num_pages: 352
description:       Americans have persistently expressed fascination with the nation's most        famous battlefields through patriotic rhetoric, monument building, physical        preservation, and battle reenactment. But each site is also a place where        different groups of Americans come to compete for ownership of cherished        national stories and to argue about the meaning of war, the importance        of martial sacrifice, and the significance of preserving the nation's        patriotic landscape.      From the anniversary speeches at Lexington and Concord that shaped the        image of the minuteman to Alamo Day speeches invoking the Texas "freedom        fighters" of 1836 in support of the contras in Nicaragua; from passionate        arguments over the placement of Confederate monuments at Gettysburg to        confrontations between militant American Indian Movement and "Custer        loyalists" during the Little Bighorn centennial in 1976; from the        treatment of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor to continuing attempts        to maintain the purity of these places in the face of commercialization--- Sacred        Ground details the ongoing struggles to define, control, and subvert        patriotic faith as expressed at these ceremonial sites.      
language: English
title: Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields
titlecomplete: Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields
genres: Nonfiction, History, Civil War
ratings_count: 34
publisher: University of Illinois Press