The following is offered as a partial attempt to negate the erasure of our history.
Memorial Day, May 30, 1871, Frederick Douglass stepped to the podium at Arlington National Cemetery. Less than a decade after the Civil War ended the former slave was concerned national memory about the war would be ill-shaped. Who would control the narrative of slavery, the war, and its consequences?
Indeed, not long after this speech Reconstruction would end and Jim Crow would begin. Douglass shared no “heritage” with those who fought to keep him and other enslaved, noting after the war was over, “the spirit of secession is stronger today than ever.”[1] Douglass would doubtless have agreed with Cambridge political scientist D. W. Brogan’s observation of the United States:
[T]he country that has a ‘history,’ dramatic, moving and tragic, has to live with it—with the problems it raised but did not solve, with the emotions that it leaves as a damaging legacy, with the defective vision that preoccupation with the heroic, with the disastrous, with the expensive past is fosters.[2]
Thus, over the graves filling the former estate of Robert E. Lee, Douglass spoke.
Friends and Fellow Citizens:
Tarry here for a moment. My words shall be few and simple. The solemn rites of this hour and place call for no lengthened speech. There is, in the very air of this resting-ground of the unknown dead, a silent, subtle, and all-pervading eloquence, far more touching, impressive, and thrilling than living lips have ever uttered. Into the measureless depths of every loyal soul it is now whispering lessons of all that is most precious and priceless; all that is holiest and most enduring, in human existence.
Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation, when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we bring today is due alike to the patriot soldiers dead and their noble comrades who still live; for, whether living or dead – whether in time or eternity – the loyal soldiers who perilled all for country and freedom, are one and inseparable.
Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits, reached, in their glorious career, that last highest point of nobleness, beyond which human power cannot go. They died for their country.
No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the benefactors of mankind, than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers, when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.
When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious, preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord; when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government throughout the world, had reached the point of supreme peril; when the union of these states was torn and rent asunder at the center, and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundation of American society, the unknown braves who slumber in these graves flung themselves into the yawning chasm where cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell. They died for their country!
We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation’s life, and those who struck to save it – those who fought for slavery, and those who fought for liberty and justice.
I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant; but may my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.
If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows and orphans; which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our youth, and sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed, and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold – swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves – and planted agony at a million hearthstones; I say, if this war is to be forgotten, I ask, in the name of all things sacred, what shall men remember?
The essence and significance of our devotions here today are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle. If we were met simply to show our sense of the worth of bravery, we should find enough to kindle admiration on both sides. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal soldier.
But we are here to applaud manly courage only as it has been displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the Republic. We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers. If today we have a country not boiling in an agony of blood, like France; if now we have a united country no longer cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage; if the American name is no longer a byword and a hissing to a mocking earth; if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army which rests in these honored graves all around us.[3]
[1]- The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, Gallagher & Nolan, University of Indiana Press, 2000, p. 2.
[2]- Ibid, p. 12-13.
[3]- Speech text
