Confederate monuments and markers in cemeteries across Georgia are inscribed with a variety of dedications. Many offer a simple sentiment, such as "Our Confederate Dead, 1861-1865" or "Lest We Forget"; some present a more political statement--"They Fought Not For Conquest, But For Liberty And Their Own Homes"; some have long soliloquies of prose or poetry; and others feature lists of names of individuals or units that served. Georgia's Confederate Monuments and Cemeteries features vintage images of soldiers, sailors, and the many different types of monuments erected throughout the state to honor them. These monuments of stone, marble, granite, and bronze recognize the sacrifice of those who served Georgia in the War Between the States. Various memorial associations and organizations, survivors, and descendants of these men and women built lasting tributes to them, and each has a story to tell.

Found on monuments throughout the South, the sentiment "Lest we forget!" represents the theme of Remembering Georgia's Confederates. Dedicated to the men and women who served Georgia when her heart belonged to the Confederate States of America, this volume remembers the state's Confederate past--a time of passion, devotion, honor, courage, faith, perseverance, sacrifice, and loss. Georgia, rich in its heritage, boasts numerous locales to visit, learn about, and remember its role in the Confederacy: the battlefields and their interpretive centers, the coastal forts, the prison camp, the world's largest painting, the world's largest Confederate memorial, a pair of locomotive engines, a number of Confederate cemeteries, and various homes, museums, and history centers.

This is the product of two decades of work, during which time the author has travelled throughout the state to photograph the memorials to the men and women of the Confederate States of America, to study their inscriptions, and to document information about their construction. These works of art and their eloquent inscriptions express a nation's profound grief, praise the soldiers' bravery and patriotism, and pay homage to the cause for which they fought.

Civil War Sites in Georgia is a brief history of the Civil War in Georgia and a comprehensive guide to more than 300 Civil War sites, including 25 battlefields, 35 museums, 40 Confederate cemeteries, 2 national cemeteries, 300 statues and monuments, 5 forts, 5 Confederate prisons, and 5 Civil War-related national, state, and municipal parks.

When we come to our final resting place, we may be remembered by an elaborate mausoleum, a block of stone, a wooden post, or perhaps nothing at all. Such is the manner in which those resting under the trees of Laurel Grove Cemetery are memorialized. Established in 1850 out of the property of Springfield, one of Savannah's earliest plantations, Laurel Grove Cemetery is one of the most mysterious and intriguing cemeteries in all of the city. Through her gates lie individuals who have made their mark locally and worldwide. In this beautiful sanctuary rest such notable individuals as Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of America; Florence Martus, who became more popularly known as the Waving Girl; James Pierpont, author of "Jingle Bells," the popular Christmas carol; and more than 600 Confederate soldiers.

Charles Reagan Wilson documents that for over half a century there existed not one, but two civil religions in the United States, the second not dedicated to honoring the American nation. Extensively researched in primary sources, Baptized in Blood is a significant and well-written study of the South’s civil religion, one of two public faiths in America. In his comparison, Wilson finds the Lost Cause offered defeated Southerners a sense of meaning and purpose and special identity as a precarious but distinct culture. Southerners may have abandoned their dream of a separate political nation after Appomattox, but they preserved their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition. “Civil religion” has been defined as the religious dimension of a people that enables them to understand a historical experience in transcendent terms. In this light, Wilson explores the role of religion in postbellum southern culture and argues that the profound dislocations of Confederate defeat caused southerners to think in religious terms about the meaning of their unique and tragic experience. The defeat in a war deemed by some as religious in nature threw into question the South’s relationship to God; it was interpreted in part as a God-given trial, whereby suffering and pain would lead Southerners to greater virtue and strength and even prepare them for future crusades. From this reflection upon history emerged the civil religion of the Lost Cause. While recent work in southern religious history has focused on the Old South period, Wilson’s timely study adds to our developing understanding of the South after the Civil War. The Lost Cause movement was an organized effort to preserve the memory of the Confederacy. Historians have examined its political, literary, and social aspects, but Wilson uses the concepts of anthropology, sociology, and historiography to unveil the Lost Cause as an authentic expression of religion. The Lost Cause was celebrated and perpetuated with its own rituals, mythology, and theology; as key celebrants of the religion of the Lost Cause, Southern ministers forged it into a religious movement closely related to their own churches. In examining the role of civil religion in the cult of the military, in the New South ideology, and in the spirit of the Lost Cause colleges, as well as in other aspects, Wilson demonstrates effectively how the religion of the Lost Cause became the institutional embodiment of the South’s tragic experience.