The Richmond Planet of 11 October 1890 contains a long article with the opinions of 17 Richmond men who were asked what was the most proper day for celebrating the end of slavery. The article fills nearly an entire column. The reasons people assigned for each of the dates reveals how personal the end of slavery was to them and how, at that date, the end of slavery was tied to specific places and events of importance to those individual people: Some advocated commemorating 1 January 1864, the day when Emancipation Proclamation went into effect ("I have to close up that day anyhow, and the colored people have holiday anyway and won't lose any time from business") Some advocated commemorating 23 September 1863, the day when the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued ("on account of the weather") Some advocated commemorating 3 April 1865, the day that the United States Army entered Richmond ("the work was done when Richmond fell") ("that was the day I shook hands with the Yankees") ("that was virtually the ending of the war") Some advocated commemorating 9 April 1865, the day that the United States Army accepted the surrender of the Confederate Army ("when the Proclamation went into effect we were not free") ("That's when we received the blessing") ("That was when the work was done") ("the day of the downfall of the Confederacy was the day of the uprising of the Negro") ("the date of the surrender of Lee would be the proper day") ("when Lee surrendered to Grant the work was accomplished") Joseph T. Wilson, of Richmond, gave the longest opinion: "In the first place I think that Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation didn't amount to any thing from a legal standpoint. It freed nobody. Understand me that it had a very marked moral effect, but the 13th Amendment really gave freedom to the slave. I believe that we should celebrate the passage of that Amendment, if we desire to celebrate the act by which we became free. However if they want to celebrate Lincoln's Proclamation, the day should be the the first of January." It is curious that none of the commentators at that time (or the editor of the newspaper, John Mitchell Jr, who posed the question) took a wider or longer view and mentioned commemorating 19 June 1865, the date on which the United States Army took final command in Texas and under Lincoln's Proclamation freed the last slaves then held in the country. Nor did any one think to mention commemorating 7 April 1864, the effective date of the Virginia Constitution of 1864 which abolished slavery (How many of us remember that?); of course, that Constitution was effective only in the areas under the control of the United States Army at that time, but in May 1865 that Constitution became the governing law of all of Virginia (less West Virginia, of course) and remained so until 1870. The Library of Virginia's current exhibition, "Myth and Memory: Understanding 400 Years of Virginia History" explores these and like themes of contested memory and how Virginians have employed commemorative events to reinterpret their history. One of my favorite parts, and one that I have been delighted to see causes people to pause and read and reflect, treats memories of the Civil War. Side by side we have displayes of items from Confederate reunions and from Loudoun County Emancipation Day celebrations. So: What did the Civil War mean? To whom? Brent Tarter The Library of Virginia [log in to unmask] Visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html