Saint Louis University Graduate School

Doctoral Project/Dissertation Proposal/Prospectus

Student’s Name: Robin Hanson SID/SS#: 000133170

Mailing Address: 14170 W. Sunrise Lake Dr.

De Soto, Missouri 63020

Major Field: American Studies Degree Sought: Ph.D.

Day Phone: 314/413/1636

Email: hansonra@slu.edu

Student’s Advisor: Joseph Heathcott, Ph.D.

I. Title:

The National Cemetery: Race and Reconciliation in a Contested

Landscape, 1865-1948
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 2

II. The Problem

This dissertation establishes that the national cemetery is a contested, historically

constructed, political landscape subject to the implications of race, gender, and regional

identity. The evolution of the national cemetery and the struggles documented

throughout this evolution provides the tools for examining these changes – the rituals, the

iconography, and the exclusion/segregation/inclusion of particular groups. This

dissertation explores the contested political landscape of the National Cemeteries through

the examination of the rituals and symbolic displays in the National Cemeteries between

1865 and 1935. The changes to these areas in the National Cemeteries accompanied the

social construction of an American heritage based on the dominate view of a white,

paternal hegemony.

The over arching issue of the dissertation is to document the malleable nature of

the National Cemetery and its reliance on the prevailing cultural expectation. Specific

points include, first, the rituals, both government and private, as these are the tools by

which the current ideology is formed and passed on to succeeding generations. The

second point is the elevation of importance of the National Cemeteries due to their role in

the reconciliation between North and South, which resulted in the sacrifice of the needs

and desires of African-Americans in favor of the Nation. The third point is that the

National Cemetery provides a physical mnemonic site of the prevailing cultural and

political attitudes towards race, gender, and duty to nation through the monuments,

headstones, location of graves, mass graves, and iconography. The fourth and final point
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 3

reviews the segregation of the cemetery and the exclusion of or limited inclusion of

groups identified as “other” and how this definition changes over time.

Prior to the American Civil War, most soldiers who fought for the federal

government lay buried where they fell. With the passage of the Act of July 17, 1862,

including section 18, “That the President of the United States shall have power, whenever

in his opinion it shall be expedient, to purchase cemetery grounds and cause them to be

securely enclosed, to be used as a national cemetery for the soldiers who shall die in the

service of the country,” the federal government attained responsibility for the burial and

maintenance of federally-funded cemeteries for fallen Union soldiers. 1 Within the same

year, the United States government established 14 national cemeteries, known originally

as Soldier’s Cemeteries, for the burial of Union soldiers. Today, the National Cemeteries

are divided between a number of government agencies including the Veteran’s

Administration that oversees 124 national cemeteries in 39 states (and Puerto Rico), the

American Battle Monuments Commission in charge of 24 overseas national cemeteries,

the Department of Interior that maintains 14 national cemeteries (through the auspices of

the National Park Service), and the Department of the Army, which retains control over

the premier National Cemetery, Arlington.

The National Cemeteries initially functioned to fulfill an immediate need to bury

the mounting numbers of Union war dead. Limited numbers of POW confederate

soldiers were buried in national cemeteries, again because repatriating them to the south

was not an option at the time and a number of these soldiers were later returned at the

bequest of Southern ladies memorial groups. Colored Troops, free individuals, but still
1
Monro MacCloskey, Hallowed Ground: Our National Cemeteries (New York: Richard
Rosens Press, Inc., 1968).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 4

not citizens, were buried in the cemeteries as befitting other Union soldiers, however,

they were segregated in death just as they were in life. Also buried in the cemeteries,

people of either race, described simply as refugees or simply civilians – people caught up

in the politics of the war and subject to the confines of the military machine.

Limited transportation, sporadic identification of the deceased, and lack of

refrigeration for storing the bodies required local burial for the deceased. Existing

cemeteries proved too small to provide enough land for the large number of burials,

leading to the government’s allocation of funds to purchase land for use as national burial

grounds. The fact that most of the battles occurred in Southern states also added to the

difficulty of burial space, as Union soldiers were not welcomed in Southern controlled

cemeteries and federal acquisition and control over the graves of Union soldiers proved

imperative.

As a State-sanctioned cultural landscape, the National Cemetery serves as a

physical site for the public memory and cultural heritage of the United States. It is

through this role that the racial, cultural, and political problems arise. Lewis Pierce, in

addressing the importance of material culture in the conveyance of American history and

heritage suggests that, “artifacts and landscapes that are labeled “historic” commonly are

buried in semi-religious manna, and their preservation is encouraged with evangelical

zeal.2 Through the State’s perpetual care and ritualistic devotion, the National Cemetery

System continues to function as a persistent mnemonic site for a public American

heritage and the means by which the government instructs the individual citizen in the

2
Peirce Lewis, "Learning from Looking: Geographic and Other Writing About the American Cultural
Landscape," American Quarterly 35, no. 3 (1983).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 5

historical vision of the State. Yet the memory preserved and perpetuated often exhibits a

myopic focus consciously removing or ignoring conflicting or disconcerting images.

The prevailing National Cemetery research centers primarily on the creation of

the National Cemetery System and subsequent changes in regulation and growth. The

architecture, monuments, and patriotism associated with Arlington National Cemetery

elicits the most scholarly interest – especially in the last twenty years. 3 Arlington’s

earliest claim to national interest rested on its historical ties to the South – The family of

Robert E. Lee’s wife, Mary Ann Custis owned Arlington and the estate and when war

broke the family fled the estate, but attempted to retain ownership even though Federal

troops took control of it. The use of the estate as a cemetery was a calculated attempt to

punish Lee and his family. In 1882, after Robert and Mary Ann’s deaths, the Supreme

Court ruled that the estate belonged to the Custis family, but with the existence of the

National Cemetery and graves located immediately outside the mansion, the estate was in

turned sold to the federal government. 4 Later, with Arlington’s role in the reconciliation

between North and South and its proximity to Washington, D.C., Arlington evolved into

the most prominent National Cemetery and ultimately attained the status of national

shrine.

3
The books include works by Philip Bigler, In Honored Glory : Arlington National Cemetery, the Final
Post (Arlington, Va.: Vandamere Press, 1986), William Alan Blair, Cities of the Dead : Contesting the
Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914, Civil War America (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2004), Lorraine Jacyno Dieterle, Arlington National Cemetery : A Nation's Story Carved in
Stone (San Francisco, Calif.: Pomegranate Military Women's Press, 2001), James Edward Peters, Arlington
National Cemetery: Shrine to American's Heroes (Woodbine House, 2001).
4
Brent K. Ashabranner and Jennifer Ashabranner, A Grateful Nation : The Story of Arlington National
Cemetery (New York: Putnam, 1990), Karen Byrne, ""We Have a Claim on This Estate: Remembering
Slavery at Arlington House," Cultural Resources Management 25, no. 4 (2002), Karl Decker and Angus
McSween, Historic Arlington. A History of the National Cemetery from Its Establishment to the Present
Time (Washington, D.C.,: The Decker and McSween publishing company, 1892).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 6

Race relations and sectional reconciliation garners some research, especially

concerning Arlington and the inclusion of confederate dead at the end of the nineteenth

century, but normally as freestanding events, rather than part of an overarching

examination of race relationship as expressed in the National Cemeteries. Outside the

confines of the cemetery modern scholarly attention centers on the dismantling of

Reconstruction gains in African American civil liberties through Jim Crow laws and

Supreme Court decisions, the racial implications of post-bellum monuments in the North

and the South, commemorating the war, and the reconciliation of the North and South. 5

This reunion, often depicted as the reunification of a “white brotherhood” depends more

on an emerging world vision than around the domestic race issue.6

An examination of the changes exhibited in the National Cemetery provides

insight into the cultural struggles occurring outside the walls of the cemetery. The first of

these changes include finding and relocating the remains of Union soldiers to national

cemeteries immediately after the war, especially in the South to the exclusion of the

Rebel dead. Even though African-Americans fought for the union, their sacrifice did not

allow them complete inclusion into American society, even in death. Colored Troops

who died while in service gained the right for burial in national cemeteries, but in

segregated sections. This issue of segregation also factors in to the reconciliation of

5
See W. E. B. Du Bois and David L. Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois : A Reader, 1st ed. (New York: H. Holt and
Co., 1995), Michael G. Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory : The Transformation of Tradition in American
Culture, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf, 1991), George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness : How
White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), David Lowenthal,
"Past Time, Present Place: Landscape and Memory," Geographical Review 65 (1975), Greg Meyerson,
"Race Matters: Analyzing the Politics of Patriotism," Omni 16, no. 5 (1994), Kirk Savage, Standing
Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves : Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1997), Neil J. Smelser et al., America Becoming : Racial Trends and Their
Consequences, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2001).
6
Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves : Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America,
Paul A. Shackel, Memory in Black and White : Race, Commemoration, and the Post-Bellum Landscape
(Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 7

North and South, but from a far different point of view. Confederate graves in Arlington

are also segregated, but at the request of both Northern and Southern interests. There still

existed a sense of betrayal of the memory of those who died if the two warring sides lay

buried next to each other.

Changes in the ritual or public ceremonies associated with the National

Cemeteries also provide clues to the racial and sectional differences. Because of federal

control, the national cemeteries provided refuge in the South for recently freed slaves to

publicly display their appreciation and support for the federal government through public

ceremonies on Emancipation Day and Decoration Day during and immediately following

the War. As time passed, the prevailing issue turned to reunification of North and South

and the movement of confederate POW dead, scattered throughout cemeteries in the

North, to a separate section at Arlington provided a major physical site for the

reunification. Allowing for a different shape and symbolism on confederate markers also

assisted with this change. The desire for unification resulted in the demotion of the needs

of the African American and the National Cemeteries serve as an important medium for

conveying this unification.

The recently freed African slaves are sacrificed at the altar of National Unity. The

North takes refuge in the fact that slavery is abolished, the Freedman’s Bureau is in place

to provide opportunities to the freed slaves, and schools are now available. For the

North, the view shifts to one of expansion (western and Caribbean) and reconciliation.

However, for the South, their viewpoint is much different. Their economy remains in

shambles and there remains little interest in the North for assisting Southern recovery.

When the federal government finally agrees to include the Southern dead in the national
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 8

cemeteries (in the Northern cemeteries) and provide for the expenses involved, the South

viewed the act as a sincere and poignant expression of reunion. To Northerners and

Southerners the issue of reconciliation trumped the issue of civil rights for African-

Americans; not just in the South, but also throughout the United States.

The changes occurring in the National Cemeteries provide a rich physical history of

the racial and sectional turmoil following the American Civil War. As a socially

constructed landscape, the National Cemeteries exhibit the dynamic nature of American

culture. This dissertation identifies the National Cemeteries as a primary source for

research into race relations and American cultural history, especially during the formative

years following the American Civil War.

II. Bibliography

Archival Collections:

Library of Congress
United States Government Documents located Saint Louis University
NAACP

Periodicals and Newspapers:

St. Louis Post Dispatch

St. Louis Star
New York Times
New York Tribune
St. Louis Argus
Richmond Dispatch
Charlotte Observer
Nation
Harper’s Weekly, located at SLU Pius XII Memorial Library, Saint Louis
University, St. Louis, Missouri (and online at 19th century master index)

Books:

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Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 9

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National Cemetery. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

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Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 12

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and the Landscapes of Southern Memory, edited by Cynthia Mills. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 2003.
Cox, Karen L. "The Confederate Monument at Arlington." In Monuments to the Lost
Cause: Women, Arts, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory, edited by Cynthia
Mills. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003.
French, Stanley. "The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount
Auburn and the "Rural Cemetery" Movement." In Death in America, edited by
David Stannard, 69-91. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1975.
Goody, Jack. "Death and the Interpretation of Culture." In Death in America, edited by
David Stannard, 1-8. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1975.
Gundaker, Grey. "At Home on the Other Side: African American Burials as
Commemorative Landscapes." In Places of Commemoration: Search for Identity
and Landscape Design, edited by Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, 25-54.
Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, 2001.
Lewis, Pierce. "Common Landscapes as Historic Documents." In History from Things,
edited by Steven and W. David Kingery Lubar, 115-39. Washington D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 15

Prown, Jules David. "The Truth of Material Culture." In History from Things, edited by
Steven and W. David Kingery Lubar, 1-19. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1993.
Stern, Michael A. "The National Cemetery System: Politics, Place, and Contemporary
Cemetery Design." In Places of Commemoration: Search for Identity and
Landscape Design, edited by Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn. Washington, D.C.:
Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, 2001.
Whitaker, Walter W. III. "The Contemporary American Funeral Ritual." In Ritual and
Belief: Readings in the Anthropology of Religion, edited by David Hicks, 304-10.
NY:NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2002.
Zipf, Catherine. "Marking Union Victory in the South: The Construction of the National
Cemeteyr System." In Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the
Landscapes of Southern Memory, edited by Cynthia Mills, 27-45. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 2003.

Articles:

"Arlington Cemetery." American Architect (1904).

Bashir, Catherine W. "Landmarks of Power: Building a Southern Past." Southern Culture
5, no. 46 (1994).
Bellah, Robert N. "Civil Religion in America." Journal of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences 96, no. 1 (1967): 1-21.
Blake, C.N. "The Usable Past, the Comfortable Past, and the Civic Past: Memory in
Contemporary America." Cultural Anthropology 14, no. 3 (1999).
Blight, David W. "'What Will Peace among the Whites Bring?': Reunion and Race in the
Struggle over the Memory Of..." Massachusetts Review 34, no. 3 (1993).
Blight, David W. "The Civil War in History and Memory." Chronicle of Higher
Education 48, no. 44 (2002).
Brown, Daniel A. "National Cemeteries: Unique Cultural Resources of the National Park
Service." Cultural Resources Management 7, no. 3 (1984): 11-12.
Byrne, Karen. ""We Have a Claim on This Estate: Remembering Slavery at Arlington
House"." Cultural Resources Management 25, no. 4 (2002).
Charleton, James H. "Why We Preserve--How We Preserve: Commemorating the 50th
Anniversary of World War II." Cultural Resources Management 14, no. 8 (1991).
Doss, Erika. "Death, Art and Memory in the Public Sphere: The Visual and Material
Culture of Grief in Contemporary America." Mortality 7, no. 1 (2002): 63-82.
Francaviglia, Richard V. "The Cemetery as an Evolving Cultural Landscape." Annals of
the Association of American Geographers 61, no. 3 (1971): 501-09.
Francis, Doris. "Cemeteries as Cultural Landscapes." Mortality 8, no. 2 (2003): 222-27.
Frisch, Michael. "American History and the Structure of Collective Memory: A Modest
Exercise in Empirical Iconography." Journal of American History 75, no. 4
(1989).
Gaust, Drew Gilpin. "Altars of Sacrifice: Confedreate Women and the Narrative of War."
Journal of American History 76, no. 4 (1990).
Godsil, Rachel D. "Race Nuisance: The Politics of Law in the Jim Crow Era." Michigan
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 16

Law Review 105 (2006): 50527. -

Grant, Susan Mary. "Landscapes of Memory." History Today 56, no. 3 (2006).
———. "Raising the Dead: War, Memory and American National Identity." Nations &
Nationalism 11, no. 4 (2005): 509-29.
Grow, Matthew J. "The Shadow of the Civil War: A Historiography of Civil War
Memory." American Nineteenth Century History 4, no. 2 (2003): 77-103.
Hanley, Ray. "The Gray Reunion." Civil War Times Illustrated (1992).
Horton, James Oliver. "Presenting: History: The Perils of Telling America's Racial
Story." The Public Historian 21, no. 3 (1999): 21.
Jones, Richard W. "Confederate Cemeteries and Monuments in Mississippi."
Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society 8 (1904): 87-119.
Kelly, C. Brian. "For the Confederate Veterans, the Conclave of 1932 Would Be a
Reunion to End All Reunions...Literally." Military History 20, no. 4 (2003).
Kook, Rebecca. "The Shifting Status of African Americans in American Collective
History." Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 2 (1998).
Lewis, Peirce. "Learning from Looking: Geographic and Other Writing About the
American Cultural Landscape." American Quarterly 35, no. 3 (1983): 242-61.
Linenthal, Edward T. "Committing History in Public." Journal of American History 81
(1994): 986-91.
———. "Heritage and History: The Dilemmas of Interpretation." Rally on the High
Ground: The National Park Service Symposium on the Civil War 42 (2001).
Lowenthal, David. "Past Time, Present Place: Landscape and Memory." Geographical
Review 65 (1975): 1-36.
———. "History and Memory." The Public Historian 19, no. 2 (1997).
Meyerson, Greg. "Race Matters: Analyzing the Politics of Patriotism." Omni 16, no. 5
(1994).
Page, Brian D. "Stand by the Flag: Nationalism and African-American Celebrations of
the Fourth of July in Memphis, 1866-1897." Tennessee HIstorical Quarterly 59
(1999): 285-301.
Parker, Franklin. "Robert E. Lee, George Peabody, and Section Reunion." Journal of
Education 78, no. 1 (2003).
"Our Soldier Unknown." Quartermaster Review (1937).
Reimers, Eva. "Death and Identity: Graves and Funerals as Cultural Communication."
Mortality 4, no. 2 (1999): 147-66.
Roberts, Nancy A. "The Afterlife of Civil War Prisons and Their Dead." 361. University
of Oregon: Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 57-11, Section: A,
page: 4902., 1996.
Rugg, Julia. "Defining the Place of Burial: What Makes a Cemetery a Cemetery?"
Mortality 5, no. 3 (2000): 259-75.
Smith, Steven D. "A Civil War Cemetery and African-American Heritage." Cultural
Resources Management 20, no. 2 (1997): 27-28.
Steere, Ed. "Shrines of the Honored Dead: A Study of the National Cemetery System.
Reprinted with Permission of the Quartermaster Review (1953, 1954)."
Quartermaster Review (1953 - 1954).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 17

Thelen, David. "Memory and American History." Journal of American History 75

(1989): 1117-29.
"Tomb of the Unknown Soldier." Quartermaster Review (1963).
Waldstreicher, David. "Rites of Rebellion, Rites of Assent: Celebrations, Print Culture,
and the Origins of American Nationalism." Journal of American History 82
(1995): 37-61.
Wallenstein, Peter. "Reconstruction, Segregation, and Miscegenation: Interracial
Marriage and the Law in the Lower South, 1865-1900." American Nineteenth
Century History 6, no. 1 (2005): 57-76.
Wensyel, James W. "Return to Gettysburg." American History Illustrated 28, no. 3
(1993).
Winberry, John J. "Lest We Forget: The Confedeate Monument and the Southern
Townscape." Southeastern Geographer 23 (1983): 107-21.
Young, F.W. "Graveyards and Social Structure." Rural Sociology 25 (1960): 446-50.
Zeitz, Joshua. "Native Son." American Heritage 52, no. 7 (2001).

Dissertations:

Cass, Kelsey R. "None Else of Name: The Origin and Early Development of the United
States National Cemetery System." KRC, Dissertation Abstracts International.
Volume: 62-07, Section: A, page: 2536., 2001.
Doran, Gerard. "Family Grief Experience at the Death of a Child in the Mexican
American Community." 398. Fielding Graduate Institute: Dissertation Abstracts
International. Volume: 63-05, Section: B, page: 2578., 2001.
Eggman, Susan Talamantes. "Testimonios from the Intersection of Mexican American
Culture and an American Death." 431. Portland State University: Dissertation
Abstracts International. Volume: 63-06, Section: A, page: 2366., 2002.
Farrell, James Joseph. "The Dying of Death: The Meaning and Management of Death in
America, 1830 - 1920." 333. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:
Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 41-02, Section: A, page: 0769.,
1980.
Krepps, Karen Lee. "Black Mortuary Practices in Southeast Michigan." 459. Wayne State
University: Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 51-06, Section: A,
page: 2067., 1990.
Mandell, Elisa C. "The Birth of Angels: Posthumous Portraits of Infants and Children in
Mexican Art." University of California, Los Angeles: Dissertation Abstracts
International. Volume: 65-09, Section: A, page: 3193., 2004.
Morrison, Suzanne Shumate. "Mexico's "Day of the Dead" in San Francisco California:
A Study of Continuity and Change in a Popular Religious Festival." 604.
Graduate Theological Union: Thesis (PH.D.)--GRADUATE THEOLOGICAL
UNION. 1992. 604p., 1992.
Mosley, Erma Dianne. "The History and Social Context of an African American Family
Cemetery and Its Influence on Social Organization and Mental Health." 280.
Texas Woman's University: Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 52-10,
Section: A, page: 3738., 1991.
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 18

Neff, John Randall. "Heroic Eminent Death: The Redefinition of American Nationality
in the Commemoration of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War Soldier Dead."
403. University of California, Riverside: Dissertation Abstracts International.
Volume: 60-02, Section: A, page: 0524., 1998.
Oltjenbruns, Kevin Ann. "Ethnicity and the Grief Response: Mexican-American and
Anglo College Students." 127. University of Colorado at Boulder: Dissertation
Abstracts International. Volume: 51-06, Section: A, page: 1960., 1989.
Piehler, Guenter Kurt. "Remembering War the American Way: 1783 to the Present." 311.
Rutgers The State University of New Jersey: Dissertation Abstracts International.
Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 1055., 1990.

IV. Review of Related Literature

The United States National Cemetery System functions as both a repository of our

military dead as well as a physical reminder of a national unity and identity secured

through the sacrifice of thousands in the American Civil War. The National Cemeteries

modify our impressions of death and serve as a template for the understanding of cultural

history through a cultural lens informed by, but not limited to history. On the surface, the

cemetery serves as a tribute to those who served honorably in the military, yet upon

closer analysis it also reflects and influences the perpetuation of an American patriotic

and nationalistic ideology.

I argue in my dissertation that the national cemetery is a contested, historically

constructed, political landscape subject to the implications of race, gender, and regional

identity. The evolution oft the national cemetery and the struggles documented

throughout this evolution provides the tools for examining these changes – the rituals, the

iconography, and the exclusion/segregation/inclusion of particular groups. This

dissertation explores the contested political landscape of the National Cemeteries through

the examination of the rituals and symbolic displays in the National Cemeteries between

1865 and 1935. The changes to these areas in the National Cemeteries accompanied the
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 19

social construction of an American heritage based on the dominant view of a white,

paternal hegemony.

The American Cemetery

Given the inevitability and definitiveness of death, it is not surprising that in all

cultures, as far as our knowledge goes, the act of dying captured the thoughts and

imagination of human beings. Intricately intertwined with religion, the study of death

remains a primary issue in the field of human consciousness. Edward Tylor, in

establishing the concept of Animism, suggested that religion resulted from humans’

questions about the soul or life energy. 7 At the foundation of religion is the need to

provide an answer for life and death, especially death. Throughout history, burials are

associated with transcendental beliefs from the earliest intentional burials of the

Neanderthals to modern times. Supporting the importance of the cemetery and its tie to

religion, De Waal Malefijt, following Tylor’s lead, proposed that, “Evidence of graves,

burial rites, and funeral offerings is usually considered to reflect the origin of religion." 8

Keeping in line with the view that religion provides the social structure for

society, W. Lloyd Warner analyzes the cemetery as a 'collective representation', a sacred,

symbolic replica of the living community that expressed many of the community's basic

beliefs and values. The funeral symbolically removes the individual from linear time and

translates the profane person into the eternal sacred realm. Warner's definition of the

cemetery as a material artifact enables historical and cross-cultural comparison; and it

supports a deeper level of analysis: The symbols of death say what life is and those of life
7
Edward B. Tylor, "Animism," in Ritual and Belief: Readings in the Anthropology of
Religion, ed. David Hicks (NY:NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2002).
8
Annemarie De Waal Malefijt, Religion and Culture; an Introduction to Anthropology of
Religion (New York,: Macmillan, 1968). pg 111
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 20

define what death must be.”9 Materially, the cemetery is a specific type of socially

bounded space where daily funerals and Memorial Day celebrations ritually order

relationships between the spiritual dead and the secular world of the living.

Warner’s analysis of these annual remembrance ceremonies remains unsurpassed

in cemetery literature and defines the sacred purpose of the cemetery as the site where the

living confront the reality of their own death and possibly receive comfort. Although

specifically individualistic in his approach to the cemetery, the recognition of the

importance of the cemetery as remembrance also applies to its application for the State,

“the cemetery functions as an enduring physical emblem, a substantial and visible symbol

of the agreement among individuals that they will not let each other die.”10

Obviously, the American cemetery fulfills the traditional expectations of a

cemetery. Yet, American cemeteries owe their history to a static past and David Sloane

explored this view in the seminal work, Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American

History. Although the history is static, he proposes that the function of the cemetery is

actually dynamic, much in the same way that farms, cities, and suburbs are constantly

changing in conjunction with cultural changes.11

Adding to this viewpoint, Richard Meyers proposes that the “American cemetery

is a window through which we can view the hopes, fears, and designs of the generation

9
W. Lloyd Warner, The Living and the Dead : A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans,
vol. 5 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959). pg 320
10
Ibid. pg 285
11
David Charles Sloane, The Last Great Necessity : Cemeteries in American History,
John Hopkins pbk. ed., Creating the North American Landscape. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1995). "Sloane's pioneering history of the development of
American cemeteries concentrated on the attitudes of the Protestant middle-class toward
death and burial from 1790 to 1980. The study focused on four paradigmic cemeteries
which served as models for American cemetery design and management."
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 21

that created it and is buried within it." 12 He also argues that the cemetery is a cultural

text readily viewed as if a written document, providing insight into the historical

dynamics of the culture associated with a particular period and location. As long as the

individual takes the time and puts in the research necessary to comprehend the language

employed by the cemetery, the narrative is legible.

Thus the cemetery, as material culture, is an object-based branch of cultural

anthropology or cultural history. The objective of a cultural investigation is the belief of

individuals and the belief of groups of individuals - societies. 13 A culture's most

fundamental beliefs are often so widely understood, so generally shared, and accepted,

that they never need to be stated. They are therefore invisible to outsiders. Indeed,

beliefs may exist that are so ingrained that people pay little attention to their existence,

and some of beliefs may illicit such pain and suffering that people consciously suppress

or ignore them. This is where Geertz's thick description becomes instrumental in

discerning the deeper purpose of the cemetery. Although Christian ideology provides the

primary framework for the communal response to death in the United States, the

interpretation and comfort of its message rests with the presentation and its conformity

with social ideology and expectations. In the National Cemetery, this presentation rests

in the rigidity of military regulations related to the symbolism based on a particular

interpretation of American history.

12
Richard E. Meyer, Ethnicity and the American Cemetery (Bowling Green, Ohio:
Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993). pg 6
13
Jules David Prown, "The Truth of Material Culture," in History from Things, ed. Steven
and W. David Kingery Lubar (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993). pg
3
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 22

As simply a burial ground for fallen soldiers, the National Cemeteries fulfilled the

established role of the cemetery. As the years passed and veterans who survived the

fighting began requesting the right to be buried next to their fellow soldiers, the National

Cemeteries assumed a secondary purpose and that of sacred memory. The changes began

with the government allowing veterans and then their wives and children permission for

burial in the National Cemeteries. More durable marble markers replaced the original

wooden grave markers provided by the government. The conformity of these markers

and their permanency inspired new interpretations of the National Cemetery’s image to

the American public.14

The National Cemetery System

Although unique to the world and its structural history, “it is the single most

visible publicly owned cemetery system in America.”15 British author Susan Grant states

that, “War dead play a central role in the development of nationalism – and it is

especially important in America as the National cemeteries assume the physical location

of a “cult of the dead”. 16 Along this same line, Robert Pogue Harrison posits that “only
14
Laurel K. Gabel, "Ritual, Regalia and Remembrance: Fraternal Symbolism and
Gravestones," Association for Gravestone Studies 11 (1994), Frederick J.E. and Michael
DiBlasi Gorman, "Gravestone Iconography and Mortuary Ideology," Ethnohistory 28, no.
1 (1981), Douglas Keister, Going out in Style: The Architecture of Death, Facts on File
(NY: Facts on Files, Inc., 1997), Ted Schaefer and Lola M. Schaefer, Arlington National
Cemetery, Symbols of Freedom (Chicago: Heinemann Library, 2006), Michael A. Stern,
"The National Cemetery System: Politics, Place, and Contemporary Cemetery Design,"
in Places of Commemoration: Search for Identity and Landscape Design, ed. Joachim
Wolschke-Bulmahn (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard
University, 2001).
15
Kelsey R. Cass, "None Else of Name: The Origin and Early Development of the United
States National Cemetery System.," (Claremont Graduate University: Dissertation
Abstracts International. Volume: 62-07, Section: A, page: 2536., 2001), Sloane, The Last
Great Necessity : Cemeteries in American History.
16
Susan Mary Grant, "Raising the Dead: War, Memory and American National Identity,"
Nations & Nationalism 11, no. 4 (2005, October).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 23

the dead can grant us legitimacy…humans bury not simply to achieve closure and effect a

separation from the dead but also and above all to humanize the ground on which they

build their worlds and found their histories.” 17 Thus, the public perception of the

National Cemeteries as a sacred shrine to nationhood provides the basis for our

continuing claim to ownership of America. For a country with such a short time span,

this sanctification of the land is paramount.

Guenter Piehler goes on to examine how public rituals, monuments, and

organizations designed to interpret and preserve the memory of past wars have changed

over time and what they suggest about the nature of American society. 18 Anthony Smith

ties nationalism to ancestral worship by suggesting that, “the graves of the forbearers

testify to the uniqueness and antiquity of particular landscapes” while at the same time

validating the nationalist claims of their descendants to the land itself. 19 Michel Ragon
20
specifically identified war memorials as ancestral worship reconstituted.” Edward

Everett infuses the emerging American identity with these ancestral images through the

inclusion of nationalistic pride in the design of Mt. Auburn Cemetery. He continued this

focus and tied the ideas of American exceptionalism directly with the honored war dead

through his address at the dedication of Gettysburg Soldier’s Cemetery, later known as

Gettysburg National Cemetery.21

17
Robert Pogue Harrison, The Dominion of the Dead (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2003).
18
Guenter Kurt Piehler, "Remembering War the American Way: 1783 to the Present,"
(Rutgers The State University of New Jersey: Dissertation Abstracts International.
Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 1055., 1990).
19
Anthony D. Smith, "Chosen Peoples," (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press,
2003).
20
Michel Ragon, "The Space of Death : A Study of Funerary Architecture, Decoration,
and Urbanism," (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983).
21
Edward Everett, Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions, 9th ed. (Boston: Little,
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 24

America is “the embodiment of an idea” a nation of immigrants with ancestors

buried far from home. Therefore, the national cemetery, so specifically identified with

the civil war and the ascendancy of the federal government over state interests, is

especially tied into nationalistic identity and the concept or idea of a country. Along this

same line true national reunification could only be sealed with the blood of the fallen….

the ultimate sacrifice necessary to validate the nation.22

The role of the military cemetery originated as one of the principal custodians of

the memory of the Revolution and parades served as one of the major rituals used to

commemorate this conflict. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, newly

created military cemeteries and public monuments played an increasingly important role

in commemorating war and national identity. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries, the federal government took on an expanded role in building war memorials,

cemeteries, and the preservation of historic battlefields.23

However, ancient mortuary customs preceded ours, and with the guidance of

Edward Everett, merely reinvented the practice of honoring the war dead. 24 Although

Americans considered the practice of burying war dead together and with specific

military regalia as a necessity of war, the military funerals, and burials by the Hellenic

Greek and the Athenians predated them by several thousand years. The Greeks used

memorials and sarcophagi depicting the deceased in heroic battle scenes as a

Brown, 1878).
22
Piehler, "Remembering War the American Way: 1783 to the Present."
23
MacCloskey, Hallowed Ground: Our National Cemeteries, Ed Steere, "Shrines of the
Honored Dead: A Study of the National Cemetery System. Reprinted with Permission of
the Quartermaster Review (1953, 1954)," Quartermaster Review (1953 - 1954).
24
Michel Ragon, The Space of Death : A Study of Funerary Architecture, Decoration, and
Urbanism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 25

remembrance of their bravery and service to their country-state. For Greek soldiers who

died in battle, Athenians erected monumental stelae on the anonymous graves. Etched

into the markers, a passerby could read the names of the tribes and even sometimes those

of the combatants themselves not unlike the memorials dedicated to the memory of our

war dead in the national cemeteries.

The Civil War provided Americans an experience with death greater and more

poignant than earlier examples of death in the past because of its prominence in national

identity and the merging of personal and national memory. The victory for the Federal

troops in the Civil War resulted in a federal basis for the growth of a distinctly American

identity, one not readily evident in the regional differences expressed before the War.

Varying viewpoints exist to the role of the national cemetery and sectional differences

start with John Neff’s argument that the implementing of the national cemeteries

contributed to the persistence of postwar sectional hostility, creating an additional, deeply

emotional obstacle to reunion.25

Catherine Zipf and William Alan Blair examine regional responses immediately

following the war and white southern resistance to the National Cemetery System. Both

authors maintain that the use of National Cemeteries in the South to remind Southerners

of the perceived righteousness of the Union cause led to increasing southern resentment.26

Although these regional accounts accurately portray regional biases immediately

25
John Randall Neff, "Heroic Eminent Death: The Redefinition of American Nationality
in the Commemoration of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War Soldier Dead," (University
of California, Riverside: Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 60-02, Section: A,
page: 0524., 1998).
26
Blair, Cities of the Dead : Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-
1914, Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson, Monuments to the Lost Cause : Women,
Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory, 1st ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 2003).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 26

following the war, with the passing of time the National Cemeteries, especially

Gettysburg and Arlington, actually function as the catalyst for emotional and spiritual

reunification.

The vast majority of scholarly work related to the National Cemeteries centers on

the formation of the cemeteries, the prominent individuals interred, and the process

involved in establishing specific cemeteries. 27 Ed Steere, Monro MacCloskey, and

Kelsey R. Cass provide three histories of the National Cemetery System as a whole, again

focusing on the historiography rather than a cultural or political interpretation. 28 In the

past ten years, Arlington gained increasing popularity as a number of books exploring the

prominence and sacred nature of Arlington provide the majority of the focus on the

National Cemeteries.29
27
John W. Busey and David G. Martin, The Last Full Measure : Burials in the Soldiers'
National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 1st ed. (Hightstown, NJ: Longstreet House, 1988),
Tony Fusco, The Story of the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery (St. Louis, Mo.:
[s.n.], 1967), Lucy Lawliss, Brian Morris, and Ruthanne L. Mitchell, Andrew Johnson
National Cemetery, Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, Greeneville, Tennessee
([Atlanta]: National Park Service, Southeast Regional Office, Office of Cultural
Resources, Cultural Resources Planning Division, 1993), Charles W. Snell, Sharon A.
Brown, and United States. National Park Service., Antietam National Battlefield and
National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, Maryland : An Administrative History (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior National Park Service, 1986), Frederick Tilberg, Antietam
National Battlefield Site, Maryland, Rev. ed. (Washington,: 1961), Karen Wagner,
Bivouac of the Dead : Oklahoma's National Cemetery (Muskogee, OK (P.O. Box 2334,
Muskogee 74402-2334): K. Wagner, 1992).
28
Kelsey R. Cass, "None Else of Name: The Origin and Early Development of the
United States National Cemetery System." (KRC, Dissertation Abstracts International.
Volume: 62-07, Section: A, page: 2536., 2001), MacCloskey, Hallowed Ground: Our
National Cemeteries, Steere, "Shrines of the Honored Dead: A Study of the National
Cemetery System. Reprinted with Permission of the Quartermaster Review (1953,
1954)."
29
Karen L. Cox, "The Confederate Monument at Arlington," in Monuments to the Lost
Cause: Women, Arts, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory, ed. Cynthia Mills
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), Dieterle, Arlington National
Cemetery : A Nation's Story Carved in Stone, Richard L. Hembra and United States.
General Accounting Office., Arlington National Cemetery Authority, Process, and
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 27

Susan Grant suggests that the American Civil War proved instrumental in

retaining the national status of the United States and the Northern win secured the Nation

as a single entity.30 Julia Rugg proposes that war cemeteries “serves more as a means of

recalling the horror of a particular catastrophe than as a context for commemorating the

individual”.31 Both of these authors reflect on the manipulation of a civil American

identity through the ceremonial and ritualistic presentation of our war dead. However, at

the same time, Grant fails to recognize that the Civil War and the commemoration

following it are the acts that resulted in a communal national identity replacing the earlier

supremacy of state identification. As to our war cemeteries, they reflect both the

individual nature of the deceased as well as the socially constructed identity of a nation

forged in the blood of sacrifice.

The communal burial in National Cemeteries of hundreds of thousands of men

and women who willingly offered their lives in defense of their country plays a major

role in legitimizing the authority of an American Civil Religion. Bellah suggested that,

“American civil religion had experienced a period of profound trail and testing, as the

American Civil War raised the very deepest questions about national identity, values and

meaning. Out of this experience came new emphases on the significance of death,

sacrifice, and rebirth within American civil religion.” 32 The American Civil War,

Criteria for Burial Waivers : Statement of Richard L. Hembra, Assistant Comptroller

General, Health, Education, and Human Services Division, before the Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Veterans' Affairs, House of Representatives
(Washington, D.C. (P.O. Box 37050, Washington, D.C. 20013): The Office, 1998), Peters,
Arlington National Cemetery: Shrine to American's Heroes, Schaefer and Schaefer,
Arlington National Cemetery, Bob Temple, Arlington National Cemetery : Where Heroes
Rest ([Chanhassen, Minn.]: Child's World, 2001).
30
Grant, "Raising the Dead: War, Memory and American National Identity."
31
Ibid.
32
Gerald Parsons, Perspectives on Civil Religion (Aldershot ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate in
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 28

“reconstructed the experiences of individuals and families in a way that the normal

passage of time usually did not, an consequently, created a tremendous imperative to

understand the drastic changes that shook people’s lives and express how that reality

felt…. But the aftermath of the war created countless possibilities for commemoration

not so noticeable before.”33 The National Cemeteries provided an instant answer for

handling the massive deaths associated with the battles, while later providing a physical

location for the manipulation of an American heritage.

Rituals

While studying ancient Greek Religion, Jane Ellen Harrison recognized that the

rituals commemorating the Olympic gods proved more important than the actual memory

of the gods themselves. Harrison, a member of the Cambridge Ritualists, placed greater

value and emphasis on exploring the process leading up to the rituals and the message

they conveyed, rather than the source of the ritual itself. 34 Thus, in her view the value of

ritual rests in the performance—about conveying a particular belief from one generation

to another. Lost in the process is a reliance on a factual representation of the event or

individual depicted; the message conveyed in the ritual assumed supremacy. Thus, ritual

provides the tool for perpetuating a sense of nationalistic and ethnic heritage, malleable to

the will of the dominate cultural viewpoint.

association with the Open University Press, 2002).

33
John E. Bodnar, "Remaking America : Public Memory, Commemoration, and
Patriotism in the Twentieth Century," (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).
34
Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis, a Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, Meridian
Books ; M145. (Cleveland,: World Pub. Co., 1962), Annabel Robinson, The Life and
Work of Jane Ellen Harrison (Oxford [England] ; New York: Oxford University Press,
2002).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 29

Catherine Bell, ritual theorist, defines political rites as, “those ceremonial

practices that specifically construct, display, and promote the power of political

institutions (such as king, state, the village elders) or the political interests of distinct

constituencies.”35 In the United States, these rituals, including the President’s annual

pilgrimage to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery provide

symbols, rites, and ceremonies that support and authenticate the prevailing history. 36

Although individuals outside the ruling political structure participate and even maintain

some of these rituals (annual Memorial Day ceremonies, Emancipation Day,

Confederate Day, and Veteran’s Day), the foundation for the ritualistic acts rests in those

established and perpetuated by the government, especially within the National

Cemeteries.

Embedded in any form of ritual, symbols, identifiable within their given cultural

audience, provide the forms for perpetuating the message of the ritual. W. Lloyd Warner

suggests that rituals, whether formal and explicit or informal and implicit, symbolically

state the meanings and social values of some part of the world in which the group is

involved.37 Roland Barthes, building upon Saussure’s identification and founding of the

science of semiology, examines the complexity of the meaning communicated through a

system of signs embedded with both obvious and subtle social meaning to members of

the culture familiar with the symbolism.38 Continuing this same process and adding to

the “thick description” of an event, the public displays of remembrance and

35
Catherine M. Bell, Ritual : Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997).
36
Parsons, Perspectives on Civil Religion.
37
Warner, The Living and the Dead : A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans. pg 229
38
Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology (New York: Hill & Wang, 1977).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 30

commemoration, especially those mandated by the State and directly associated with the

National Cemetery System, form the foundation of this dissertation.

By design, these rituals, whether meant for the individual or for the community,

center on death and the commemoration of the deceased. Robert Hertz, a student of

Emile Durkheim, employed his mentor’s study of religious forms as the format for

studying death and his work influenced most contemporary anthropological accounts of

death rituals.39 Hertz argued that mourning behavior, as well as conceptions of death

itself and the status of the corpse and soul, are social products.

Arnold van Gennep, one of the first scholars to recognize the social

importance of non-periodic rituals, including death, interpreted these events as a

transition from one social status to another, and identified these events as rites of

passages. Even though death signaled the physical separation of the individual from his

community, Van Gennep insisted that the social changes accompanying death were more

important than the biological ones."40 For Van Gennep, these non-periodic rituals

provided the structure, which he assigned as a series of stages within the crises -

separation, transition, and reintegration, as the means by which the individual projects a

sense of agency in the biological processes in which they truly have little control or

understanding. Just as man worships gods that are subject to manipulation, so he creates

rituals to appease and influence biological activity that threatens or transforms his

existence and those around him41

39
Robert Hertz, Death and the Right Hand, trans. Rodney and Cynthia Needham
Needham (1960).
40
Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1960). pg 190
41
De Waal Malefijt, Religion and Culture; an Introduction to Anthropology of Religion.
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 31

Starting with the Great Awakening, public ceremonies exposed Americans to

historical commemoration, propaganda, and even provided avenues for their own

protests. The rituals associated with civil religion and the National Cemetery System

grew out of these experiences. Susan Davis assigns a distinct political purpose to public

ceremonies, “As dramatic representations, parades and public ceremonies are political

acts. They have pragmatic objectives, and concrete, often material, results. People use

street theatre, like other rituals, as tools for building, maintaining, and confronting power

relations.”42 Nevertheless, there is a distinction between the people using public

ceremony as tools to provide them the means to respond to political manipulation, public

rituals employed by the State tends to further their own political agendas at the expense

of the people.

Whereas rituals associated with individual death served to convey sorrow at the

loss of the individual, these national rituals provide life to the community as a whole.

Acknowledging loss paradoxically denotes life. The public ceremonies perpetuated a

certain mnemonic vision of the past and of national unity. Of great importance to the

dissertation, this form of public memory provided a convenient bridge between religion

and those who died in service to their country – creating an American Cult of Sacrifice.

In respect to the National Cemeteries, Edward Everett delivered the earliest

reference to this cult in 1863 at the dedication for the Soldier’s Cemetery at Gettysburg,

“God bless the Union; — it is dearer to us for the blood of brave men which has been

shed in its defence.”43 Through the careful appropriation of Decoration Day ceremonies

42
Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power : Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1985).
43
Everett, Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions.
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 32

(later changed to Memorial Day), the creation of Blue and Gold Star Mothers, and the

evolution of the National Cemetery System, the State created a lasting impression that

dying in service to one’s country was the ultimate expression of patriotism. Linder and

Pierard suggest that besides acting as catalysts, these cemeteries also “served as outdoor

cathedrals for the litany of the civil faith. The sacred ceremonies recalled the martyred

Lincoln and those who fell in the Civil War so that the American nation could enjoy a

new birth of freedom.” 44

Clifford Geertz employs a well-defined paradigm for assigning cultural meaning,

“that sacred symbols function to synthesize a people’s ethos–the tone, character, and

quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood—and their world view—the

picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas

of order.”45 For the cemetery specifically, W. Lloyd Warner considers the cemetery as a

“living sacred Emblem,” a socially bounded space where daily funerals and Memorial

Day celebrations ritually order relationships between the spiritual dead and the secular

world of the living.46 The rituals and monuments associated with American National

Cemeteries are performance -- the ritual tied to the history -- that serves as means of

communication.47

Cemeteries as Text

44
Richard V. Pierard and Robert Dean Linder, Civil Religion & the Presidency (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Academie Books, 1988).
45
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures; Selected Essays (New York,: Basic
Books, 1973).
46
W. Lloyd Warner, "The Living and the Dead : A Study of the Symbolic Life of
Americans," (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959).
47
Mircea Eliade, "The Sacred and the Profane : The Nature of Religion," (New York:
Harper & Row, 1961).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 33

Jules David Prown suggests the investigative nature of material culture can be

more clearly understood by dividing the physical creations into two distinct categories

and exploring how they are interpreted through both internal and external frames of

reference. Textual metaphors, based on emotive experience of the living world, include

descriptions based on the feelings that accompany experience such as cheerful,

comfortable, reliable, grandmotherly, etc. Whereas structural metaphors, based on the

physical experience of the phenomenal world, such as creating a cup shaped like a breast

with the nipple functioning as the spout, require specific, physical examples. Artifacts

may express beliefs, but they do not create them. Artifacts are inanimate objects and

require human thought to create the idea or belief, thus the original cultural meaning

embedded in artifacts occurs at conception, but is subject to appropriation at a later date

as culture expectations change. Understanding cultural interpretations through artifacts,

we engage the other culture in the first instance not with our minds, the seat of our

cultural biases, but with our senses that creates the cycle since our senses provide the

input for the formation of ideas.

Ian W. Brown, takes Lewis’ theory and applies it directly to the cemetery. He

states that few people have looked at cemeteries from the perspective of a cultural

landscape in which each stone is a part of a larger universe. 48 To show how this more

inclusive reading can add to our cultural knowledge, he traces one particular family's

representation in a cemetery, thus providing evidence for the ability to read the cemetery

as a cultural text that is not necessarily available in the written record. 49 He also shares
48
Ian Brown, "The New England Cemetery as a Cultural Landscape," in History from
Things, ed. Steven and W. David Kingery Lubar (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1993). pg 16-17
49
Ibid.
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 34

Edith Stein and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concern that an external language is incapable of
50
capturing the essence of sensory perception and interpretation through words. The

cultural aspect of the material world is readily available for interpretation, but it is the

personal or internal interpretation, for which a communal language does not exist.

Yet, the landscape, like any artifact, is an incomplete record. As interpreters, we

cannot hope to write a complete history due to our distance from the timer period of the

artifact and its cultural contemporaries. No matter how many layers of culture are

identified and interpreted, “that which has been” is destined to remain in the past and our

understanding of it remains a distanced interpretation based on limited resources and

insight. Yet no scholar can expect to ask any serious questions of the landscape or to

gain reasonable answers without prior knowledge and extensive preparation. The

Landscape will not provide answers to questions that are not asked, and it cannot be

expected to provide quality answers unless questions are carefully and intelligently

framed.51 Asking questions of landscape differs from questions posed to the individual

on how the landscape affects them as these questions result in phenomenological

responses - evoked through experience or gained prior knowledge and are subjectively

dependent upon the individual's interpretation of the viewed object.

Material culture, specifically associated with the cemetery, includes the

gravestones and memorials that are symbolic representations of the deceased and serve as

physical reminders of our loss. As the physical location of the architecture of the dead,

cemeteries not only reflects religious and cultural attitudes toward death, they also
50
Ibid.
51
Pierce Lewis, "Common Landscapes as Historic Documents," in History from Things,
ed. Steven and W. David Kingery Lubar (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1993).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 35

strikingly mirror the social structures of the living. Yet, the material world of the

cemetery, often exists without a thick description52

Noting the passing of the Revolutionary generation and sensing the possibility to

create an American Père Lachaise, Justice Joseph Story, a trustee, urged that the cemetery

erect memorials that teach Americans of their “destiny and duty.” 53 Americans viewed

Mt. Auburn as a physical repository of American culture and that the cemetery would

serve as "the country laborer's only library where moral and historical notions could be

passed on to the illiterate country folk through the interaction and exposure in the

cemetery, much as the coming national cemeteries. 54

Place, Memory, and Heritage

Human society exists in a spatial context and through human manipulation of

matter, we tangibly and cognitively construct the space we live in to reflect our ideas and

beliefs. Thus, "Material culture mediates our relationship with death and the dead;

objects, images and practices, as well as places and spaces, call to mind or are made to
55
remind us of the deaths of others and of our own mortality." Given that the cemetery is

a clearly defined material space, it is important to follow Pierce Lewis’ emphasis of

52
Kenneth T. Jackson and Camilo J. Vergara, Silent Cities : The Evolution of the
American Cemetery (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1989). In the St. Louis
area headstones with Spanish, Chinese, German, Eastern European languages provide the
opportunity to see that the headstone conveys a message that a person is buried there, but
there is no thick description – male or female, age, etc.
53
Blanche Linden-Ward, Silent City on a Hill : Landscapes of Memory and Boston's
Mount Auburn Cemetery (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989).
54
Stanley French, "The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount
Auburn and the "Rural Cemetery" Movement," in Death in America, ed. David Stannard
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1975).
55
Elizabeth Hallam and Jennifer Lorna Hockey, Death, Memory, and Material Culture,
Materializing Culture, (Oxford ; New York: Berg, 2001)., pg 2
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 36

interpreting the landscape in its context of place and time, which ties the material

construction to the worldview of the society in which it is created. 56 It is through place,

memory, and ritual that the National Cemetery perpetuates a collective American

Heritage.

Place is the crucible of memory.57 Jacques Le Goff traces the fluctuation of

memory processes in relation to the dead over the last millennium. He suggests that,

“Mementos, memorials, words and artifacts are understood as external cultural forms

functioning to sustain thoughts and images that are conceived of as part of the internal

state of living persons and thus required to perpetuate the connection between the living

and the dead.” Jacques Le Goff traces the fluctuation of memory processes in relation to

the dead over the last millennium. He suggests that, “Churchyards tend to maintain a

spiritual 'community' of members and the early cemeteries followed this same communal

aspect, but the contemporary cemeteries appears to be caught between and betwixt, while

still exhibiting societal norms and expectations, the communal setting of mourning
58
shifted to a site more amiable to personal visits. American Civil Religion uses the

spiritual community of the cemetery as the foundation for the growth of the state’s

manipulation of its citizenry.

National Cemeteries assist in establishing a unified national identity, by providing

a place of physical memory. A national identity is, “established, maintained, and

renewed through various mnemonic practices and sites, such as centennial celebrations,

56
Lewis, "Common Landscapes as Historic Documents." pg 117
57
Jacob Climo and Maria G. Cattell, "Social Memory and History : Anthropological
Perspectives," (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002).
58
Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 37

clothing, heritage, heroes, language, national anthems, monuments, and museums 59 this

use of physically created spaces of memory is not limited to the cemetery. Michael G.

Kammen also identifies the period directly following the American Civil War as the time

when this need for a physical presence, one that transcends a generation, becomes more

widespread. He suggests “Another general characteristic that is commonly shared by

tradition-oriented cultures, including the United States after 1870, is the use of

monuments, architecture, and other works of art as a means of demonstrating a sense of

continuity or allegiance to the past.”60

Since the cemetery is a reflection of the living community, and ethnic identity is

important in American culture, the cultural variations reflected in the cemetery provides a

primary source of cultural identity in both contemporary and historic societies. Mitford

and Whitaker agree that there is surprisingly little difference in the US across racial,

ethnic, religious, or geographic lines in relation to funerals. The overall form of funerals

is remarkably uniform from coast to coast. Its general features include rapid removal of

the corpse to a funeral parlor, embalming, institutionalized "viewing”, and disposal by

burial.

The conformity required of individuals in the military and the influence of an

61
American Heritage transferred over into the visual text of the military cemetery.

Initially, the markers provided by the government provided only the name, rank, war and

59
Climo and Cattell, "Social Memory and History : Anthropological Perspectives."
Citing (Olick and Robbins [1998:124-125]
60
Michael G. Kammen, "Mystic Chords of Memory : The Transformation of Tradition in
American Culture," (New York: Knopf, 1991).
61
Tony Fusco, Historic Jefferson Barracks : A Collection of Articles Which Have
Appeared in the Naborhood Link News (St. Louis, Mo.: [T. Fusco], 1967), MacCloskey,
Hallowed Ground: Our National Cemeteries.
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 38

dates of birth and death.62 Early in the twentieth century, Congress allowed placing the

Southern Cross of Honor on Confederate graves and in 1921 Congress included emblems

of beliefs, the first two consisting of a Christian Cross or the Jewish Star of David.

Currently the National Cemetery Administration allows thirty-eight different belief

markers on the monuments. Since the inception of the National Cemetery System a

number of women’s groups, Black groups, and various ethnic groups sponsored war

memorials and rituals in an attempt to access American’s physical landscape of memory.

Exclusion, Segregation, and Inclusion

The 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessey vs. Ferguson, set a national

precedence for the legitimization of the long-established practice of segregation.

Although African-Americans served in the Continental Army during the American

Revolution, with the creation of a structured military, African-Americans did not find a

welcome in the military until the American Civil War. Even then, the prevailing practice

of segregation served its purpose in the military. Throughout the Spanish-American War,

and both World Wars, African-Americans volunteered and were drafted in to service, yet

their assignments and units remained separate until President Truman ended segregation

on July 31, 1948 with the signing of executive order 9981. 63 The segregation of

cemeteries, both civilian and military also continued until 1948.

62
The National Cemetery Administration. For rebel soldiers buried in military cemeteries
(due to death in prison camps) the grave markers were limited to name and company.
The shape of the stone was different as well with rounded union markers and steepled
confederate markers.
63
Morris J. MacGregor, Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965, Defense Studies
Series. (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History U.S. Army : for sale by the Supt. of
Docs. U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1981). Morris J. MacGregor is an historian with the U.S.
Army Center of Military History (CMH)
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 39

The issues of exclusion, segregation, and inclusion play prominently in changes

reflected in the National Cemetery in conjunction with sectional reconciliation. The last

comments of Paul Buck’s 1938 book, Road to Reunion is a perfect expression of the

early view of North and South reunion following the war,

“Greater than sacrifice on the field was this victory of peace. How
different it would have been had the generation of the war died
unreconciled and bequeathed to children the antipathies of their lives!
Then would the task of reunion have been complicated beyond the hope of
solution, for nothing is more ineradicable than hatreds that are inherited.
Americans registered one of their noblest achievements when within a
single generation true peace had come to hose who had been at war.”64

For pre-world war II historian, reunion between two halves of a nation, assumed the

greatest importance. For Buck, the “black man had been a symbol of strife between the

sections.”65 From this viewpoint, the black man assumes the blame for the Civil War

instead of the institution of slavery, thus in the scheme of American history, present, and

future, brushing aside the civil rights concerns of the African Americans in respect to

National unity was of little consequence.

In stark contrast, David W. Blight’s 2001 book, Race and Reunion: The Civil War

in American Memory, elevates the issue of African American civil rights and the

reconciliation of North and South.66 He explores the exclusion of African Americans

from civil war history focuses on the process for creating collective memory through

imagery, public ceremonies, and literature. In both books, the role of the cemetery, both

National and Confederate are mentioned, but relegated to a peripheral role. 67

64
Paul Herman Buck, The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 (Boston,: Little Brown and
Company, 1937).Buck served as a History Professor at Harvard.
65
Ibid.
66
David W. Blight, Race and Reunion : The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001).
67
For more references to Race and Reunion see Elizabeth Rauh Bethel, The Roots of
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 40

Ethnicity and the Cemetery

Because practices, including the most sacred, can "go without saying," it is

difficult for scholars to discipline their meanings no matter how diligent the enforcement

of religious ideology. Including a detailed explanation of a practice's meaning in so

many words is unnecessary (even impossible) in their performance; practices are nimble,

capable of holding together a wide range of meanings and uses. 68 However, the National

Cemetery provides a detailed physical location for a shifting landscape of racial

exclusion, segregation, and inclusion.

For minority ethnic communities, so often ignored by the dominant ethnic group,

cemeteries normally offer a subtle, yet extremely effect means of maintaining their ethnic

history and heritage. The importance of this opportunity rests in the individual; living in a

culture that often overlooks or even intentionally erases their heritage and history, the

individual plot is the unit of commemorative landscape that matters most, for here lays

one body distinguished from all others. 69 Within the confines of the National Cemetery,

African-American Identity : Memory and History in Free Antebellum Communities, 1st

ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), Blair, Cities of the Dead : Contesting the
Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914, David W. Blight, Beyond the
Battlefield : Race, Memory & the American Civil War (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2002), David W. Blight, "'What Will Peace among the Whites
Bring?': Reunion and Race in the Struggle over the Memory Of..." Massachusetts Review
34, no. 3 (1993), W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past : A Clash of Race and
Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), W.
Fitzhugh Brundage, Where These Memories Grow : History, Memory, and Southern
Identity (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), Savage, Standing
Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves : Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America,
Shackel, Memory in Black and White : Race, Commemoration, and the Post-Bellum
Landscape, Joel Williamson, A Rage for Order : Black/White Relations in the American
South since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
68
McNally
69
Gary S. and Craig M. Eckert Foster, "Up from the Grave: A Sociohistorical
Reconstruction of an African American Community from Cemetery Data in the Rural
Midwest," Jounral of Black Studies 33, no. 4 (2003).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 41

the graves and grave markers limit any expression of deviance from the prescribed

physical memory associated with the site. Although sociological research using cemetery

data remains limited specific to National Cemetery burials, studies conducted in civilian

cemeteries cited cemeteries as expressions of community...to be 'analyzed and read as a

cultural text...about the social, religious, and aesthetic expectations of the community that

maintains it.70 Applying this same approach to the National Cemetery, the reading of the

text brings a more uniform impression of the individuals buried there.

Research related to Black mortuary practices are often embedded in the greater

social or religious attributes of the Black community or are stand-alone articles on the

discovery of historic Black cemeteries. Karen Krepps documents current and past

mortuary practices of the Black ethnic group in southeastern Michigan, providing a view

of Black culture north of the Mason-Dixon Line. 71 Lysa Allman-Baldwin travels to

several of the more prominent Black cemeteries in the United States. From the cemetery

at the only remaining black town west of the Mississippi to Cincinnati and Vancouver,

Washington she explores the impact and ramifications of these sites of physical memory

for modern Blacks.72

The portrayal of death and dying in twentieth-century Black communities

provides a thorough investigation of the myths, rituals, economics, and politics of African

American mourning and burial practices, and discovers that the ways of dying are just as

70
R. & Lowe Vidutis, V.A.P., "The Cemetery as Cultural Text," Kentucky Folklore Record
26 (1988).
71
Karen Lee Krepps, "Black Mortuary Practices in Southeast Michigan," (Wayne State
University: Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 51-06, Section: A, page: 2067.,
1990).
72
Lysa Allman-Baldwin, "The History Behind African American Cemeteries," New York
Amsterdam News 2005.
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 42

much a part of black identity as the ways of living. 73 Following this same approach,

Erma Dianne Mosley found that the Black cemetery fulfills many important functions for

descendants including preserving family history and strengthening family solidarity, both

of which are intended functions of cemeteries founded during the rural cemetery

movement.74

Although only a handful of authors comment on the Latino community’s

interaction with cemeteries in the United States, the majority of this work revolves

around the continuation of the Mexican observance of the Day of the Dead. The focal

point rests on documenting the difficulty associated with maintaining traditional patterns

of ritual and mourning in a new country. This difficulty is also apparent in the National

Cemeteries where individuality, other than specific vital statistics, serves as another

example of the unifying function of a State-run agency and of a physical landscape under

State control.

Kevin Oltjenbruns continued this focus while also expanding to discover that

although there are many similar patterns in grief response, some differences do exist

among ethnic groups as well as between the sexes. 75 Gerard Doran looks at the

experience of death through the eyes of first and second generation Latinos in America

73
Karla F. C. Holloway, Passed On : African American Mourning Stories : A Memorial
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).
74
Erma Dianne Mosley, "The History and Social Context of an African American Family
Cemetery and Its Influence on Social Organization and Mental Health," (Texas Woman's
University: Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 52-10, Section: A, page: 3738.,
1991).
75
Kevin Ann Oltjenbruns, "Ethnicity and the Grief Response: Mexican-American and
Anglo College Students," (University of Colorado at Boulder: Dissertation Abstracts
International. Volume: 51-06, Section: A, page: 1960., 1989).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 43

and Susan Eggman explores the impact of the various layers of oppression in

acculturation, end-of-life decision making, and ways of knowing76

Elisa Mandell looks at visual culture and the use of the photographic portrait as an

important element in funerary rituals for those children who died a premature death.

Throughout Latin America, when a child dies, making a portrait of the deceased child

dressed in a religious costume often accompanies the funeral and other familial mourning

rituals. These funerary portraits raise several questions. First, and foremost, did this

tradition originate in Mexico? If not, where did this practice originate and when? There

are striking similarities between Pre-Columbian and European attitudes towards child

death, but proving continuity of pre-conquest traditions is difficult. Similar portrait types

are found in Spain and other Latin American countries. Thus, while it is highly

problematic to assume unilateral influence, the angelito funerary rites and portraits from

Spain and Latin America are loaded with references to Catholic ritual, suggesting

European origins.77 The regulations for the National Cemetery prohibit any use of

photographs in the cemetery or on the markers, thus effectively shutting out the ethnic

expression of grief expressed in Latino culture.

Suzanne Morrison looks specifically at Day of the Dead practices, which include

home altars and cemetery vigils that affirm life even in the midst of death and assuage

76
Gerard Doran, "Family Grief Experience at the Death of a Child in the Mexican
American Community," (Fielding Graduate Institute: Dissertation Abstracts International.
Volume: 63-05, Section: B, page: 2578., 2001), Susan Talamantes Eggman, "Testimonios
from the Intersection of Mexican American Culture and an American Death," (Portland
State University: Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 63-06, Section: A, page:
2366., 2002).
77
Elisa C. Mandell, "The Birth of Angels: Posthumous Portraits of Infants and Children in
Mexican Art," (University of California, Los Angeles: Dissertation Abstracts
International. Volume: 65-09, Section: A, page: 3193., 2004).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 44

fears by portraying death as a natural part of the cosmic duality of life-and-death. Of

central importance is Mexicans' familiarity with and humorous mockery of death, a

playfully irreverent yet respectful stance that conflicts with mainstream mores in the

United States. Analyzing a phenomenon that traveled from a homogeneous rural setting

in one country to a pluralistic urban setting in another led to a number of conclusions

about the diffusion and re-creation of rituals. The Day of the Dead functions not only as

a ritual to honor the dead and celebrate life, but also to define and proclaim their

heritage78

V. The Procedure

Establishing the basis of my theoretical viewpoint, the next step is identifying the

data available to inform my research. The focus of the dissertation is the National

Cemetery, thus the research centers on the formation, and evolution of the National

Cemetery System, this includes the location of the cemeteries, who is allowed burial in

the cemeteries, and the regulations pertaining to the graves and the observation of the

sanctity of the site. Embedded in this research are the major issues fueling change within

the National Cemetery. After creating a list of available material and conducting a

literature review, the following issues appear most pertinent - racial and sectional

segregation, collective memory, American heritage, ritual and performance, and the

symbolism associated with the National Cemetery. Identifying the boundary of my

research provides the framework for the outline of the dissertation.

78
Suzanne Shumate Morrison, "Mexico's "Day of the Dead" in San Francisco California:
A Study of Continuity and Change in a Popular Religious Festival," (Graduate
Theological Union: Thesis (PH.D.)--GRADUATE THEOLOGICAL UNION. 1992.
604p., 1992).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 45

From this point forward, I expect my research to use the National Cemetery as my

point of departure as I examine the influence of race and sectional conflict in the

evolution of the National Cemetery. Ian Brown, Stanley French, and Lewis Pierce

provide methodological techniques for reading the cemetery itself as a source. Although

a unique type of cemetery, the National Cemetery functions first as a burial ground and

secondly as a political landscape. To substantiate the argument proposed in this

dissertation requires a strong commitment to employing Gene Wise’s “dense fact” and

Geertz’s “thick description” while researching the material for this dissertation in an

effort to ascertain its full meaning. On the surface the National Cemetery System appears

simply to provide a final resting place for American war veterans, but in the effort to

establish a thicker description by looking deeper into the cultural landscape uncovers a

much more elaborate “web of significance.”

The National Cemetery functions first for the community as a communal burial

ground. W. Lloyd Warner and Charles David Sloane provide the basis for a general

understanding of death and cemeteries in the United States and the departure point for the

creation of the National cemetery System itself and its relationship with civil religion.

Within the cemetery, the layout, the type of stones, the inscriptions, the iconography, the

location of graves, and even who is allowed burial in the cemetery plays a part in the

communicative aspect of the National Cemetery national shrine and conveyor of a

particular memory of American history.

Embedded in the study of cemeteries and civil religion is the function of ritual. .

The first ritual associated with both the National Cemetery and the State began as a

racially and socially initiated Decoration Day that the State quickly appropriated as a
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 46

symbol of nationalistic pride. The research into many of these early rituals comes from

National cemeteries in the South, as the greatest examples of conflict occur in the South

as Southerners as physical reminders of federal occupation of Southern land view the

National Cemeteries. These earlier rituals serve as precursors to later Memorial Day

rituals and a growing ritual and architectural grandeur associated with Arlington in the

early twentieth century. Included in this discussion is the Southern response to the

National Cemeteries in Southern states, the Northern reaction to Decoration Day

activities in the South, and the process leading to and including the symbolic merger

exhibited in Arlington National Cemetery and later elevation to status of National Shrine.

Ritual serves as the means to communicate the interpretation of myth and

perpetuate a shared history. The racial and regional differences and the evolution of the

ritual add substantial support to the strength of my argument. Adding to my initial

theoretical approach, Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner guide my interpretation of

the cultural significance of the ritualistic and symbolic interpretation occurring in, and

associated with, the National Cemeteries.

Following this initial focus, the reconciliation of North and South proves a

significant influence on the landscape of the National Cemetery. Researching the Blue

and Gray reunions, the petition and acceptance of inclusion of Confederate war dead in

Arlington Cemetery and other Northern National Cemeteries, and the racial implications

of these actions provides the next step in the changes occurring in the cemeteries that

reflect cultural expectations outside the confines of the National Cemetery.

Within the discussion of the National Cemetery System and corresponding

changes is American history and heritage. This idea of the creation of an American
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 47

heritage and its expression in the National Cemetery resides throughout the dissertation

as it is the result of the process under investigation. National monuments, documents,

rituals, and myths perpetuate the ideal of American exceptionalism while reflecting the

prevailing cultural and political viewpoints. David Lowenthal provides vital structure to

the clarification of history vs. heritage, Edward Linenthal explores sacred sites and

battlefields in American history and their role in perpetuating the righteousness of

American destiny, and John E. Bodnar discusses American myths and the impact and

power of heritage, even at times in opposition to history itself.

With the focus of the research established, identifying the source material is the

next step in the process. I plan to explore the original intent of the national cemetery

through an examination of government documents (which are readily available), Library

of Congress photographs, period speeches (by Edward Everett, Abraham Lincoln,

Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois), newspaper articles

(primarily New York Times and various smaller local and regional newspapers) and

period photographs. I am especially cognizant of the dangers of projecting modern

historical viewpoints back into the past, thus impacting the interpretation of events within

their historic context. Removed by generations, my viewpoint, the struggle to maintain a

more historically accurate interpretation is core to my dissertation process as well.

Often overlooked as a primary source, I plan to use photographic documentation

of the National Cemetery, the rituals involved, headstone modification, and conformity,

and the impact of ritual and pageantry in the history of the National Cemetery.

Photographs provided by the Library of Congress and included in several books

documenting Civil War photography provide valuable visual evidence of the early
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 48

cemeteries when documentation is somewhat limited. 79 The photograph supplies visual

conformation of the physical layout, type of markers, and neglect common to early

National Cemeteries. Comparing photographs of the National Cemeteries, the public

celebrations, the grave makers, and the emblems displayed over time, contribute an often

overlooked source of cemetery symbolism and cultural transitions.80

For this dissertation to establish the National Cemetery as something more as

simply a shrine to a mythic “cult of sacrifice” the project requires engaging the evolution

of the National Cemetery in with the changing racial and sectional differences and the

role of the National Cemetery. As a sacred space the cemetery’s role in the performance

and conveyance of an American heritage, it is important to illustrate that the viewpoint

expressed in the rituals and symbolic imagery is not historically inclusive of all

Americans.

VI. The Probable Contents

Introduction

This section includes an introduction to the purpose of the dissertation and the

literature review.

Chapter 1: Ritual within the National Cemetery

This section explores the origin of Memorial Day from its simple beginning, to

the appropriation of the Decoration Day by the government, and the later renaming of the
79
Library of Congress, Library of Congress ([cited); available from
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html, William A. Franssanito, Early Photography at
Gettysburg (Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1995), Bob Zeller, The Blue and Gray
in Black and White : A History of Civil War Photography (Westport, Conn.: Praeger,
2005).
80
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), Susan Sontag, On
Photography (New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977).
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 49

day; the locating and moving of civil war dead to National Cemeteries; emancipation day

ceremonies in the south; presidential pilgrimage, Guarding of the tomb of the Unknown

Soldiers, political speeches, etc.

Chapter 2: Segregation in the National Cemetery

The return of American war dead from overseas; segregated burial; and the

inclusion of others besides those who died in battle; exclusion from cemetery; the

inclusion of wives, children; location of graves

Chapter 3: Reconciliation and Reunion in the National Cemetery

Blue and gray reunions; political decision to move confederate graves to national

cemetery, the debate over this inclusion (with the most vehement opponents living in the

South); N. Carolina soldier first death in Spanish American War; the black issue and

identification as African-Americans as the same as “other” located outside the US and

European background of colonization; Wilson and McKinley speeches

Chapter 4: The Physical Record of Commemoration in the National Cemetery

The monuments, the markers, the iconography and symbolism and the changes

over time; Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; the introduction of religious symbols on the

tombstones, the conformity of headstones, the building of the Amphitheater in Arlington,

the monuments to the death

Epilogue

The move of Colored Troops to JB National Cemetery in 1939 and later

desegregation in 1948 referencing Benedict Anderson’s collective amnesia and the news
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, Page 50

articles about segregation and JB National Cemetery. Also, reference to burials today

and the limited attempts for individual identity in the National Cemeteries.