Preface
PREFACE Roughly a decade ago, I was researching a related project on national identity when I came across a newspaper item about an Emancipation Day celebration. The year was 1866. Former Confederates in Hampton, Virginia, were angered by the event, which featured black soldiers marching in the streets. The controversy turned violent when someone fired shots. Further digging into newspapers yielded other problems over ceremonies —times, for instance, when federal authorities censored aspects of Confederate Memorial Days. They prohibited veterans from wearing uniforms and stripped the buttons from the clothing of those who did. Speeches about the war were forbidden. On Union Memorial Day in 1869 at Arlington, the former home of Robert E. Lee, soldiers prevented southern women from decorating the graves of Confederate soldiers who had been buried on the grounds. It was apparent that bitterness remained after the war and that something as seemingly harmless as a public celebration—or the placing of flowers on a grave—provoked strong reactions , including life-threatening ones. As controversial as the Civil War has been and still is today with disputes over the Confederate flag, their intensity pales in comparison with the nineteenth-century clashes over commemorations of the conflict. Since that first discovery, I have hunted for the meaning behind these ceremonies, especially how they revealed the struggles over politics and power in the postemancipation South. Memorial Days and Emancipation Days seemed to o√er a way to learn the sentiments of various contending groups, revealing the positions of people who normally do not leave a written record. I thought, for instance, that I might learn more about African American political strategies during a time before much of the South had established black newspapers. The parades contained public associations and clubs that sent a message about political positions or the ambitionsofthemarchers.Itseemedreasonabletoconcludethatifpersons x Preface attended civic ceremonies, they found the message and reason for holding the event compatible with their own interests. Their interests may have di√ered from those of the speaker at times, but common people attending the commemorations of the Civil War and emancipation had to share at least basic premises with organizers or they likely would have stayed home. I found, however, that far from being merely windows into people’s attitudes, the new invented traditions of the Civil War were politics and power. They were politics in a way that does not happen today; the lines between election rituals and festive celebrations blurred in the nineteenth century. Public rituals drew crowds to listen to partisan speeches at a time when oral tradition was very important and literacy was still something to be achieved among African Americans emerging from enslavement. Political mobilization depended on outdoor rituals, processions, torchlight parades, and other activities characteristic of nineteenth-century America. They were power in a way that does happen today; they reflected who can declare their history and rituals as the o≈cial version. The postemancipation South, however, provided an electric atmosphere for this power display. The ceremonies emerged as a nation redrew the boundaries of freedom and citizenship, the result of the emancipation of 4 million enslaved Americans. The use of public space, such as letting women decorate Confederate graves at Arlington or black men carry weapons in a parade, would define citizenship, with repercussions extending into the twentieth and now the twenty-first centuries. It might be good to announce what this book does not do, so readers expecting otherwise can place the volume back on the shelf. I am not primarily interested in the construction of memory, although the concept serves as an important background of this study. Memory has become a cottage industry in the historical profession, with numerous scholars exploring how people define their past and their character using history that has been distorted to suit current needs. I am more interested in how that past was used than in describing how it was constructed. I also did not pursue religious symbolism in the ideology of black or white ceremonies. African Americans during Emancipation Day ceremonies did argue that freedom came because God had intervened in human a√airs; however, they more often used secular arguments when calling for the expansion of rights. They deployed demographics and other scientific evidence compatible with the progressive era. I also did not look at statuary, other material culture , battlefield preservation, veterans’ reunions, historical societies, or any mechanism beyond the invention of traditions. For better or worse, I tried [18.119.135.202...
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