Co-opted Culture

In 1918, the Colt Firearms Company printed an ad in Literary Digest extolling the quality of its newest line of pistols that included the artistic representations of a Union and Confederate soldier admiring the famed M-1911 semi-automatic. From the time the Civil War ended, enterprising Gilded Age entrepreneurs manipulated the public’s memory of the war to market a variety of goods and services, including canned asparagus tips (Veteran Brand), replica Confederate uniforms suitable for reunions, trading cards to promote the Duke Tobacco Company, cookware, parlor games, and patent medicines.

James Martin and Caroline Janney have compiled an ingenious, multifaceted, collection of essays examining various ways Civil War memory became commercialized during the economically booming decades that came to be known as the Gilded Age. They and their contributors collectively agree that “the war would infuse almost every element of U.S.