OXFORD, Miss. – As a tribute to its continued importance in the fields
of history and Southern Studies, University of Mississippi professor
Charles Wilson’s book “Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost
Cause, 1865-1920” has been reissued 30 years after its original
publication.
Time has not diminished the value of “Baptized in Blood” (University of
Georgia Press, 1980) because an understanding of the memory of the
Civil War still plays an important role in understanding the culture of
the South. Wilson’s work provides a unique combination of the concept
of civil religion and memory in its analysis of the post-Civil War
South.
“Scholarly books usually go out of style so
quickly that it is notable when an academic work is still selling
copies 15 or 20 years after it is published,” said Ted Ownby, director
of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. “So it is extremely
rare for a press to publish a new edition of a 30-year-old work of
history.”
The new edition features an expansion of the ideas of the
original work, and raises questions that should be interesting to
anyone who wants to explore the continuing meaning of the Civil War in
the South, Wilson said.
“My book explores the cultural struggles of white
Southerners trying to reorient their culture after the Civil War,” he
said. “The new edition explores the meaning of Confederate defeat for
black Southerners as well. The results of the war brought their freedom
so they didn’t mourn the loss of the Confederacy at all.”
Students from outside the South have pointed to “Baptized in
Blood” as an important resource that helped them understand why
Southerners place such value on flags, monuments and the like, Ownby
said.
Wilson is the university’s Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Chair of
History and professor of Southern studies. He served as director of the
Southern studies academic program from 1991 to 1998 and director of the
Center for the Study of Southern Culture from 1998 to 2007. Wilson
served as co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (University
of North Carolina Press, 1989) and is the general editor of the New
Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (University of North Carolina Press).
He is also author of “Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern
Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis,” (University of Georgia Press, 2007) and
is editor or co-editor of “Religion and the American Civil War” (Oxford
University Press, 1998), “The New Regionalism” (University Press of
Mississippi, 1998) and “Religion in the South” (University Press of
Mississippi, 1985).
This semester, Wilson is teaching a graduate seminar in Southern
studies and an undergraduate class on Southern religious history.
Copies of the new edition of “Baptized in Blood” are available at Square Books in Oxford and the Ole Miss Bookstore.
For more information about the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, visit http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/