From History News Network (www.hnn.us) - posted there on Wednesday, May 21,
2008 |

Caroline Janney* : We need to rewrite history of Memorial Day

*Author of Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations
and the Lost Cause (University of North Carolina Press, March 2008).


Cities, counties and states continue to debate who has ownership of the
first Memorial Day, but a Purdue University historian says credit really
belongs to thousands of Southern white women.

"If Confederate men would have organized memorials to honor their fallen
soldiers in 1866, a year after the Civil War ended, it would have been
considered treason against the United States," says Caroline Janney, an
assistant professor of history. "Instead, women organized each event, and
the men were figuratively hiding behind the skirts of these women. The
memorial celebrations served as shields so that participants could
simultaneously criticize the postwar government and praise their 'Lost
Cause.' What many people don't realize is that these women, who are often
portrayed as politically indifferent, were motivated by politics, too."

The women, through Ladies' Memorial Associations, organized dozens of
memorials during the spring of 1866 and the years after. While Memorial Day
is now a one-day celebration, historically these memorials were scheduled
throughout the spring as a sign of renewal and rebirth, and each community
chose its own symbolic date on which to gather. For example, some selected
the May 10 anniversary of Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's death while
others settled on April 26, the day Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his
troops in 1865.

"People should have a better understanding about the origins of Memorial Day
because the Civil War secured the Union and freed 4 million slaves," Janney
says. "The day should not only be about celebrating the lives of servicemen
and women, but also celebrating the perseverance of the United States."

Janney, who is author of "Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies'
Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause," has studied these associations,
which were formed in Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina,
Mississippi and Alabama. The associations were composed of middle- and
upper-class white women. In Janney's book, she focuses on associations in
five Virginia cities: Winchester, Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Lynchburg and
Richmond.

These local associations are often overlooked in history because the focus
has been on larger national organizations, such as the United Confederate
Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy, that emerged decades after
the Civil War ended, Janney says.

"These other groups may be larger, but many people do not realize the power
and influence of the Ladies' Memorial Associations," she says.

During the war, fallen Confederate soldiers were often left on the
battlefield or buried in shallow graves on farmland. Immediately after the
war, Virginia women in these associations relocated and interred the remains
of more than 72,000 soldiers, which is nearly 28 percent of the 260,000
Confederate soldiers killed.

"These women believed it was imperative that each town establish an annual
tradition of placing flowers and evergreens on these graves," Janney says.
"Within a year from the war's end, white Southern women from Virginia to
Alabama established nearly 100 memorial associations."

Memorial days also were observed in the North, but they were organized by
Union veterans beginning in 1868, two years after the ex-Confederate women
had established the practice.

"Union speeches at memorial days in the late 1800s rarely made reference to
women's contributions to the war," Janney says. "In the South,
ex-Confederates not only praised the courage and honor of their soldiers,
but they always mentioned the women's efforts during the war and their
efforts to commemorate with Confederate cemeteries and memorial days. Women
were portrayed as much more important in the South in terms of memory of the
war. Union women essentially got left out. It's not to say they were not
participating in memorial days, but they were never the organizers the way
in which women had to be in the South."

History often shows Southern women as not being part of the women's movement
until the early 20th century, but these local associations show that women
were more active in politics than many believed, Janney says.

"The women even stood up to the veterans in the 1870s after Reconstruction
was over," she says. "The officers returned and thanked the ladies for their
work and said, 'We can take it from here.' The ladies said no, 'We've carved
out these political and leadership roles for ourselves, and we plan to keep
them.'"

As impressive as these women's efforts were, Janney says their place in
history also is controversial.

"There is such a dual legacy about these women, and I'm really torn about
how I feel about them," she says. "On the one hand, I feel they are
responsible for some of the racist sentiment that is attached to the
Confederacy, and they put in motion this romanticized image of the
Confederacy today. Yet these are incredibly high-spirited, passionate women
who engaged and fought for what they believed in. Historians will need to
consider the good and the bad when examining them."

Janney's research was supported by Purdue's Department of History,
University of Virginia's Department of History, the Virginia Historical
Society and Duke University.




-- 
Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com

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