Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914

CHAPTER 2. Establishing Freedom’s Celebrations, 1865–1869

2 ESTABLISHING FREEDOM’S CELEBRATIONS, 1865–1869 In the spring of 1866, the Civil War had been over for a year, but the wounds had by no means healed. That much became clear as the black residents of Hampton, Virginia, gathered on the first anniversary of freedom . They marched on April 9—not the date of the Emancipation Proclamation but the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Black veterans paraded in the blue uniforms of the United States while carrying weapons like the ones that had helped to bring down the Confederacy. The event angered former Confederates; its correspondence with a tragic day seemed to mock their sense of loss. It was a volatile time in the South, with civil authority uncertain and the struggles to define new boundaries among various groups overlapping into a battle for public space, where violence served as the mediator. Someone attacked the procession of black veterans as it wound through the streets. That night, white mobs roamed the area, and sniper fire missed the Union commander who had authorized the ceremony. The episode caused a Republican newspaper 24 Establishing Freedom’s Celebrations editor to sputter indignantly, ‘‘Are we to be forbidden to hold national celebrations in our own country, lest we o√end the enemy?’’∞ Residents of the postwar South understood that the commemorations of war represented not simply ceremonies of unity and healing but potentially divisive rituals with political consequences.≤ Whoever appropriated the public realm signified that they held power in the shifting context of the postemancipation world. Those who controlled the nation-state determined who the enemy was or which celebrations represented ‘‘their country.’’ In this situation, every public act contained additional meaning as it was scrutinized for a≈rmation of a particular cause. The federal government demanded loyalty as a qualification for restoration of political rights to ex-Confederates—if not wartime faithfulness to the Union, then proof that they accepted the United States as the sovereign authority. One measure of that loyalty came through public symbolism, including the commemorations of war and freedom. With Republican politicians serving as orators during these formative years, freedom celebrations often resembled political rallies, and the opposition just as often interpreted them that way. The festivities surrounding Emancipation Days and Independence Day provided occasions for the mass assembly of people when the entire community, whether black or white, enjoyed release from work or greater freedom of travel. Especially during the two years immediately after the war, black people in the South had to use these and other festive occasions for mobilizing and announcing their public positions. They had no o≈cial standing as voters and were not considered part of the electorate. Civic commemorations provided black people with one way to profess support for the Union and press the case for political rights. On the surface African Americans appeared to be allies of the national government, or at least the Republican portion. Easy to miss, however, is that a consensus about these events did not exist and that the delineation of three commemorative traditions does not quite capture the complexity of the situation. The postwar world featured more than an emancipationist , a reconciliationist, and a white supremacist interpretation of the war. We should add to the list the Unionist. But even these advocates of reunion did not always favor conciliation with rebels.≥ It was possible for them to think of new coalitions being built with white Unionists without coddling the people who had led the rebellion. Nor did reunion mean accepting the Confederate version of history or absolving the rebels of the blame for bringing on the war. Establishing Freedom’s Celebrations 25 During the formation of freedom celebrations, di√erences between the freedpeople and white Republicans remained secondary to the formation of a new order. Similarly, the divisions among black people remained muted, even though there were di√erent ideas about how far to push a revolutionary agenda and collaborate with white people. There were also small concerns with how to celebrate freedom, with black leaders worried about the lack of decorum shown by the plain people, some of whom continued customary habits of displaying less than proper behavior. Scattered in the fields of initial unity germinated the seeds of later problems. n n n origins of emancipation days That southerners faced a di√erent world after the war became strikingly clear with the fall of Richmond. In...