\u2026 these descriptions soon entered into print alongside dispatches from northern journalists who visited the South at the end of the war.\u201d[7]<\/a> Illustrated weeklies such as Harper\u2019s Weekly<\/em> published graphic illustrations of the fire its aftermath while famous photographers from George N. Barnard to Richard Wearn either included powerful pictures of destroyed buildings in books or documented the damage in a series of photographs.<\/p>\n The idea\u00a0of commemorating the American Civil War through memorials and ruins also played an important role in creating memory of the war in both Atlanta and Columbia. Not only did \u201ccommemorations of the burning of Atlanta and Columbia illuminate the resolution and persistence of the sectional tensions that exploded in the Civil War\u201d[8]<\/a> but monuments also helped shaped American literature and writers throughout the nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. On the other hand, the idea of the Lost Cause, a set of beliefs that sought to describe the goals of the Confederate as a heroic one\u2013despite their defeat by the Union, became an important symbol of Confederate memory and commemoration in Atlanta and Columbia after the war. Brown argued that Atlanta and Columbia had \u201cestablished many places of Confederate commemoration during the seventy-five years after the Civil War\u2026 [and] these sites did not all center on the burning of the cities, but local trauma figured prominently even when the capitals tried to look back broadly at the war records of Georgia and South Carolina.\u201d[9]<\/a>\u00a0In the end, while memory in Atlanta and Columbia turned from monuments and ruins toward new ways to commemorate the war through battle flags, license plates, and even costumed simulations of the battles fought in the conflict, Brown ends his article by stating that the burning of the two cities ultimately demonstrate the continuities and discontinuities of memory and remembrance in the postwar era.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> K. Stephen Prince, \u201cThe Burnt District: Making Sense of Ruins in the Postwar South,\u201d in The World the Civil War Made<\/em>, ed. Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 106.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Ibid, 108.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Ibid, 112.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Thomas J. Brown, \u201cMonuments and Ruins: Atlanta and Columbia Remember Sherman,\u201d Journal of American Studies<\/em> (2016): 1-2.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Ibid: 2.<\/p>\n