Tag: Civil War

Decoration Day

Sometimes, looking at discussion boards about the Civil War, I get the impresssion that we in the United States are STILL fighting it.


I’m old enough to remember when Memorial Day was on the 30th of May, not the last Monday in May, which was a change that took place in 1971. I’m not sure when the holiday changed from being called Decoration Day to Memorial Day, though I recently saw a 1902 Library Journal making reference to the former name.

The holiday was designed to remember the dead from the American Civil War (or however it was called by others) on both sides of the battle. According to Wikipedia, “General John A. Logan, who helped bring attention to the event nationwide, was likely a factor in the holiday’s growth. On May 5, 1868, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic – the organization for Northern Civil War veterans – Logan issued a proclamation that ‘Decoration Day’ should be observed nationwide. It was observed for the first time on May 30 of the same year; the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of a battle.” (Emphasis mine.)

This year, of course, is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. Sometimes, looking at discussion boards about the war, I get the impression that we in the United States are STILL fighting it.

One can surely question the wisdom of wars, which, after all, are generally instigated by the civilian leaders who don’t actually FIGHT in the wars and still appreciate the ultimate sacrifice many have made over the years fighting them.

Civil War books

Blight helps to explain why America today continues to wrestle with the seemingly endless and divisive issue of race, even while a black man resides in the White House.

Late last year, Glenn W LaFantasie came up with The top 12 Civil War books ever written for Salon magazine. A bold list with a lot of caveats (no biographies, no series or multivolume works, no fiction.) And if you’re interested, you can check out his choices, and the four dozen comments about the same.

But I came to a dead stop when he described his #5 book, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” by David W. Blight (2001), which I have never read. It’s because the description seems so important to our 21st-century lives in America:

[It] explores how the past is connected to the present by looking at the ways in which Americans have remembered the Civil War. His deeply researched and carefully crafted study argues that after the war white veterans, Union and Confederate, facilitated the reconciliation of the two sections by consciously avoiding the fact that slavery had brought on the sectional conflict, choosing instead to celebrate the courage that they and their comrades had brandished in battle. Less consciously, they and their fellow Americans found this new narrative — this rewriting of history based on a kind of historical amnesia — comforting and restorative. Reunification became a joyful event, but it came at a steep price. After Reconstruction, Northerners and Southerners alike took hold of a “Lost Cause” ideology that showed pity toward the South in its defeat, accepted Jim Crow policies that deprived blacks of their civil rights, and pushed for policies and practices that would ensure white supremacy across the land. Blight carefully avoids grinding axes as he makes his argument, which taken as a whole helps to explain why America today continues to wrestle with the seemingly endless and divisive issue of race, even while a black man resides in the White House. Here is a powerful book, artfully written by a scholar of learned poise who believes that by knowing the past we might better know ourselves.

I was wowed by the description, and if the book is as good as its review, it seems evident that I, and perhaps many of us, should be reading it.

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