Martyrs of the Race Course

Memorial Day means different things to different people, but it is odd that the official U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs website makes no mention of the first Decoration Day held in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. Instead, the VA lists the typical story of Waterloo, New York, which was officially commemorated by President Andrew Johnson in 1866.

David Blight offers an excellent chapter in Race and Reunion on the first Decoration Day, describing how the 21st US Colored Infantry marched into Charleston in late spring of 1865, accepted the formal surrender of the city and gave the Union dead found in a mass grave of a makeshift prison camp a proper burial. They also cleaned up the former horse racetrack, designating it as a cemetery for the "Martyrs of the Race Course."

This event was celebrated by some 10,000 people, including white Charlestonians, with a parade, military drills, a children's choir singing "We'll Rally Around the Flag," and a huge picnic afterward. Fortunately, a correspondent's record survived in the archives of the New York Tribune.

In the chapter, Blight went onto note how the memorial became co-opted by other towns and cities around the country and eventually came to be a national holiday, but it seems these black infantry soldiers never got their due. Not surprising since it wasn't until 1948 that Harry Truman desegregated the Armed Forces with Executive Order 9981. It didn't matter that blacks had fought along side whites in the Civil War and in two world wars, they were still considered separate and not quite equal. What should have been a reconciliation back in 1865 was deferred 73 years, much like the Civil Rights movement itself.

Meanwhile in the South, Memorial Day ceremonies revolved around the fallen Confederacy, marked on days that honored the final surrender of General Joseph Johnston and the birthdays of Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, ranging from April 26 to June 3. Charleston kept its initial celebration quietly under the rug.

Memorial Day has grown to commemorate all American war dead and was officially designated a national holiday in 1971. The military aspect of it has receded a bit. There are not the big parades like there used to be, but still many people go to cemeteries to honor fallen soldiers. A somber ceremony is carried out each year at Arlington National Cemetery as the dead has grown considerably since 1865.

But, it seems to me that not only are events like that in Charleston in 1865 lost to the collective imagination, but the brutality of war itself, as we seem to keep getting ourselves mired in wars that serve little purpose and leave deaths and casualties far beyond the official tally of fallen American soldiers. Moments like these should give us pause, like it did those soldiers of the 21st US Colored Infantry.

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

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