Remembering War The American Way Summary

Kurt Piehler’s Remembering War the American Way is an informative book that shows what has happened in American society, how important representative government is, and shows how regular citizens can influence public affairs. Throughout the text, Piehler gives a complete history of how American’s have gone about remembering certain conflicts when it comes to wars, or even certain battles. The main things to be covered in this paper will include the main themes, how Americans have remembered the past and how memorialization of wars evolved, different groups influencing the memory of past events, and what the book teaches citizens about their roles and duties. The first thing to cover is the main themes of Remembering War the American Way

The

main themes of Piehler’ book include how Americans remember past conflicts, why Americans want to make sure these conflicts are remembered, and how the remembrance and memorialization of these events have changed. The first memorials for wars the United States were involved in came after the Mexican American War, were the United States government built an obelisk to mark the graves of soldiers that had died in battle (pg.43). Memorial structures and statues have remained consistent throughout history, although the styles have changed; the idea behind memorializing the dead is consistent. American’s were very big advocates of making sure certain battlefields and gravesites were made into national memorials when it came to wars that were fought on United States soil. With different conflicts, came different reasons for why these wars needed to be remembered. During the revolutionary war, “preserving a memory of the American Revolution that emphasized the struggle for independence” (pg.18) was extremely important to our founding fathers and the nation as a whole. Citizens wanted to commemorate the war to make sure future Americans would know how America got its independence and to remember the soldiers that had fallen in order to achieve independence.
That ideology of remembering why America got engaged in war goes into the belief that Americans want to have reasoning for the loss of life. For example when the largest life of life occurred during the civil war, “efforts to commemorate the Civil War and other conflicts stressed the terrible costs and the blessings of peace, war came to be seen as an acceptable option when the national interest was at stake (pg.87)”. Although the way Americans remember the wars throughout history has not stayed consistent, remembering the fallen has always been an important thing to the Citizens of America. An example of keeping the same ideology but using a different method to show it would be massive gravesites that had a memorial built to commemorate the dead, these were popular during the earlier years of America, mostly for the Revolutionary and Civil war. Later into history, wars that fell outside the borders of The United States, it was important for citizens and mothers of soldiers that making sure individual soldiers were brought home and given a proper grave, because this was seen as the correct and most honorable memorial to do after the First World War occurred.
Throughout history, there have been multiple groups that have attempted to shape the memory of how Americans remember the past.

Starting with the Federalist and the Democratic Republicans, these two groups faced off for what they thought was important for Americans to remember and how they should celebrate these events or people. A big thing they faced off with was how certain monuments are used when remembering history, the Federalist believed it should too much resemblance to imperial rule instead of a republic (pg.22). In a different belief, the Democratic Republicans believed they did not need to worry about public opinion shifting into thinking the Government will become an imperial rule. Another big group that faced off were the North and South during the Civil war area. The two war torn areas of the United States had very opposite ways in remembering what happened during the war. After the war, considering the North had beat the South, the North did not believe that graves of Southern soldiers should be represented by the government due to the cause the South believed in, which essentially was keeping slavery legal. Eventually both sides put up memorials funded mostly by rich political groups in their areas, and both made traditions that honored their dead. Groups throughout history did collide quite often and that is naturally because human beings strive for some sort of conflict. These groups were successful in shaping the memory of the past, but to a certain

extent. The way wars regarding conflicts outside of the United States are mostly the same, but when it comes to conflicts mainly affecting the United States citizens, people talk about the past differently on whichever side they believe in.
Remembering War the American Way teaches us, citizens of the United States, just how important our roles and duties are, and how we can influence bringing necessary change to our country.

Previously stated in the last paragraph, there were many groups that went head on with each other to bring upon change. These groups are a large indication of how taking part in government affairs can lead to citizens voices being heard and creating change from actively participating. Piehler’s main goal was to show that citizens could bring about change without having to be a government official. Being an actively participating citizen is every Americans civil duty to make sure the citizen’s rights are protected and not tarnished. This book also teaches citizens that remembering past wars and preserving the memory of those wars is a priority not only to honor the dead, but to teach future American Citizen’s on how the United States can better it self from these past

conflicts.
Kurt Piehler’s Remembering War the American Way is a great insight to what has happened in American society, how important representative government is, and shows how regular citizens can influence public affairs. War has been around for thousands of years, and is almost in its entirety never going to not be around. Educating and reminding citizens on past events will shed more light on how War was conducting and why certain conflicts happened. Remembering the past and learning from it will help nations avoid future conflicts and help build a stronger national identity.