To reunite the nation: Constructing memory after reconstruction, 1876-1904

To Reunite the Nation: Constructing Memory After Reconstruction, 1876-1904 uses the critical framework of civil religion and cultural memory to explore how ritual and patriotism intersect after Reconstruction (1876-1904) in a surge of American faith. The dissertation examines the increased desire to construct memories that promoted unity after the trauma of war. To Reunite the Nation maintains that because the Civil War challenged the faith of Americans, memory-making of an idealized past in the post-Reconstruction period sought to reaffirm citizens' patriotism. These narratives often expressed fundamentalist ideas that exclude women, African Americans, and Native Americans.;After the war, I argue Marietta Holley, Henry Adams, and George Washington Cable seek to restore faith in democracy by highlighting the wisdom and moral fortitude of the nation's forefathers through rituals of reunion, which are literary tropes such as marriage and pilgrimage that spark patriotism and promote unity. I assert these literary representations invigorate nationalism by constructing memories of key iconographic people and events in the nation's past; these moments call for a return to the democratic virtue imagined of citizens during the Revolutionary and antebellum periods. At the same time, these memories and rituals are exclusionary. By studying civil religion, this dissertation investigates how Americans justify the sacrifices they make for the nation, while interrogating the secular rhetoric that defines American identity and experience.;Holley's Samantha at the Centennial exposes the tension between marginalized groups in America; however, it emphasizes memories of consent through the commemoration of George Washington, Independence Hall, and other American icons. Adams's Democracy interrogates two sites of memory: Mount Vernon and Arlington House to contrast the evocation of perceived republican virtues with the corruption of Washington, D.C. Cable's The Grandissimes eliminates remaining sectional tensions over the emancipation and citizenship of African-Americans, resulting in the expulsion, death, or disappearance of the biracial and enslaved characters in the novel in favor of national unity and American imperialism. While many of the authors in this project were reformers, the issues they long to reform are often in conflict with the tenets of an emerging fundamentalism that emphasizes white icons and achievements.;KEYWORDS: Cultural Memory, Civil Religion, Patriotism, Republican Virtue, Reunion Rituals.