For The Union Dead Analysis

After the civil war, black people are partially inserted into the white man’s America but they did not have equal rights, which caused the civil rights movement. These writers are telling us that to be a Black person in America is two things, a blessing and a curse. In LeMahieu’s piece “Robert Lowell, Perpetual War, and the Legacy of Civil War Elegy” he discusses Robert Lowell’s book “For the Union Dead.” LeMahieu discusses how the end of the civil war gave birth the civil rights struggle. Meaning that even though blacks and whites could fight side by side for the same belief they were still not considered equal. Also in time there would be a group of white people who sympathize with black people and start to adopt their culture and beliefs because they feel it is the truth. Proof of the change in white people’s point of view can be found in LeMahieu’s analyzation of Lowell’s poem “’For the Union Dead’ is a meta-elegy, a poem that mourns contemporary society's inability to mourn and to commemorate because of its capitulations to the forces of social modernization and consumer culture.” (LeMahieu 112) Meaning that some people were not allowed to mourn and acknowledge each other as brothers

However, a majority of them still did not care for the Negro. This began during the civil war with the south fighting to keep slavery with an all-white army and the north fight with some all black units. The black units were not allowed to have a black commander, so they often had a white one. The white commander of a black unit was not respected by his peers. Robert Lowell discusses this in his poem “For the Union Dead.” The differences between the older generations, like Robert Gould Shaw’s father, who did not want a memorial built for his son because he fought and died with an all-black unit. Evidence of this can be found in the 13th