The War Within: Interpreting the Civil War in the North Carolina Museum of History

This exhibit explores "the war within" at the sesquicentennial moment in North Carolina, arguing that the Civil War exhibits in the North Carolina Museum of History represented an interpretive ambivalence relating to how North Carolinians have chosen to remember the war over time.  The author argues that three examples in the museum highlight three distinct (and conflicting) threads of Civil War memory--nostalgia, commemoration, and reconciliation.