"Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.Shovel them under and let me work—I am the grass; I cover all.And pile them high at GettysburgAnd pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.Shovel them under and let me work.Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:What place is this?Where are we now?I am the grass.Let me work."
Decoration Day -- now Memorial Day -- demonstrates the human impulse to recognize, in the face of mortality, the momentary flicker that is life.
Yale historian David Blight describes an incident in Charleston, South Carolina, just as the Civil War was ending. General Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Lincoln was assassinated on April 15. Charleston, where the war had begun, was a bombed-out wreck during the spring of 1865. Whites had evacuated the town. Freed Blacks and former slaves lived in the wreckage. A prominent local landmark, the racetrack, had been used as a site for a mass grave of some 300 Union soldiers. Townspeople moved the bodies to individual graves. Schoolchildren brought flowers. Townspeople set up a stage. Fourteen people spoke. It was May 1, 1865. It was probably the first "Decoration Day."
Three years later, on May 5, 1868 the head of a veterans group for the Grand Army of the Republic, Major General John Logan, tried to put regular order onto "Decoration Day" events taking place spontaneously all over America, in both North and South. He said it should be May 30, where flowers are in bloom everywhere.
People were decorating graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers. The spontaneous celebrations portended the short life of the Reconstruction impulse to bring racial equality in America. Majorities in Congress -- led by so-called "Radical Republicans" -- advanced the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and the Civil Rights Acts, over the objection and vetos of pro-South presidential successor to Lincoln, Andrew Johnson. Wartime bitterness was combined with a desire for reconciliation, reflected in Decoration Day remembrances.
Let it go. Forgive. Stop the fighting. Union and Confederate, all brothers in arms. Rest in peace. Let the grass work.
Sentiment in the North remained anti-slavery, but there wasn't widespread sentiment for equality or integration. Racial prejudice was commonplace. Most Northerners considered the status of Black Americans to be the South's business, with their Black Codes, legal segregation, voter suppression, all-White juries, and a two-class society.
And, as before, that progress creates its own sentiment for backlash and retreat.
5 comments:
The Civil War is still being fought by those who refuse to accept the fundamental principle it defended. More so they are being incited by cynical opportunists for their own profits.
"...all men are created equal."
It is not being fought on battlefields but in the halls of Congress, in statehouses and courts all over this nation, and it desecrates the memory of those we honor on this day.
Rick is right – the Civil War never really ended. It was all about White supremacy, and the scourge remains. The MAGA movement has made racism respectable again. One small example: textbooks in Florida have removed references to race from the Rosa Parks story for fear of offending DeSantis’ anti-woke law.
White-wingers like to whine about ‘racist’ being used as a verbal bludgeon, but sometimes things are called racist because they are. Memorial Day is a good time to remember and honor the many Black veterans of WWI and WWII who were humiliated, attacked and lynched because Whites perceived them as a threat.
The Civil War was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to America. Northern whites let the south alone after the Grant administration. The understanding was that the south would keep to itself and if the south remained stagnant, that was no big concern of white northerners; the south wasn't supposed to bother the north and west and the north and west wouldn't bother the south. This understanding and accomodation was strong for about eighty years, through the Great Depression. During this time, the Great Migration got underway, and then came World War Two. The country had to come together, and after the War regional lines blurred as people of all races, creeds, and colors from all corners of the country relocated to wherever their work was. In order for white northerners and white southerners to get along in this post-War melting pot, a lot of whites accepted the white south's Lost Cause version of the Civil War, if they thought much about the Civil War at all; that's sort of what history text books in public schools taught about the Civil War in the'50s and '60s, and you can see this in movies from the '40s and '50s, and especially television westerns through the mid-'60s (think Johnny Yuma, the rebel). The cultural assumption was that whites from all regions are "Americans"; for whites, the idea of Confederates as traitors wasn't mainstream in the latter half of the twentieth century. However, this way of thinking cannot withstand the civil rights revolution. Now, America has to once again confront why we had a Civil War as it really was. Now, America is renaming Army bases so as not to honor Confederate generals. I guess only in America would it ever have occurred to anyone to name important military bases after Confederate generals.
When I first moved to the South from Massachusetts in 1980, they were still fighting the War. One time I was at a party when someone looked me in the eye and said “I hate Yankees”. I replied “ I hate Yankees, too. I’m a Red Sox fan.” I loved the glassy look on his face as he was trying to make sense of my remark.
As a kid growing up in Medford, Oregon, I remember going with my Mom Helen and Grandma Power to decorate the gravestone of her late husband, my Grandpa Phillip Power in the old graveyard up on the hillside in spring. We went nearly every Memorial Day, May 30th. It was important for my Grandma, because she said that Grandpa's father James Power had been imprisoned and nearly starved to death at Andersonville Prison Florida after being captured during the battle for Atlanta in the Civil War. After the war he returned home to his wife Etheldra, to heal and recover at his Illinois farm and raise a big family.
Our Power family story is that it was James' wife, my great Grandma Etheldra, who picked the date of May 30th for observance of the "Decoration day" that was established by Lincoln with the advice of General John "Black Jack" Logan, who was Etheldra's cousin. After the great and terrible War, there was a strong sentiment in both the North and South to somehow come together in reconciliation to commemorate the sacrifice made by the soldiers who gave everything to the cause. Gen. Logan had come home to Illinois that springtime, and was walking with Etheldra in her garden, when he told about President Lincoln's request, and asked what she thought about a time for a memorial day. Mrs. Power, so the story goes, waved a hand around her large flower garden before she answered. "Just look around you, John. Pick a day when the roses are at their best." When Logan pressed her to pick a date, she said, "May 30th". So that is how it happened.
Wayne E. Taylor, 28 May 2023.
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