Abstract
On November 19, 1962, acclaimed Civil War historian Bruce Catton delivered an address to an eager audience at Gettysburg College. That evening, instead of offering listeners installments from his popular New York Times Magazine series, which chronicled the "great turning points" of the Civil War, the fifty-five-year-old editor of American Heritage addressed the ongoing centennial commemoration of the conflict. Well aware that the very next year the greater Gettysburg community would observe the one hundredth anniversary of the conflict's most celebrated battle, Catton came to urge both caution and careful consideration in the looming ceremonials. "If we are not careful," he declared, "we may become prisoners of the Civil War—prisoners of its romance, of its legendry, of the odd, heart-warming, and ever-living impulses which its people, its flags, its songs and its stories send tingling along the spine."What troubled Catton was not the propensity of his fellow Americans to look back on the conflict, but the "irresistible force of sentiment" that overwhelmed any discussion of the causes and consequences of the war.