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Ω 10 Ω Forgetting and Remembering Milliken’s Bend M illiken’s bend was never a prominent battle, not even during the war. A few newspapers, North and South, carried short reports, often only a paragraph or two. Even the abolitionist press gave it less attention than Fort Wagner and Port Hudson. To two nations consumed with news of Lee’s advance into Pennsylvania and the siege at Vicksburg, Milliken’s Bend was born in obscurity. Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that it has remained obscure and nearly forgotten to the present day. The site of the battlefield and nearby village literally vanished from the face of the earth in the early twentieth century when the Mississippi River changed its course. There is nothing there to mark, to walk, to see. If Milliken’s Bend was born in obscurity, little wonder that it was quickly forgotten in the larger narrative of the war. After four bloody years of struggle, it was time for the nation to reunite and move on. Historian David Blight sees the urge toward reconciliation in North and South as a key point in ensuring that the memory of African Americans and their role in the war would be omitted from the historical record. The issue of slavery and its consequences, the need for emancipation, and the role of black soldiers in the fight for freedom had to be left out of this narrative in order to have Southern support for reconciliation with the North. Furthermore, many Northern veterans had negative opinions about their black counterparts, as did their former Southern enemies. The white veterans on both sides had to remember their fight as noble, brave, and for a just cause. For most white Union veterans, this cause was the restoration of the Union. Emancipation, although conceded as an important outcome of the war, was given secondary status. White supremacy and sectional reconciliation overruled any attempt at racial reconciliation and justice, with the result that black veterans’ contributions to the war effort were minimized.1 Andre Fleche takes issue with Blight’s thesis, making a convincing case milliken’s bend 166 based upon veterans’ own recollections as published in the organ of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the National Tribune. Fleche sees substantial evidence that the GAR was keenly aware of the role of emancipation in the war, took pride in the downfall of slavery, and, more often than one might expect, praised black troops and the men who led them.2 Donald R. Shaffer , too, sees the GAR as generally supportive of black veterans, although not without controversy. In 1891, some white members in the Mississippi and Louisiana Department proposed the creation of an entirely separate department for blacks. Though it was not unusual to find GAR posts in individual communities segregated by race in the South, in part to keep the peace among their Southern-born neighbors, the proposal to create two entirely separate departments based on color met with resistance and even condemnation from most veterans who lived outside of the South. Many Northern black veterans were especially critical, believing that shared sacrifice on the battlefield with their white comrades demanded equal treatment within the organization. The effort to create twin departments in Mississippi and Louisiana failed, but it pointed out a fracture within the GAR. Despite being a more racially tolerant organization than most others of the late nineteenth century, racism persisted.3 Frederick Douglass saw that the memory of the black man’s role in his own liberation, and the greater cause of full citizenship for the American Negro, in practice as well as in theory, was disappearing from the nation’s consciousness. After the war, he urged Northern Republicans to make justice for the black man a central tenet of lawmaking, politics, and commemoration, especially as Southern Democrats began to regain power through violence, exploitation, and intimidation. He fought to ensure that the black man’s contribution to freedom and the war effort was not forgotten.4 As Milliken’s Bend quickly vanished from the larger historical narrative, some men worked to keep its memory alive. Three black authors—two of them Civil War veterans—mentioned Milliken’s Bend in their works. In 1867, William Wells Brown was the first to write a history of blacks’ actions during the war. He quoted extensively from other sources about Milliken’s Bend, most notably Lt. Matthew Miller’s letter. Brown wanted to make sure his readers recognized the importance of the battle...

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