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

CHAPTER 3. Waging Politics through Decoration Days, 1866–1869

3 WAGING POLITICS THROUGH DECORATION DAYS, 1866–1869 For former Confederates, a number of shadows darkened the first ceremonies in honor of their war dead. First was the knowledge that those being mourned had fallen in an unsuccessful e√ort. White southerners had to accept the sacrifice of nearly one-quarter of their seventeen- to fiftyyear -old men, many of whose bodies lay in unmarked graves far from home. Another shadow was cast by the ceremonies in which black people marched through the streets carrying guns as symbols of their agency in winning freedom. Still another element darkening the Confederate valley of sorrow was the federal government and its policies concerning commemorations of the dead. Graves of federal soldiers were dug, marked, and tended with government monies in newly formed national cemeteries . No federal arm was raised to gather the southern corpses that often lay nearby. Additionally, various generals prohibited expressions of Confederate sentiment. By 1867 this had resulted in new prohibitions on memorial celebrations that meant conducting the occasions without parades 50 Waging Politics through Decoration Days or speeches.∞ To the former masters of the Old South, it appeared as if they did not have the liberty of the freedpeople in creating public occasions for remembering the dead. Scholars more recently have appreciated the power implications behind the ceremonies for the dead, but they have overlooked the extent of intervention by federal o≈cials in Confederate traditions and the impact that the neglect of southern dead had on the defeated. Northerners expected to forge reunion with their enemies and were in many ways remarkably lenient with the men who could have been considered traitors to the nation. Despite indictments, no Confederate o≈cials underwent a trial for treason. Union authorities, however, expected capitulation to the government and acceptance of national symbols by the vanquished. Of- ficers often prohibited public display that smacked too much of honoring the rebellion: the waving of Confederate flags, the wearing of military uniforms, or the honoring of the southern cause in public addresses. Reconciliation in the five years or so after the war was to be a one-way street, with the defeated accepting the terms of the victorious. Interference with their public rituals added to the sting of Reconstruction for former rebels, especially because of the contrast with the ceremonies of emancipation and the creation of government-funded cemeteries. But it also created an irony. The emerging Confederate commemorations in the postwar South assumed a more solemn tone because o≈cials banned the behavior that seemingly kept treason alive. This has allowed historians of Memorial Days such as Paul Buck and Gaines Foster to stress the role of these commemorations in helping the process of reunion or allowing the Confederate psyche to heal. The pattern of Memorial Days has steered observers then and now to interpreting the ease with which exConfederates acquiesced in defeat.≤ Despite having to style their rituals according to federal tastes, former Confederates still found the Cities of the Dead useful as places for resistance. For more than a decade, and possibly for more than two, the dominant motivation behind Confederate commemorations was to maintain a sectional identity that defied complete assimilation within the Union. Ex-Confederates could not conduct open warfare in their ceremonies , but even the watered-down versions contained more points of conflict than consensus with the government. More to the point, the celebrants of Decoration Days fell into patterns that reflected the political alliances of Reconstruction. Union Decoration Days became branded as Republican Party events by the opposition, who saw them as belonging to Waging Politics through Decoration Days 51 scalawags, carpetbaggers, and southern African Americans. Confederate Decoration Days, on the other hand, attracted former southern Democrats and Whigs who tried not only to keep alive the Confederate past but to use that memory as one of the bases for political unity. n n n establishing the cities of the dead As former Confederates instituted memorial customs in the spring of 1866, a number of elements came together to generate controversy around cemeteries and reburials. Political winds had turned against white southerners, who were increasingly on the defensive and limited in their ability to find a public means for Confederate expressions. Black codes and other problems in the former Confederacy made northern moderates more receptive to radical measures for the region. The actions of white southerners raised concerns that they were attempting...