Americans have persistently expressed fascination with the nation's most         famous battlefields through patriotic rhetoric, monument building, physical         preservation, and battle reenactment. But each site is also a place where         different groups of Americans come to compete for ownership of cherished         national stories and to argue about the meaning of war, the importance         of martial sacrifice, and the significance of preserving the nation's         patriotic landscape.       From the anniversary speeches at Lexington and Concord that shaped the         image of the minuteman to Alamo Day speeches invoking the Texas "freedom         fighters" of 1836 in support of the contras in Nicaragua; from passionate         arguments over the placement of Confederate monuments at Gettysburg to         confrontations between militant American Indian Movement and "Custer         loyalists" during the Little Bighorn centennial in 1976; from the         treatment of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor to continuing attempts         to maintain the purity of these places in the face of commercialization---Sacred         Ground details the ongoing struggles to define, control, and subvert         patriotic faith as expressed at these ceremonial sites.