"For Something beyond the Battlefield": and the Struggle for the Memory of the Civil War Author(s): David W. Blight Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 75, No. 4 (Mar., 1989), pp. 1156-1178 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1908634 . Accessed: 01/12/2014 14:28

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This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "ForSomething beyond the Battlefield":Frederick Douglass and the Strugglefor the Memory of the Civil War

David W. Blight

Fellowcitizens: I am not indifferentto the claimsof a generousforgetfulness, but whateverelse I mayforget, I shall neverforget the differencebetween thosewho foughtfor liberty and thosewho foughtfor ; between those who foughtto save the Republicand thosewho foughtto destroyit. -FrederickDouglass, "Decoration Day," 1894 We fellunder the leadershipof thosewho wouldcompromise with truth in the past in orderto makepeace in the presentand guide policyin the future. -W. E. B. Du Bois, BlackReconstruction, 1935 What you have as heritage, Takenow as task; For thusyou will makeit yourown. -Goethe, Faust, 1808 In thefirst week ofJanuary 1883, on thetwentieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation,a distinguishedgroup of blackleaders held a banquetin Washing- ton, D.C., to honorthe nineteenthcentury's most prominent Afro-American in- tellectual,Frederick Douglass. The banquetwas an act ofveneration for Douglass, an acknowledgmentof the agingabolitionist's indispensable role in the CivilWar era,a ritualof collective celebration, and an opportunityto forgehistorical memory and transmitit acrossgenerations. The nearlyfifty guests comprised a who'swho of blackleadership in the middleand late nineteenthcentury. For the moment, rivalriesand ideologicaldisputes were suppressed. Sen. BlancheK. Brucechaired the event. RobertSmalls, Edward Blyden,the ReverendBenjamin T. Tanner,

David W. Blightis assistantprofessor of history and Afro-Americanstudies at HarvardUniversity. An earlierversion of thisarticle was delivered at theannual meeting of theOrganization of AmericanHistorians, Reno, Nev., March 26, 1988. For theirmany helpful criticisms and suggestions,the authorwishes to thankDaniel Aaron,Susan Armeny,Karin Beckett,Ira Berlin,Richard Blackett, Randall Burkett,Melvin Dixon, David HerbertDonald, GenevieveFabre, Nathan 1. Huggins,Michael Kammen, Alan Levy,Waldo E. Martin,David Thelen,Clarence Walker,the reviewers for the Journal of American History, and especiallythe members of theWorking Group on Historyand Memoryin Afro-AmericanCulture, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute,Harvard University.

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This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FrederickDouglass and theMemory of the Civil War 1157

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This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1158 TheJournal of AmericanHistory southernstate and sixnorthern states were represented. After a sumptuousdinner, numeroustoasts were offered to Douglass,and to nearlyevery major aspect of black life:to "thecolored man as a legislator";to "theNegro press"; to "the Negroau- thor";to "theRepublican Party"; and so forth.Douglass himself finally ended the joyousround of toastsby offering one of his own:to "thespirit of theyoung men" bywhom he wassurrounded. Many of the mostdistinguished guests had come of age onlysince the Civil War. For them slavery, , and eventhe war itself werethe historybeyond memory. Douglass had capturedan essentialmeaning of theoccasion; the young had gatheredin tributeto theold. As theymet to celebrate and to understandthe pivotal event in theirhistory-emancipation -the meaning of thatevent was being passed to a new generationof black leaders.' In his formalremarks at the banquet,Douglass demonstratedthat during the lastthird of his life(he livedfrom 1818 until 1895), a distinguishingfeature of his leadershipwas his quest to preservethe memoryof the Civil War as he believed blacksand the nationshould remember it. Douglass viewedemancipation as the centralreference point of blackhistory. Likewise the nation,in his judgment,had no greaterturning point, nor a betterdemonstration of nationalpurpose. On the twentiethanniversary, Douglass soughtto infuseemancipation and the warwith thesacred and mythicqualities that he had alwaysattributed to them."This high festival. . . ," Douglass declared, "is coupled with a day which we do well to hold in sacredand everlastinghonor, a daymemorable alike in thehistory of thenation and in the lifeQf an emancipatedpeople." , he believed,ought to be a nationalcelebration in whichall blacks- the low and the mighty-could claima newand securesocial identity. But it wasalso an "epoch"full of lessons about themeaning of historicalmemory. "Reflection upon it (emancipation)opens to us a vastwilderness of thoughtand feeling,"Douglass asserted."Man is said to be an animallooking before and after.To him alone is giventhe propheticvision, en- abling him to discernthe outlineof his futurethrough the mistsof the past." Douglasschallenged his fellowblack leaders to rememberthe CivilWar with awe. "The daywe celebrate,"he said, "affordsus an eminencefrom which we mayin a measuresurvey both the past and thefuture. It is one ofthose days which may well countfor a thousandyears." This was more than mere banquet rhetoric.It was Douglass'sattempt to inspirehis colleagueswith the idea RobertPenn Warren would laterexpress when he wrotethat "the Civil War is our onlyfelt history- historylived in the nationalimagination."2 Douglass'seffort to forgememory into action that could somehow save the legacy of the CivilWar for blacks-freedom, citizenship, suffrage, and dignity-cameat a timewhen the nationappeared indifferent or hostileto thatlegacy. The richly

I People'sAdvocate, Jan. 6, 1883,Leon GardinerCollection (Historical Society of Pennsylvania,Philadelphia). The banquetwas organizedby ProfessorJ. M. Gregoryof HowardUniversity. 2 Ibid; RobertPenn Warren, The Legacy of the Civil War:Meditations on the Centennial(Cambridge, Mass., 1983),4. Douglass'simagery here reflects his apocalyptic view of history. On hisapocalyptic conception of the Civil War,see David W. Blight,"Frederick Douglass and the AmericanApocalypse," Civil WarHistory, 31 (Dec. 1985), 309-28.

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FrederickDouglass and theMemory of the Civil War 1159 symbolicemancipation day banquet of 1883 occurredonly monthsbefore the UnitedStates Supreme Court struck down the CivilRights Act of 1875,sacrificing the CivilWar amendments, as the dissentingJusticeJohnMarshall Harlan put it, and openingthe door for the eventual triumph of Jim Crow laws across the South. The rulingin UnitedStates v. Stanley,better known as the CivilRights Cases, declaredthat the equal protectionclause of the FourteenthAmendment applied onlyto states;a personwronged by racial discrimination, therefore, could look for redressonly from state laws and courts.In effect,the decision would also meanthat thediscriminatory acts of privatepersons were beyond the safeguards of the Four- teenthAmendment. At a mass meetingin Washington,D.C., immediatelyafter thedecision, Douglass tried to capturethe sense of outrage felt by his people. "We have been, as a class,grievously wounded, wounded in the house of our friends," Douglass proclaimed.In the SupremeCourt's decision, Douglass saw "a studied purposeto degradeand stampout the liberties of a race.It is theold spiritof slavery, and nothingelse."3 Douglassinterpreted the CivilRights Cases as a failureof historical memory and nationalcommitment. Reflecting on theSupreme Court decision in hisfinal autobi- ography,Douglass contended that "the future historian will turn to the year1883 to findthe mostflagrant example of thisnational deterioration." White racism, among individualsand in nationalpolicy, he remarked,seemed to increasein proportionto the"increasing distance from the time of thewar." Douglass blamed not onlythe "fadingand defacingeffects of time,"but moreimportant, the spirit ofreconciliation between North and South.Justice and libertyfor blacks, he main- tained,had lostground from "the hourthat the loyalNorth . . . began to shake handsover the bloodychasm."4 Thus, Douglass saw the SupremeCourt decision as partof a disturbingpattern of historical change. Historical memory, he had come to realize,was not merelyan entityaltered by the passage of time;it wasthe prize in a strugglebetween rival versions of the past, a questionof will,of power,of persuasion.The historicalmemory of any transformingor controversialevent emergesfrom cultural and politicalcompetition, from the choiceto confrontthe past and to debate and manipulateits meaning. Eversince the war Douglass had exhibitedan increasinglykeen sense of history. "I am thissummer endeavoring to makemyself a littlemore familiar with history," Douglasswrote to GerritSmith in 1868. "Myignorance of the past has long been a troubleto me."From the early days of Reconstruction, but especially by the 1870s, Douglassseemed acutely aware that the postwar era might ultimately be controlled bythose who could bestshape interpretations ofthe war itself. Winning the peace wouldnot only be a matterof power, but also a struggleof moral will and historical

3RayfordW. Logan,The Betrayalof the Negro:From Rutherford B. Hayesto WoodrowWilson (, 1965),114-18; Frederick Douglass, "The CivilRights Case: Speechat theCivil Rights Mass-Meeting Held at Lincoln Hall, October22, 1883,"in The Lifeand Writingsof Frederick Douglass, ed. PhilipS. Foner(5 vols.,New York, 1950), IV, 393, 402. 4 FrederickDouglass, The Life and Timesof Frederick Douglass, Writtenby Himself His EarlyLife as a Slave, His Escapefrom Bondage, and His CompleteHistory (1892; reprint,New York,1962), 539.

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consciousness.In thesuccessful rise of the Democratic party, Douglass saw evidence thatthe South was beginning to winthat struggle. In 1870he complainedthat the Americanpeople were"destitute of politicalmemory." But as he triedto reachout to bothblack and whitereaders with his newspaper,Douglass demanded that they notallow the country to "burydead issues,"as theDemocrats wished. "The people cannotand willnot forget the issues of the rebellion," Douglass admonished. "The Democraticparty must continue to face the musicof the past as well as of the present."5 Some of Douglass'scritics accused him of livingin the past. Americanpolitics, declareda LiberalRepublican newspaper in 1872,would "leave Mr. Douglass be- hind . . . vociferatingthe old platitudes as though the world had stopped eight yearsago." To suchcriticisms Douglass always had a readyanswer: he wouldnot for- give the Southand he would neverforget the meaningof the war.At the Tomb ofthe Unknown Soldier in ArlingtonNational Cemetery in 1871,on one ofthe first observancesof MemorialDay, Douglass declaredwhere he stood. We aresometimes asked in thename of patriotismto forgetthe merits of this fearfulstruggle, and to rememberwith equal admiration those who struck at the nation'slife, and thosewho struck to saveit-those who fought for slavery and thosewho fought for liberty and justice.I am no ministerof malice . . ., I would notrepel the repentant, but . . . maymy tongue cleave to theroof of my mouth ifI forgetthe difference between the parties to that ... bloodyconflict ... I may sayif this war is to be forgotten,I ask in thename of all thingssacred what shall menremember?6 Douglassoften referred to the preservationof the Union in glowing,nationalistic tones.But in thelast third of his life,he demonstratedthat the Civil War had also leftmany bitter elements of memory. Around the pledge to "neverforget," Douglass organizedhis entire postwar effort to shapeand preservethe legacy of the Civil War. By intellectualpredilection and by experience,Douglass was deeplyconscious thathistory mattered. As theauthor of three autobiographies by the 1880s,he had cultivateddeep furrowsinto his own memory. In a realsense, the Frederick Douglass who enduresas an unendingsubject of literaryand historicalinquiry- because of the autobiographies- is and was the creatureof memory.Moreover, Douglass deeplyunderstood that peoples and nationsare shapedand definedby history. He knewthat history was a primarysource of identity,meaning, and motivation.He seemedacutely aware that history was bothburden and inspiration,something to be cherishedand overcome.Douglass also understoodthat winning battles over policyor justicein thepresent often required an effectiveuse of thepast. He came to a realizationthat in late nineteenth-centuryAmerica, blacks had a specialneed fora usable past. "It is not well to forgetthe past,"Douglass warnedin an 1884

5 FrederickDouglass to GerritSmith, Aug. 24, 1868,in Lifeand Writingsof FrederickDouglass, ed. Foner, IV, 210; New NationalEra, Nov. 24, 1870. 6 GoldenAge, quoted in New NationalEra, Aug. 8, 1872; FrederickDouglass, "Address at the Graveof the UnknownDead," May 30, 1871,reel 14, FrederickDouglass Papers(Manuscript Division, Library of Congress).

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FrederickDouglass and theMemory of the Civil War 1161 speech."Memory was given to manfor some wise purpose. The pastis ... themirror in whichwe maydiscern the dim outlinesof thefuture and bywhich we maymake themmore symmetrical." To all who look to historyfor meaning, those premises may seem obvious.But in the 1880s,according to Douglass, blacksoccupied a specialplace in America's historicalmemory, as participantsand as custodians.He understoodhis people's psychologicalneed not to dwellon the horrorsof slavery.But the slaveexperience was so immediateand unforgettable,Douglass believed,because it was a history thatcould "be tracedlike that of a woundedman througha crowdby the blood." Douglassurged his fellowblacks to keep thezrhistory before the consciousnessof Americansociety; if necessary, they should serve as a nationalconscience. "Well the nationmay forget," Douglass said in 1888, "it mayshut its eyesto the past, and frownupon anywho maydo otherwise,but thecolored people of thiscountry are bound to keep the past in livelymemory till justiceshall be done them."But as Douglass learned,such historicalconsciousness was as out of date in Gilded Age Americaas the racialjustice he demanded.8 In his retrospectivethought about the Civil War,Douglass's intention was to forgeenduring historical myths that could help win battlesin the present.The deepestcultural myths-ideas and storiesdrawn from history that, through sym- bolicpower, transcend generations - arethe mechanisms of historical memory. Such mythsare bornof divergentexperiences and providethe culturalweapons with whichrival memories contest for hegemony. Douglass hoped thatUnion victory, blackemancipafion, and theCivil War amendments would be so deeplyrooted in recentAmerican experience, so centralto anyconception of nationalregeneration, so necessaryto thepostwar society that they would become sacred values, ritualized in memory.Douglass dearly wanted black freedom and equality-thegift from the Uniondead whowere memorialized every Decoration Day-to become(as Richard Slotkin puts it) one of those "usable values fromhistory . . . beyond the reach of criticaldemystification."9 Douglass's hope thatemancipation could attainsuch in-

7 FrederickDouglass, "Speech at the Thirty-ThirdAnniversary of theJerry Rescue," 1884, reel 16, Douglass Papers.On the natureand importanceof historicalmemory, see HaydenWhite, Tropics of Discourse:Essays in CulturalCriticism (Baltimore, 1978), 26-50; EricHobsbawm and TerenceRanger, eds., TheInvention of Tradition (New York,1983); Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindicationof Tradition(New Haven, 1984); MichaelKammen, A Season of Youth:The American Revolution and theHistorical Imagination (New York,1978); UlricNeisser, ed., Memory Observed:Remembering in NaturalContexts (San Francisco,1982); and David Lowenthal,The PastIs a Foreign Country(London, 1985). On theCivil War in thenorthern memory, see Daniel Aaron,The UnwrittenWar: Amer- ican Writersandthe Civil War(NewYork, 1973); Oscar Handlin, "The CivilWar as Symboland as Actuality,"Mas- sachusettsReview, 3 (Autumn1961), 133-43; Kammen,Season of Youth,256-59; Paul H. Buck,The Road to Re- union, 1865-1900(New York, 1937), 228-309; and James M. McPherson,The AbolitionistLegacy: From Reconstructionto the NAACP (Princeton,1975), 95-139, 333-38. 8 Douglass,"Speech at theThirty-Third Anniversary of theJerry Rescue"; Frederick Douglass, "Address deliv- eredon theTwenty-Sixth Anniversary of Abolitionin theDistrict of Columbia,"April 16, 1888,reel 16,Douglass Papers. 9 RichardSlotkin, The Fatal Environment. The Myth of the Frontier in theAge ofIndustrialization, 1800-1890 (New York,1985), 19. Myunderstanding of thestructure of cultural myth, and itsuses and misusesby historians, is derivedfrom ibid., 3-32; BruckKuklik, "Myth and Symbolin AmericanStudies," American Quarterly, 24 (Oct. 1972),435-50; SacvanBercovitch, The Americanjeremiad(Madison, 1978), xi-xii, 132-220; Clifford Geertz, The

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1162 TheJournal of AmericanHistory deliblemythic quality was rootedin his enduringfaith in the doctrineof progress and in hismoral determinism, a belief that in a societyof egalitarian laws good will outweighevil in thecollective action of humanbeings. Repeatedly, Douglass criti- cized theclaim that emancipation came only by "military necessity" during the war. "The warfor the Union came onlyto executethe moraland humanejudgment of thenation," he assertedin 1883."It wasan instrumentof a higherpower than itself." What drewnortherners to MemorialDay observances,Douglass maintainedin 1878, was the "moral characterof the war . . , the far-reaching. . ., eternalprin- ciplesin dispute,and forwhich our sons and brothersencountered . .. dangerand death."1oBy continuingto stressthat sacredand ideologicallegacy of the war, Douglassexposed both his deepest sense of the meaning of theconflict and hisfear thatsuch meaningwould not successfullycompete with rival memories (in both Northand South) and could, therefore,be lost. Douglass'spledge to "neverforget" the meaning of the Civil War stemmed from at leastfive sources in his thoughtand experience:his beliefthat the war had been an ideologicalstruggle and not merelythe testof a generation'sloyalty and valor; hissense of refurbished nationalism made possibleby emancipation, Union victory, and RadicalReconstruction; his confrontationwith the resurgentracism and Lost Cause mythologyof the postwar period; his critique of America's peculiar dilemma of historicalamnesia; and his personalpsychological stake in preservingan Afro- Americanand an abolitionistmemory of the war. Douglass never softened his claim thatthe Civil War had beenan ideologicalconflict with deeply moral consequences. He abhorredthe nonideologicalinterpretation of the warthat was gainingpopu- larityby the 1880s.The spiritof sectional reunion had fostereda celebrationof mar- tialheroism, of strenuousness and courage,perhaps best expressed by Oliver Wen- dell Holmes,Jr., and laterpopularized by Theodore Roosevelt. Holmes experienced and thereforeloathed the horror of combat. But to him,the legacy of the Civil War restednot in any moralcause on eitherside, but in the passion,devotion, and sacrificeof the generationwhose "hearts were touched with fire." To Holmes,the truehero-the deepestmemory-of the CivilWar was the soldieron eitherside, thoughtlessof ideology, who faced the "experience of battle . .. in thoseindecisive contests."War almost always forces people to askthe existential question why? Mas- siveorganized killing compels the question, but it seldom reveals satisfying answers. Indeed,the very face of battle,suffering, and deathcan bluntor denyideology al- together.Teleological conceptions of war are rarely the luxury of individual soldiers; theveteran's memory rarely focuses on the granddesign. Ideology, though always

Interpretationof Cultures:Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz (New York,1973), 28-30, 33-141,213-20; Kammen, Seasonof Youth,3-32, 221-58;and WarrenI. Susman,Culture as History:The TransformationofAmerican Society in the TwentiethCentury (New York,1984), 3-26. l0 FrederickDouglass, "Speech on EmancipationDay," September1883, reel 15, Douglass Papers. For Douglass'sattacks on the idea of "militarynecessity," see also [FrederickDouglass], "The BlackMan's Progress on This Continent,"New NationalEra, July 27, 1871.Frederick Douglass, "Speech in MadisonSquare," Decoration Day, 1878,reel 15, Douglass Papers.

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FrederickDouglass and theMemory of the Civil War 1163 at the rootof war, is leftto the interpreters,those who willcompete to definethe meaningand legacyof the wartime experience. "In themidst of doubt,in thecol- lapse of creeds,"said Holmes,"there is one thingI do not doubt,and thatis that the faithis trueand adorablewhich sends a soldierto throwaway his lifein obe- dienceto a blindlyaccepted duty, in a causewhich he littleunderstands, in a plan of campaignof which he has no notion,under tactics of which he does notsee the use."By the 1880sHolmes's memory of the war became deeply rooted in American culture.What matteredmost was not the contentof the cause on eitherside but theacts of commitment to eithercause, not ideas but the experience born of conflict overthose ideas. Whoeverwas honestin his devotionwas right."1 Douglass resistedsuch an outlookand demandeda teleologicalmemory of the war.His MemorialDay addresseswere full of tributes to martialheroism, albeit only on the Union side; but moreimportant, they were testaments to the abolitionist conceptionof thewar. The conflict,Douglass insisted in 1878,"was a warof ideas, a battleof principles . .. a warbetween the old and new,slavery and freedom,bar- barismand civilization."After Reconstruction Douglass was one ofa smallband of old abolitionistsand reformerswho struggledto sustainan ideologicalinterpreta- tionof the Civil War. His speecheswere strikingly similar to thewritings of the nov- elistand formercarpetbagger, Albion Tourgee. Satirically, Tourgee attempted to an- swerthe Holmesian version of an ideology-freeveteran's memory. "We havenothing to do withthe struggle that followed" the outbreak of war, wrote Tourgee in 1884. "Historyhath already recorded it with more or less exactitude. It waslong and fierce because two brave peoples fought with the desperation of conviction. . . . It was a wonderfulconflict." What people should rememberof the war,Tourgee con- tended,was "not the courage, the suffering, the blood, but onlythe causes that un- derlaythe struggle and the resultsthat followed from it." LikeDouglass, Tourgee consideredemancipation the great result of the war. He also rejecteda coreconcept of thenational reunion: that the South'swar effort was honestand, therefore,just as heroicas the Union cause. "Becausean opponentis honest,"Tourgee asserted, "it does notfollow that he is right,nor is it certainthat because he wasoverthrown he was in the wrong."Thinkers like Douglass and Tourgeewere not merelytrying to "keepalive conflict over issues time was ruthlesslydiscarding," as Paul H. Buck wrotein 1937.12Belligerence was not the primarymotive of thosewho arguedfor an ideologicalmemory of the CivilWar. Theirs was a persuasionunder duress by the1880s, a collectivevoice nearly drowned out bythe chorus of reconciliation. They understoodthe need for healing in therecently divided nation; they could acknowl-

"Mark De WolfeHowe, ed., TheOccasional Speeches oflustice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass., 1962),4-5, 76. Excellentdiscussions of Holmes are found in GeorgeM. Fredrickson,The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectualsand the Crisisof the Union(New York,1965), 218-21; Cruce Stark, "Brothers At/In War: One Phase of Post-CivilWar Reconciliation:' Canadian Review of American Studies, 6 (Fall 1975), 174-81;and Aaron,Un- writtenWar, 161-62. 12 AlbionW. Tourgee,An Appealto Caesar(NewYork, 1884), 37, 44; Buck,Roadto Reunion, 242. On Tourgee, see OttoH. Olsen,Carpetbagger's Crusade: The Life ofAlbion Winegar Tourgee (Baltimore, 1965); Richard Nelson Current,Those TerribleCarpetbaggers: A Reinterpretation(New York,1988), 367-82, 401-6; and Aaron,Un- writtenWar, 193-205.

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1164 TheJournal of AmericanHistory edgethe validity of veterans' mutual respect. But they distrusted the sentimentalism of bothNorth and South,and theyespecially feared Holmes's notion of the "col- lapseof creeds." Most of all, thosenortherners who stressed ideas in thedebate over thememory of thewar saw Americaavoiding-whether benignly or aggressively- the deep significanceof race in the verdictof Appomattox. Douglass'svoice was crucial to thelate nineteenth-centurydebate over the legacy of the Civil War. As Edmund Wilson wrotein analyzingthe significanceof "detached"American writers of theCivil War era: "Theyalso servewho onlystand and watch.The men of actionmake history, but the spectatorsmake most of the histories,and thesehistories may influence the action."Douglass had actedin his- tory,but nowhis principal aim wasto help shape thehistories. Unlike Holmes and manyothers, Douglass had not servedon the battlefield.But he had servedin slavery,he had servedon theabolitionist platform, and he had servedwith his pen and voiceas fewother black leaders had duringthe war. Douglass's war was an in- tellectualand spiritualexperience; his actionhad been moreof an innerstruggle thana physicaltest. Perhaps his remoteness from the carnage enabled him to sustain an ideologicalconception of the warthroughout his life.Answering of theveterans' memory, Douglass maintainedthat the war "was not a fightbetween rapaciousbirds and ferociousbeasts, a meredisplay of brute courage and endurance, but it wasa warbetween men of thought,as wellas of action,and in dead earnest forsomething beyond the battlefield."I13 The secondsource of Douglass'squest to preservethe memory of the CivilWar washis refurbished nationalism. At stakefor the former fugitive slave was the sense ofAmerican nationhood, the secure social identity that he hopedemancipation and equalitywould one day offerevery black in America.Douglass expressed this con- nectionbetween nationalism and memoryin hisfamous speech at theunveiling of theFreedmen's Memorial Monument to AbrahamLincoln in Washington,D.C., in April1876. The Freedmen'sMemorial speech is too easilyinterpreted as merelyeu- logistic,as simplyDouglass's contribution to themyth of Lincoln as GreatEmanci- pator.Attended by President Ulysses S. Grant,his cabinet, Supreme CourtJustices, and numeroussenators, the ceremonywas as impressiveas the brightspring day, whichhad been declareda holidayby joint resolution of Congress.After a reading ofthe Emancipation Proclamation and theunveiling of thestatue (which Douglass lateradmitted he dislikedbecause "it showedthe Negroon his knees"),Douglass tookthe podium as theorator of theday. His addressincluded strong doses of the rail-splitterLincoln image, the "plebeian" who rose throughhonesty, common sense, and the mysterioushand of God to become the "greatliberator." But Douglassunderstood the significance of theoccasion; he knewit was a momentto forgenational memory and to practicecivil religion. Through most of the speech he spoketo and forblacks; the monumenthad been commissionedand paid for

13 EdmundWilson, Patriotic Gore: Studiesin the Literatureof the AmericanCivil War(Boston, 1984), 669; Douglass,"Speech in MadisonSquare." On theconflict between ideological and nonideologicalconceptions of the war,see Fredrickson,Inner Civil War,196-98, 217-38.

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FrederickDouglass and theMemory of the Civil War 1165 almostentirely by blacks. But the monument was not only to Lincoln;rather, it was to thefact of emancipation.The occasionhonored Lincoln, but Douglass equally stressedthe eventsthat transpired "under his rule,and in due time."Most impor- tant,Douglass staked out a claimto nationhoodfor blacks. "We standtoday at the nationalcenter," he said,"to perform something like a nationalact." Douglass struck clearnotes of civilreligion as he describedthe "statelypillars and majesticdome of the Capital"as "ourchurch" and rejoicedthat "for the firsttime in the history ofour people, and in thehistory of the whole American people, we join in thishigh worship."Douglass was, indeed, tryingto make Lincolnmythic and, therefore, usefulto the cause of black equality.But the primarysignificance of Douglass's Freedmen'sMemorial address lies in itsconcerted attempt to forgea placefor blacks in the nationalmemory, to asserttheir citizenship and nationhood."When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless . . ," Douglass concluded, "when the foulreproach of ingratitudeis hurledat us, and it is attemptedto scourgeus beyondthe rangeof humanbrotherhood, we maycalmly point to themonument wehave this day erected to thememory of ." What Lincoln himself had oncecalled the "mystic chords of memory" as a sourceof devotion to theUnion, Douglass now claimed as the rightfulinheritance of blacksas well. He did so throughlanguage, the essence of cultural myth, and theonly secure means he pos- sessed.14 The thirdcause of Douglass's concern over the memory of the CivilWar was the resurgentracism throughout the countryand therise of theLost Cause mentality. Sinceits origins as a literaryand politicaldevice immediately after the war, the Lost Cause has been an enigmaticphrase in Americanhistory. Historians have defined theLost Cause in at leastthree different ways: as a publicmemory, shaped by a web oforganizations, institutions, and rituals;as a dimensionof southern and American civilreligion, rooted in churchesand sacredrhetoric as wellas secularinstitutions and thought;and as a literaryphenomenon, shaped by journalistsand fiction writersfrom the die-hardConfederate apologists of the immediatepostwar years throughthe gentle romanticism of the "local color" writers of the 1880s to thelegion of moremature novelists of the 1890sand earlytwentieth century who appealed to a nationalaudience eager for reconciliation.15 Dividing the movementinto the "inner"and "national"memories is also usefulin makingsense of theLost Cause.

14 On theFreedmen's Memorial speech, see BenjaminQuarles, Frederick Douglass (New York,1968), 276-78. Quarlesmaintains that the speech was "distinctly not one of [Douglass's]best." See also NathanI. Huggins,Slave and Citizen:The Lifeof FrederickDouglass (Boston,1980), 102-3. FrederickDouglass, "Oration in Memoryof AbrahamLincoln," April 14, 1876,in Lifeand Writingsof Frederick Douglass, ed. Foner,IV, 317-19,314, 310-11, 319. Forthe "mysticchords" quotation, see AbrahamLincoln, "First Inaugural Address," March 4, 1861,in The CollectedWorks ofAbraham Lincoln, ed. RoyP. Basler(8 vols.,New Brunswick,1953), IV, 271.On blackattitudes towardLincoln during the war,see BenjaminQuarles, Lincoln and the Negro(New York,1962). 15Gaines M. Foster,Ghosts of the Confederacy:Defeat, the Lost Cause,and theEmergence of the New South, 1865-1913(New York,1986), 4-5, 36-46, 104-14;Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood. TheReligion of the Lost Cause,1865-1920 (Athens, Ga., 1980), 12-14,37-78; ThomasL. Connellyand BarbaraL. Bellows,God and GeneralLongstreet:The Lost Cause andthe SouthernMind (Baton Rouge, 1982), 39-72. See also C. VannWood- ward,The Originsof the New South, 1877-1913(Baton Rouge,1951), 154-58.

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The "inner" Lost Cause argue Thomas L. onnellyand Barbara L. Bellows, repre- sents the die-hard generationthat foughtthe war and experienceddefeat and dis- honor.Led byJefferson Davis, and especiallyby the prototypicalunreconstructed rebel,Gen. Jubal Early, these former Confederate leaders created veterans' organiza- tions,wrote partisan confederate histories, built monuments, made RobertE. Lee intoa romanticicon, and desperatelysought justification for their cause and expla- nationsfor their defeat. The Confederacy,argued the diehards, was never defeated; rather,it wasoverwhelmed by numbers and betrayedby certain generals at pivotal battles(namely James Longstreet at Gettysburg).The activitiesof the initialLost

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Cause advocateshave been comparedto the GhostDance of the PlainsIndians of the late nineteenthcentury. As mystics,they remained "captivated by a dream," writesGaines Foster,"a dreamof a returnto an undefeatedconfederacy." The "inner"Lost Cause was not,however, merely a band of bitter,aging, mystical sol- diers.During the 1870sand 1880sthey forged an organizedmovement in print, oratory,and granite,and theirinfluence persisted until World War I.16 The "national"Lost Cause took hold duringthe 1880sprimarily as a literary phenomenonpropagated by mass marketmagazines and welcomedby a bur- geoningnorthern readership. Avoiding the defensivetone and self-pityof earlier LostCause writers,successful local coloristJohn Esten Cooke found a vastand vul- nerableaudience for his stories of the genteel and romanticheritage of old Virginia. Cookeand otherwriters such as ThomasNelson Page and Sara Pryordid notwrite abouta defeatedSouth or theConfederate cause. They wrote about the Old South, about the chivalryand romanceof antebellumplantation life, about black "ser- vants"and a happy,loyal slave culture, remembered as a sourceof laughterand music.They wrote about colonialVirginia - the Old Dominion- as the sourceof revolutionaryheritage and thebirthplace of several American presidents. Northern readerswere treated to an exoticSouth, a premodern,preindustrial model of grace. These writerssought, not to vindicatethe Confederacy,but to intrigueYankee readers.Northern readers were not askedto reconcileJefferson's Virginia with the rebelyell at the unveilingof a Confederatemonument. They were only asked to recognizethe South'splace in nationalheritage.17 The conditioningof the northern mind in popularliterature had itscounterpart in veterans'reunions, which in the 1880sand 1890sbecame increasingly intersec- tional.Celebration of manlyvalor on bothsides and the mutualrespect of Union and Confederatesoldiers fostered a kindof veterans' culture that gave the Lost Cause a place in nationalmemory. The warbecame essentially a conflictbetween white men; both sides foughtwell, Americans against Americans, and therewas glory enoughto go around.Celebrating the soldiers' experience buttressed the nonideo- logicalmemory of the war. The greatissues of the conflict - slavery,secession, eman- cipation,black equality,even disloyaltyand treason-fadedfrom national con- sciousnessas the nationcelebrated reunion and ultimatelyconfronted war with Spain in 1898.Many southerners became pragmatic about thememory of the war; theywanted to rememberwhat was bestin theirpast, but mostimportant, they embracedthe reunionism implicit in theconcept of a "New South"and demanded respectfrom northerners. To mostsoutherners, the Lost Cause came to represent thiscrucial double meaning:reunion and respect.Late in lifeFrederick Douglass rarelyfound it possible to concedethe South both aspects of the national Lost Cause sentiment;at timeshe couldacknowledge neither reunion nor respect on theterms thatpopular consciousness demanded. Inwardly,Douglass clung to a Victorious Cause ofhis own, resisting and wishingaway Jim Crow, lynching, and theongoing

16 Connellyand Bellows,God and GeneralLongstreet, 2-38; Foster,Ghosts of the Confederacy,47, 60. 17 See Connellyand Bellows,God and GeneralLongstreet, 39-72.

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1168 TheJournal of AmericanHistory betrayalof his people. And Douglassoften took his version of the Victorious Cause to thepublic forum, demanding justice in thepresent, the arena of competing and rivalmemories.18 Therewere ghosts to be called up on all sides. Whitesoutherners were finding a balmfor defeat and bereavement,autonomy in theirown region, and a newplace in theUnion. Southern memory of the war had begunthe long process of achieving resolution;southern ghosts could be purged.For blacks, however, many ghosts were notpurged in thelate nineteenth century and, indeed,they remain unpurged even today.Some twentieth-centuryblack writers portray the burdenof memorymuch as Douglassdid. In AugustWilson's recent play, Joe Turner'sCome and Gone, the hero,Herald Loomis, a formersharecropper who has come northto Pittsburghin 1911,is hauntedby the memory of his seven years' unjust imprisonment on a chain gang.Loomis was kidnapped by a turn-of-the-centuryslave catcher (Joe Turner) who believedthat emancipation was the worstthing that ever happened to the South. As he searchesfor his wifeand a new startin life,Loomis is tormentednot only bythe memory of chains but also byvisions of white bones rising out ofthe ocean, a clear and powerfulimage of the slave trade. In the dramatizationof Herald Loomis'sstruggle to reemergefrom a secondslavery, we can findechoes of Douglass's challengeto Americato "neverforget" its responsibilitiesto the freedpeople. Wilson'suse of historyon stage transmitsblack culturalmemory as a weapon, a sourceof spiritthat enables people to grapplewith their historical ghosts in an ever-sovereignpresent. Similarly, in ToniMorrison's novel , Sethe, a freed- womanliving in duringReconstruction, confronts the returnof the living ghostof her daughter, a childshe had killedin infancyrather than permit her immi- nentreturn to slavery.The ghost,"Beloved," is a metaphorfor all the haunting horrorof slaverythat the freed people havecarried with them into their new lives. Belovedis memoryitself, all-consuming, overwhelming, forcing Sethe to faceeach "day'sserious work of beatingback the past." At theend ofthe bookMorrison sug- geststhat to thecharacters in thiswrenching story, "remembering seemed unwise." But she also remindsus as readers- as a people- to bewareof thepath left by Be- lovedas she vanished:"Down bythe stream in backof 124 [Sethe'shouse] her [Be- loved's]footprints come and go,come and go. Theyare so familiar.Should a child, an adultplace his feet in them,they will fit. Take them out and theydisappear again as though nobody everwalked there."'19Collective historical memory, like the

"8 Foster,Ghosts of the Confederacy,66-75. On the New South,see Woodward,Origins, especially 142-74. On thegenerational impact of the war in southernmemory and on generationalchange in general,see David Her- bertDonald, "A Generationof Defeat,"in Fromthe Old Southto the New: Essaysin the TransitionalSouth, ed. Walterj.Fraser and WinfredB. Moore,Jr. (Westport, 1978), 3-20; and WernerSollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descentin AmericanCulture (New York,1986), 208-36. 19 AugustWilson, Joe Turner'sCome and Gone. At thiswriting there is no publishedversion of the play.It had itsworld premiere at the Yale RepertoryTheatre, May 2, 1986. I viewedthe playin May 1988 in New York City., Beloved(New York, 1987), 274-75. Anotherexcellent example from the recent Afro-American literarytradition showing the power of historical memory over life in thepresent is David Bradley,The Chaneysville Incident(New York,1981). On Bradleyand blacknovelists' use of history,see Klaus Ensslen,"Fictionalizing His- tory:David Bradley's'The ChaneysvilleIncident,' " Callaloo, 11 (Spring1988), 280-95.

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FrederickDouglass and theMemory of the Civil War 1169 deepestpersonal memories, can overwhelmand controlus as do the ghostsin the workof Wilsonand Morrison.But historicalmemory is also a matterof choice,a questionof will. As a culture,we choosewhich footprints from the past will best help us walkin the present. In the midstof Reconstruction,Douglass began to realizethe potentialpower of the Lost Cause sentiment.Indignant at the universalamnesty afforded ex- Confederates,and appalled bythe nationalveneration of Robert E. Lee, Douglass attackedthe emergingLost Cause. "The spiritof secessionis strongertoday than ever. . ," Douglasswarned in 1871."It is nowa deeplyrooted, devoutly cherished sentiment,inseparably identified with the 'lostcause,' which the halfmeasures of the Governmenttowards the traitorshave helped to cultivateand strengthen."He wasdisgusted by the outpouringof admiration for Lee in thewake of the general's deathin 1870."Is it notabout time that this bombastic laudation of the rebel chief shouldcease?" Douglass wrote."We can scarcelytake up a newspaper. . . thatis not filledwith nauseating flatteries of the late RobertE. Lee." At thisearly stage in the debate overthe memoryof the war,Douglass had no interestin honoring the formerenemy. "It would seem fromthis," he asserted,"that the soldierwho killsthe most men in battle,even in a bad cause,is thegreatest Christian, and enti- tled to the highestplace in heaven."Douglass's harsh reactions to the veneration of Lee are a revealingmeasure of his enduringattitudes toward the South,as well as his conceptionof the meaningof the war.He seemedto relishthe opportunity to lecturehis readersabout theirformer enemies. "The Southhas a pastnot to be contemplatedwith pleasure, but with a shudder,"Douglass cautioned in 1870."She has been sellingagony, trading in blood and in the souls of men. If herpast has anylesson, it is one of repentanceand thoroughreformation."20 As forproposed monuments to Lee, Douglassconsidered them an insultto his peopleand to theUnion. He fearedthat such monument building would only "rea- wakenthe confederacy."Moreover, in a remarkthat would prove more ironic with time,Douglass declaredin 1870 that "monumentsto the Lost Cause will prove monumentsof folly."As the LostCause mythsank deeper into southern and na- tionalconsciousness, Douglass would find that he waslosing ground in the battle forthe memoryof the CivilWar.21 Douglassnever precisely clarified just how much southern "repentance" or "refor- mation"he deemed necessarybefore he could personallyextend forgiveness. He merelydemanded "justice," based on adherenceto theCivil War amendments and to thecivil rights acts. Given the strength of his nationalismand his ownsouthern ,Douglass's vindictiveness toward the South probablywould have softened

20 [FrederickDouglass], "Wasted Magnanimity," New National Era, Aug. 10,1871; [Frederick Douglass], "Bom- bast,"ibid., Nov. 10, 1870. 21 [FrederickDouglass], "The Survivor'sMeeting-A Soldier'sTribute to a Soldier,"ibid., Dec. 1, 1870; [FrederickDouglass], "Monuments of Folly,"ibid. Douglass was also outragedby southerners' attempts to write the Lost Cause outlookinto Americanhistory textbooks. "They have takento makingrebel schoolbooksand teachingsecession and disloyaltyin theirprimary schools," Douglass reported.See [FrederickDouglass], "Still Firingthe SouthernHeart," ibid., Feb. 23, 1871.

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morewith time had notthe resurgent racism of the 1880sand 1890sfueled the spirit of sectionalreunion. "A spiritof evilhas been revived,"Douglass declaredin a eu- logy to William Lloyd Garrisonin 1879, "doctrinesare proclaimed . . . which were, as we thought,all extinguishedby the ironlogic of cannonballs." In the political victoriesof the southernDemocrats and in the increasingoppression of the freedmen,Douglass saw a "conflictbetween the semi-barbarous past and thehigher civilizationwhich has logicallyand legallytaken its place." He lamentedthe passing of so manyof the old abolitionistslike Garrisonwhose services would be needed in whatDouglass called "thissecond battlefor liberty and nation."22 Fromhis positionas a stalwartRepublican, Douglass's condemnations of resur- gentracism often seemed in starkcontradiction to his supportof theparty that in- creasinglyabandoned blacks.His allegianceto, and criticismof, the Republican partycould emergein bewilderingextremes. Campaigning for Alonzo B. Cornell, Republicancandidate for governor of New Yorkin 1879,Douglass charged that too manyRepublicans had caved in to the charmsof sectionalreunion. The issuesof thecurrent election, he asserted,were "precisely those old questionswhich gave rise to our late civilwar." Such rhetoricdid not square withthe realitiesof American politicsduring the Hayesadministration. Like an angryrevivalist wishing for a rea- wakeningin hisfellow party members, Douglass chastised "this tender forbearance, thisamazing mercy, and generousoblivion to thepast." Yet in an 1880speech com- memoratingemancipation, Douglass declared: "Of the Republican party . . . it is the same as duringand beforethe war;the same enlightened,loyal, liberal and progressiveparty that it was. It is the partyof Lincoln,Grant, Wade, Seward,and Sumner;the partto whichtoday we are indebtedfor the salvationof the country, and today it is well representedin its characterand compositionby James A. Garfieldand ChesterA. Arthur."Over the course of the 1880shis rhetoricshifted to harsherand morerealistic assessments as Douglass facedthe bittertruth about his party.In an 1888 speechhe accusedthe Republicansof treatingthe as "a deserted,a defrauded,a swindledoutcast; in law,free; in fact,a slave;in law, a citizen;in fact,an alien; in law,a voter;in fact,a disfranchisedman." Douglass pleadedwith Republicans not to reston theirlaurels and demandedthat they con- verttheir original values into a creativeforce for the newera. "I am a Republican, I believe in the Republican party . . . ." he asserted."But . .. I dare to tell thatparty thetruth. In myjudgment, it can no longerrepose on the historyof itsgrand and magnificentachievements. It mustnot only stand abreast with the times, but must createthe times."23

22 FrederickDouglass, "Speech on theDeath ofWilliam Lloyd Garrison,"June 2, 1879,reel 15, Douglass Papers. The emergenceof the New Southin the 1880scaused great uncertainty among old abolitionists.They shared some of theoptimism of the newera, but theyalso lamentedthe demiseof Reconstructionand fearedthe controlan autonomousSouth could wieldover race relations. See McPherson,Abolitionist Legacy, 107-20; and Woodward, Origins,107-74. 23 FrederickDouglass, "CampaignSpeech on Behalfof Alonzo B. Cornell,"1879, reel 15, Douglass Papers; FrederickDouglass, "Emancipation," Aug. 4, 1880,ibid.; FrederickDouglass, "Address Delivered on theTwenty- SixthAnniversary of the Abolitionof Slaveryin the Districtof Columbia,"April 16, 1888,reel 16, ibid.

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Douglass'sambivalence toward the Republicans late in lifestemmed from more thantwo decades of loyaltyto the party.The partyhad been the primaryvehicle throughwhich he pursuedhis political ambitions, developed his political conscious- ness,and exercisedsome influence in the federalgovernment. Beginning in 1877, when PresidentRutherford B. Hayesappointed him marshallfor the Districtof Columbia,and throughsubsequent appointments as recorderof deeds for the Dis- trictof Columbia (1881-1886) and ministerto Haiti(1889-1891), Douglass achieved a place,albeit largely emblematic, in Washingtonofficialdom. But aside fromper- sonalambition, he had alwaysimbued the Republican party with deeper, historical meanings.He saw it as the vesselof progressand as the institutionalcustodian of theCivil War's legacy. During the Grant years (1869-1877), he had stumpedfor the Republicanswith an almostdesperate zeal, as ifonly through the party could eman- cipationand the triumphsof RadicalReconstruction be preserved.An elementof wishfulfillment no doubt both sustainedhis supportof the Republicansand in- spiredhis later attacks on theparty. But Douglass's Republican loyalty is bestunder- stoodas partof his quest to realizea secure,abolitionist memory of the war.He continuedto use theRepublican party to demandthat the nation confront its recent history,not run from it. What Douglassmost wanted was not national reunion; he wantedracial justice, promised in law,demonstrated in practice,and preservedin memory.24 Whateverhe thoughtof the Republican party, though, the aging Douglass never waveredin his critiqueof racism."The tide of popularprejudice" against blacks, Douglass said in 1884,had "swollenby a thousandstreams" since the war.Every- where,he lamented,blacks were "stamped" with racist expectations. Douglass ex- pressedthe pain of being black in America:wherever a black man aspiredto a profession,"the presumption of incompetenceconfronts him, and he musteither run,fight, or fallbefore it." The allegedrapes by black men ofwhite women were to Douglassmanifestations ofthe South's invention of a new"crime" to replacetheir old fearof "insurrection." Lynching, therefore, represented a white, southern inven- tionof new means to exerciseracial power and oppression.In a speechin 1884,com- memoratingthe rescue of fugitive slaves in the 1850s,Douglass chastised his Syra- cuseaudience for preferring sectional peace overracial justice. "It is weakand foolish to cryPEACE when there is no peace,"he cried."In America,as elsewhere,injustice mustcease beforepeace can prevail."25 The fourthsource of Douglass's arguments in thedebate over the memory of the CivilWar was his conviction that the country had been seducedinto "national for- getfulness,"a peculiar American condition of historicalamnesia. In his numerous retrospectivespeeches in the 1880s,Douglass discussed the limitations of memory. He knewthat memory was fickle and thatpeople mustembrace an "ever-changing ... present."Even his own "slavelife," he admitted,had "lostmuch of itshorror,

24 See Quarles,Frederick Doug/ass, 252-82; and Waldo E. Martin,The Mind of FrederickDoug/ass (Chapel Hill, 1984), 79-91. 25 Douglass,"Speech at the Thirty-ThirdAnniversary of theJerry Rescue."

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and sleepsin . . . memorylike the dim outlinesof a half-forgottendream." But Douglass'sgreater concern was withcollective memory, not merelywith personal recollection.Douglass was rowingupstream against a strongcurrent in American thought.As a people,Americans had alwaystended to rejectthe past and embrace newness.The overweeningforce of individualism in an expandingcountry had ever madeAmericans a future-orientedpeople, a cultureunburdened with memory and tradition.Douglass was learningto appreciateone of Alexisde Tocqueville'sgreat observationsabout Americansociety: in America,each generationis a newpeople, and "no one caresfor what occurred before his time."The discoveryTocqueville made in 1831would ring only more true in the climateof laissez-fairegovernment and social Darwinismof the Gilded Age. Americanindividualism, wrote Toc- queville,makes "every man forgethis ancestors. . . hides his descendantsand separateshis contemporariesfrom him; it throwshim back foreverupon himself alone and threatensin the end to confinehim entirelywithin the solitudeof his ownheart."26 To Douglass,the individualism that bred indifference and theracism that bred oppressionwere the twinenemies undercutting efforts to preservean abolitionistmemory of the Civil War. Indeed,one of the ambiguitiesin Douglass'spostwar thought is thatwhile at- tackingthe surging individualistic indifference ofnortherners who wished to forget thewar issues, to forgiveex-Confederates, and to abandonthe freed people, he was also an outspokenproponent of laissez-faireindividualism, a celebratorof "self- made men."27There was perhapsno othersolution for a blackleader who had to preachself-reliance to hispeople while demanding national commitments from the governmentand fromsociety at large.Moreover, Douglass was one ofTocqueville's Americans,trapped between the country'shistoric racism and his ownembrace of individualism. Mostassuredly, though, Douglass was not one of thoseAmericans who rejected the past. His lamentsabout historicalamnesia oftenechoed Tocqueville'spre- science.He believedthat individualism could coexist with social justice, that getting on in the worldreleased no one fromthe weightof history."Well it may be said thatAmericans have no memories,"Douglass said in 1888."We lookover the House ofRepresentatives and see theSolid Southenthroned there; we listenwith calmness toeulogies of the South and oftraitors and forgetAndersonville.... We see colored citizensshot down and drivenfrom the ballot box, and forgetthe services rendered by the coloredtroops in the late war for the Union." More revealingstill was Douglass's contemptfor northernsympathy with the Lost Cause. He believed

26 FrederickDouglass, "Thoughtsand Recollectionsof the AntislaveryConflict," undated speech, reel 19, DouglassPapers; Alexis de Tocqueville,Democracy in America,ed. ThomasBender (New York,1981), 115, 397. On the significanceof Tocquevillein understandingAmerican individualism and the rejectionof the past,see RobertBellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualismand Commitmentin AmericanLife (New York,1985), 27-51, 255-307. 27 FrederickDouglass, "Self-Made Men," reel 18, Douglass Papers. Beginning in 1874or earlier, Douglass deliv- ered thisspeech during numerous lecture tours. On Douglass'sconception of self-mademen, see Martin,Mind of FrederickDouglass, 253-78.

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FrederickDouglass and theMemory of the Civil War 1173 northernforgiveness toward the South shamed the memoryof the war. "Rebel gravesare deckedwith loyal flowers," Douglass declared,"though no loyalgrave is everadorned by rebel hands. Loyal men are buildinghomes for rebel soldiers; but whereis thehome for Union veterans, builded by rebel hands?" Douglass had never reallywanted a Carthaginianpeace. But he feltleft out of the nation'shappy re- union; the deep grievancesof his people- both historicand current- wereno longerto be heard.At thevery least, Douglass demanded that the power to forgive should be reservedfor those most wronged.28 The debate overthe meaningof the warwas not merelya questionof remem- beringor forgetting. Douglass worried about historical amnesia because his version of the war,his memory,faltered next to the rivalmemories that resonated more deeplywith the white majority in bothNorth and South.Douglass may never have fullyappreciated the complexity of the experience of the Civil War and Reconstruc- tionfor whites. The overwhelmingnumber of white northerners who voted against blacksuffrage shared a bond ofwhite supremacy with southerners who rejected the racialegalitarianism of Radical Reconstruction. The thousandsof white Union vet- eranswho rememberedthe waras a transformingpersonal experience, but not as the crucibleof emancipationfor four million slaves, had much in commonwith white Georgianswho had found themselvesin the path of Gen. William T. Sherman'smarch to thesea. Therewere many rival memories of the war and itsafter- math,and therewas much need forforgetting and healing.As FriedrichNietzsche suggested,personal happiness often requires a degreeof forgetting the past. "For- gettingis essentialto actionof anykind," wrote Nietzsche. "Thus: it is possibleto livealmost without memory ... butit is altogetherimpossible to liveat all without forgetting. . . thereis a degreeof the historicalsense which is harmfuland ulti- matelyfatal to the livingthing, whether this living thing be a man or a people or a culture."Nietzsche captured elements of both truth and dangerin humannature. Douglassfocused his effortson thedangers of collectiveforgetting, not on itsper- sonal or culturalnecessity. Douglass knewthat his people, confinedto minority statusand livingat themargins of society, could rarelyafford the luxuryof forget- ting. Althoughhe may not have thoroughlydiscriminated between the rival memorieshe confronted,he becamefully aware of theirpower and theirthreat. Thus,with ever fewer sympathetic listeners by the late 1880s,Douglass was left with his lamentthat "slavery has alwayshad a bettermemory than freedom, and was alwaysa betterhater."29 Those werenot merelywords of nostalgicyearning for a vanishedpast uttered

28 Douglass,"Address Delivered on the Twenty-SixthAnniversary of Abolitionin the Districtof Columbia." On Confederateveterans' homes funded by the Grand Army of the Republic, see Foster,Ghosts of the Confederacy, 94. 29 FriedrichNietzsche, "On theUses and Disadvantagesof History for Life" [1874], in FriedrichNietzsche, Un- timelyMeditations, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale(New York,1983), 62; Douglass,"Thoughts and Recollectionsof the AntislaveryConflict." On the conceptof historicalforgetting, see Lowenthal,The PastIs a ForeignCountry, 204-6. On northernersand blacksuffrage, see C. VannWoodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-SouthDialogue (Boston, 1964), 173-83.

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The RobertG. Shaw-Fifty-fourthMassachusetts Monument was unveiled May31, 1898, in BostonCommon as a memorialto thewhite commander and blacksoldiers who died at theBattle of Fort Wagner, South Carolina, July 18, 1863. Douglass'stwo sons served in theregiment. CourtesyBoston Athenaeum. bya man out of touchwith changing times. In a sense,Douglass was livingin the pastduring the last part of his life;for him, the Civil War and Reconstructionwere the referencepoints for the blackexperience in the nineteenthcentury. All ques- tionsof meaning, of a senseof place, of a senseof future for blacks in Americadrew upon theera of emancipation. Hence, the fifth source of Douglass's pledge to "never forget":a tremendousemotional and psychologicalinvestment in his ownconcep- tionof the legacyof the conflict.As an intellectual,Douglass had grownup with theabolition movement, the war, and itshistorical transformations. His careerand hisvery personality had been shapedby those events. So, quite literally,Douglass's effortto preservethe memoryof the CivilWar was a quest to savethe freedomof his people and the meaningof his own life. Douglassembraced his role in preservingan abolitionistmemory of the war with a senseof moralduty. In an 1883 speechin his old hometownof Rochester,New York,he was emphaticon thatpoint.

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Youwill already have perceived that I am notof that school of thinkerswhich teachesus to letbygones be bygones;to letthe dead pastbury its dead. In my viewthere are no bygonesin theworld, and the past is notdead and cannot die. The evilas wellas thegood thatmen do livesafter them.... The dutyof keeping inmemory the great deeds of the past, and of transmitting thesame from genera- tionto generationis implied in themental and moralconstitution ofman.30 But what of a societythat did not widelyshare the same sense of historyand preferreda differentversion of the past?Douglass's answer was to resistthe Lost Cause byarguing for an oppositeand, he hoped,deeper cultural myth - theaboli- tionistconception of the CivilWar, black emancipation as the sourceof national regeneration. In tryingto forgean alternativeto the LostCause, Douglassdrew on America's reformtradition and constantlyappealed to theConstitution and to therule of law. Moreover,reversing a centraltenet of the Lost Cause- the memoryof defeat- Douglassemphasized the memory of victory, the sacrifices of the Union dead, and thehistorical progress he believedinherent in emancipation.This is whatDouglass meantin an 1878Memorial Day speechin MadisonSquare in New York,when he declaredthat "there was a rightside and a wrongside in thelate war which no senti- mentought to cause us to forget."'31 In some of his postwarrhetoric Douglass undoubtedlycontributed to what RobertPenn Warren has calledthe myth of the "Treasuryof Virtue." He did some- timesimbue Union victorywith an air of righteousnessthat skewed .His insistenceon the "moral"character of thewar often neglected the complex,reluc- tantmanner in whichemancipation became the goal of the Union wareffort. In structuringhistorical memory, Douglass could be as selectiveas hisLost Cause adver- saries.His persistentdefense of the Republicanparty after Reconstruction caused himto walka thinline of hypocrisy. Indeed, Douglass's millennialist interpretation ofthe war forever caused him to see theconflict as a cleansingtragedy, wherein the nationhad been redeemedof its evilby lasting grace.32 Douglass knew that black freedomhad emergedfrom history more than from policy deliberately created by human agents.Moreover, he knewthat emancipationhad resultedlargely from slaves'own massive self-liberation. But winning the battle over the legacy of the Civil War,Douglass knew, demanded deep culturalmyths that would resonate widely in society.He knewthat the struggleover memory was always,in part,a debateover

30 Douglass, "Speech on EmancipationDay." 31 Douglass, "Speech in MadisonSquare." 32 Warren,Legacy of the Civil War,59-76. Warrenilluminates the ambiguities and contradictionsin the dual developmentof the "LostCause" and the"Treasury of Virtue." For Douglass's discussion of "The NationalLincoln MonumentAssociation," see New NationalEra, Oct. 27, 1870. This monument,never constructed as planned, wasto be seventyfeet high and containmany statues of Civil War military and politicalpersonalities and allegorical figures.In hiseditorial, Douglass seemed flushed with excitement. He saw the monumentas "an eternalsentinel guardingthe era of emancipation;an immortalherald proclaiming to all theraces of men the nation'sgreat civil and moralreforms.... In a word,a splendidbronze and graniteportraiture of the finaltriumph of libertyand equalityon Americansoil." Ibid. On laterefforts for a monumentto blacksoldiers (also unsuccessful),see ,George Washington Williams: A Biography(, 1987), 171-74.

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1176 TheJournal of AmericanHistory thepresent. In hisview, emancipation and blackequality under law werethe great resultsof thewar. Hence, while urging old abolitionistsnot to giveup theirlabors in 1875,Douglass contended that "every effort should now be made to savethe re- sult of this stupendousmoral and physicalcontest." Moreover, nine yearslater Douglasswarned that unless an abolitionistconception of thewar were steadfastly preserved,America would "thus lose to aftercoming generations a vastmotive powerand inspirationto highand virtuousendeavor." Douglass laboredto shape the memoryof the Civil War,then, as a skillfulpropagandist, as a black leader confidentof thevirtue of his cause,and as an individualdetermined to protecthis own 'dentIty.33 In his book The UnwrittenWar: American Writers and the Civil War,Daniel Aaronobserves that very few writers in thelate nineteenth century "appreciated the Negro'sliteral or symbolicrole in the war."Black invisibilityin the massiveCivil Warfictional literature - theabsence of fully realized black characters, even in Mark Twainor WilliamFaulkner-is yetanother striking illustration that emancipation and thechallenge of racial equality overwhelmed the American imagination in the postwardecades. Slavery, the war's deepest cause, and blackfreedom, the war's most fundamentalresult, remain the mostconspicuous missing elements in the Amer- ican literatureinspired by the Civil War. Black invisibilityin America'scultural memoryis preciselywhat Douglass struggledagainst during the last twodecades of hislife. Obviously, Douglass was no novelisthimself and was not about to write thegreat Civil War book. But memoriesand understandingsof greatevents, espe- ciallyapocalyptic wars, live in our consciousnesslike monuments in themind. The agingDouglass's rhetoric was an eloquentattempt to forgea place on thatmonu- mentfor those he deemed theprincipal characters in the dramaof emancipation: the abolitionist,the blacksoldier, and the freedpeople. Perhapsthe best reason theCivil War remained, in Aaron'swords, "vivid but ungraspable" to literaryimagi- nationwas that most American writers avoided, or were confounded by, slavery and race,the deepestmoral issues in the conflict.34 The late nineteenthcentury was an age whenwhite supremacy flourished amid vastindustrial and social change.The nationincreasingly embraced sectional re- union,sanctioned Jim Crow, dreamed about technology,and defineditself by the assumptionsof commerce. Near the end of his monumental work, Black Reconstruc- tion(1935), W. E. B. Du Bois declaredhimself "aghast" at theway historians had suppressedthe significance of slavery and theblack quest for freedom in thelitera- tureon the CivilWar and Reconstructionera. "One is astonishedin the studyof

33 FrederickDouglass, "Address at the CentennialCelebration of the AbolitionSociety of Pennsylvania,"reel 15, Douglass Papers;Douglass, "Speech at the Thirty-ThirdAnniversary of theJerry Rescue." 3 Aaron,Unwritten WUar, 332-33, xviii,340. On fictionand the Civil War,see also RobertA. Lively,Fiction Fightsthe Civil War.:An UnfinishedChapter in theLiterary History of the AmericanPeople (Chapel Hill, 1957); and JoyceAppleby, "Reconciliation and the NorthernNovelist, 1865-1880," Civil WUarHistory, 10 (June 1964), 117-29.On blackliterary activity and memoryin thenineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries, see ArleneA. Elder, The "HinderedHand". CulturalImplications of EarlyAfrican-American Fiction (Westport, 1978). Forthe power of warover the imagination,especially in literaryforms, see Paul Fussell,The Great Warand ModernMemory (New York,1975), 310-35.

This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:28:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FrederickDouglass and theMemory of the Civil War 1177 history,"wrote Du Bois, "at the recurrenceof theidea thatevil must be forgotten, distorted,skimmed over.... The difficulty,of course,with this philosophyis that historyloses its value as an incentiveand example;it paintsperfect men and noble nations,but it does not tellthe truth."As Du Bois acknowledged,it wasjust such a use of historyas "incentiveand example"for which Douglass had labored.35 Althoughhis jeremiadsagainst the LostCause mythand his effortsto preserve an abolitionistmemory of the conflicttook on a strainedquality, Douglass never losthope in the regenerativemeaning of the CivilWar. It wassuch a greatdivide, sucha compellingreference point, that the nationwould, in time,have to faceits meaningand consequences.In an 1884speech, Douglass drew hope froma biblical metaphorof deathand rebirth-the storyof Jesus' raising Lazarus from the dead. "The assumptionthat the cause of the Negrois a dead issue,"Douglass declared, "is an utterdelusion. For the moment he maybe buriedunder the dust and rubbish ofendless discussion concerning civil service, tariff and freetrade, labor and capital but our Lazarusis not dead. He onlysleeps."36 Douglass'suse ofsuch a metaphorwas perhaps a recognitionof temporary defeat in the strugglefor the memoryof the CivilWar. But it also representedhis belief that,though the struggle would outlast his own life, it couldstill be won.Douglass gaveone ofhis last public addresses on thefinal Memorial Day ofhis life (May 1894) at MountHope Cemeteryin Rochester,were he wouldhimself be buriedsome nine monthslater. The seventy-six-year-oldorator angrily disavowed the sectional recon- ciliationthat had sweptthe country. He fearedthat Decoration Day wouldbecome an eventmerely of "anachronisms,empty forms and superstitions."One wonders ifthe largely white audience in Rochesteron thatpleasant spring afternoon thought of Douglasshimself as somewhatof an anachronism.In a countryreeling from an economicdepression in 1893,worried by massive immigration, the farmers' revolt, and thedisorder of growingcities, Douglass's listeners (even in his old hometown) maynot have looked beyond the symbolic trappings of theoccasion. One wonders howwilling they were to cultivatetheir thirty-year-old memory of the warand all itssacrifice, to facethe deepermeanings Douglass demanded.The aged Douglass could stillsoar to oratoricalheights on such occasions.He askedhis audienceto reflectwith him about their"common memory." "I seemeven now to hearand feel the effectsof the sightsand the soundsof thatdreadful period," Douglass said. "I see the flagsfrom the windowsand housetopsfluttering in the breeze.I see and hear the steadytramp of armed men in blue uniforms.... I see the recruitingser- geantwith drum and fife. .. callingfor men, young men and strong,to go to the frontand fillup thegaps made byrebel powder and pestilence.I hearthe piercing soundof trumpets." These were more than Whitmanesque pictures of bygone peril and glory.In a nationthat now acquiesced in thefrequent lynching of his people, thatshattered their hopes withdisfranchisement and segregation,Douglass ap- pealed to history,to what forhim was authenticexperience, to the recognition

35 W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstructionin America,1860-1880, (New York,1935), 725, 722, 715. 36 Douglass,"Speech at the Thirty-ThirdAnniversary of theJerry Rescue."

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scenesthat formed personal and nationalidentity. On an ideologicallevel, where Douglass did his bestwork, he was stillfighting the war. By 1894 he was as harsh as everin hisrefusal to concedethe Confederate dead anyequal place in Memorial Day celebrations."Death has no powerto changemoral qualities,"he argued. "Whatwas bad beforethe war, and duringthe war, has not been made good since thewar." A toneof desperationentered Douglass's language toward the end of his speech.Again and againhe pleadedwith his audience not to believethe arguments of theLost Cause advocates,however alluring their "disguises" might seem. He in- sistedthat slavery had causedthe war, that Americans should never forget that the Southfought "to bind withchains millions of the humanrace."37 No amountof nationalism,individualism, or compassioncould everchange Douglass'sconception of the memoryand meaningof the Civil War. His pledge to "neverforget" was botha personaland a partisanact. It was an assertionof the powerof memoryto inform,to inspire,and to compelaction. Douglass was one ofthose nineteenth-century thinkers who by education, by temperament, and espe- ciallyby experience believed that history was something living and useful.Even in the twilightof his life,there was no greatervoice for the old shibboleththat the CivilWar had been a strugglefor union and liberty."Whatever else I mayforget," Douglasstold thoseassembled at MountHope Cemetery,"I shallnever forget the differencebetween those who foughtfor liberty and thosewho foughtfor slavery; betweenthose who foughtto save the Republicand thosewho foughtto destroy it."The jubilee of blackfreedom in Americahad been achievedby heroicaction, throughforces in history,through a tragicwar, and byfaith. Among Douglass's final public acts,therefore, was to fight- using the powerof languageand historical imagination- to preservethat jubilee in memoryand in reality.In a Rochestercem- etery,he stoodwith the Union dead, wavedthe last bloody shirts of a formerslave, a blackleader, and a Yankeepartisan, and anticipatedthe dullingeffects of time and thepoet RobertLowell's vision of "thestone statues of theabstract Union sol- dier"adorning New England town greens, where "they doze overmuskets and muse throughtheir sideburns."38

}'"DecorationDay," May 1894, reel 17, Douglass Papers. 38 Ibid., 9; RobertLowell, "For the Union Dead" [19641,in NortonAnthology ofAmerican Literature: Shorter Edition,ed. RonaldGottesman et al. (New York,1980), 1842.

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