Tribute by freed slaves long-worth remembering

[struggle4progress]

May 29, 2016
The Philadelphia Tribune

... “Decoration Day” was the name given to a memorial event honoring 257 soldiers who died fighting for the Union. After Confederate soldiers buried the bodies in a mass grave, former slaves were said to have spent weeks digging up the bodies and providing them a proper burial.

According to news reports of that time, thousands of Blacks, including 3,000 Black schoolchildren, gathered in May to remember these soldiers and to express their gratitude for their fighting on the side of freedom.

Later, Commander-in-chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued an order declaring May 30 as Memorial Day — “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land” ...

Confederate soldiers converted a Charleston race course and club into an outdoor prison, inside of which Union soldiers died and were later dumped in a mass grave. He wrote, “After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston, black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, ‘Martyrs of the Race Course’” ...

http://newpittsburghcourieronline.com/2016/05/29/tribute-by-freed-slaves-long-worth-remembering/

[fasttense]

1. A lot of Union Soldier's dead bodies were drug through Southern streets

hung out on trees and lamp posts and generally desecrated.

There was no national cemetery for them. It was created after the end of the war. So, many dead union soldiers were left in the Southern battlefields. After the war some effort was made to return the dead bodies.

And the Southerners did Not treat their remains with any dignity or respect. The south never talks about that part were they abuse the dead bodies though.

[Igel]

2. Most don't talk about what's shameful.

Unless you can use it to shame the other side. "I'm abused" only works if it shames the abuser more than it shames you, but then the claim becomes something that's rewarded.


When the North destroyed the railroad tracks heading to besieged towns through Union-controlled territory, nobody minded. Even if the trains were routinely inspected for arms and were found to be carrying only food, they'd be destroyed. Starvation was a tactic fairly widely employed: burn food shipments (or confiscate them), destroy the food stockpiles in territories that the Union troops passed through. If you starve, abuse, and demoralize the population then you'd destroy support for the army. The Southerners were morally inferior and those defeated looked down upon not just as defeated but as despised. The war against the South wasn't against the army, it was against the populace.

The "40 acres and a mule" field order was given by a commander (for a specific area) because the freed slaves were following the Union army . Even the former slaves had trouble finding food in areas where the Union troops passed through, and they often made passes through swathes of territory where no Confederate troops were reported or after Confederate troops had retreated. These former slaves had hoped to get food from the Union army, not just avoid revenge attacks by disenfranchised whites. If they could give the former slaves land and a mule, perhaps they'd stay put and stop pestering the army.


Hard to respect total warfare or desecration of bodies. The only difference is one disrespects the dead, the other tries to make the living dead. Moreover, civil wars are often the worst.

[fasttense]

3. War is hell for both sides

But Southerners try to appear as the abused victim. You know gone with the wind and all that crap. To listen to some Southerners around where I live, you would think black people were volunteering to be slaves because slavehood was just so wonderful.

No kidding, I heard some stupid white person say how lucky the slaves were to be slaves. And they said it in church and no one challenged him. I stopped attending soon after that.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Good for you. At least you can walk out on that kind of vile deceit, and let them babble alone.

Don't see how there could be a reason to go back, either. They are too twisted. They've decided to rewrite the truth.

Good luck.

[bemildred]

5. Civil Wars do tend to be particularly nasty.

Which is ironic, eh?

But it's like family arguments, they can get extra nasty too.