A. Michael Ruderman
Civil War Monuments, from Obelisks to ‘Parade Rest’ to American Renaissance
The Civil War monument is an iconic element of hundreds of Massachusetts’s town landscapes. From a shared anguish — sons and fathers killed on distant battlefields, and never to return — they give us a range of answers to the question of what those soldiers fought for. They also hold a mirror up to the nation we were becoming in the generation after Appomattox. We can see in these monuments a new America emerging, one reflected in an evolving architectural language of mourning and commemoration. This talk will relocate our Civil War monuments from the ubiquitous background of the town common to symbols of our American destiny.
Michael Ruderman is an author and a noted presenter on topics of Colonial and nineteenth-century history. His love for the subject was spurred by his elementary-school discovery that his classmates were descendants of Pilgrims. Today’s presentation is both timely and local, as Ruderman lives in “Menotomy village” (today’s Arlington, MA) where the most action occurred on April 19, 1775.
