American History 101

All right, people, settle down! Class is in session!

I learned some very interesting things at my monthly Sons of Confederate Veteran's meeting last week which impressed me enough for me to want to share them with whoever reads my blog, so here they are. And, if you know me by reading my blog, then you'll know that the information I'm about to bless you with is the actual truth and not the "Reconstructed" or "Yankee" version of American history now being taught - or rather, not being taught - in our public schools.

Thanks to the teachings in our public schools, the South and the Confederacy are widely considered to be the "villians" in the war, responsible for all of the bad things that took place. The Federal government, along with the Northern troops and people, on the other hand, have been portrayed as righteous, caring, compassionate people who never, ever did anything wrong.

Which any true student of American history will know is total bullshit.

The speaker at my SCV meeting was a very knowledgeable lady who has written a book entitled, "No More Sacred Piece of Ground," and it's a history of Southern monuments to Confederate war dead and Confederate veterans. During her presentation she told us some things about the monuments at Gettysburg that I found quite profound.

After the battle, the Federal forces immediately began to collect their dead for identification and burial. Once they were identified, they were either buried right there at the battlefield or sent back to their home state for burial. The bodies that were buried on the battlefield were buried on the section that was earmarked as the new National Cemetary, the one where Lincoln gave his famous "Gettysburg Address" at the grand opening ceremonies.

The Confederate dead, however, were either buried where they fell with little or no efforts being made to identify them, or gathered up and buried in mass graves - again, with little or no efforts being made to identify them. So as Lincoln was giving his soon to be famous speech honoring the "gallant dead" of the battlefield, the Confederacy's gallant dead were, for the most part, lying together in mass graves, the bodies unidentified and the families in the South left wondering what happened to their sons, husbands, and fathers.

Soon after that, several groups of Southern ladies from the different states (women's support groups were VERY popular during the war) petitioned Lincoln and the Federal government to let them travel up North to Gettysburg and collect their dead; Lincoln immediately denied all such requests. The first Confederate dead weren't recovered from the battlefield and taken back home to the South until 1867, four years after the battle.

But we were talking about monuments and markers, weren't we?

The rush to start erecting monuments and markers began almost immediately after the gunsmoke cleared from the field. Of course, this rush was by the Northern states - the Southern states were still kinda busy trying to win their independence. And once the war was over and Reconstruction was in full swing, the Southern states were too broke to be able to even think about erecting monuments at Gettysburg. Soon the battlefield was littered with monuments, all of them to Northern units and troops, while the equally-brave and gallant Southern troops lay buried in unmarked, mass graves.

Nice. Very nice.

With the approach of the 25th Anniversary of the battle, some of the Southern states attempted to put up some monuments to their honored dead; however, two things stood in their way. First, they were still broke, and second, the surviving Union veterans screamed and hollered so loudly in objection to this idea that the Federal government denied any and all requests from Southern states to erect any monuments in Gettysburg. It took FIFTY YEARS for the "caring and compassionate" people of the North to finally relent and allow the Southern states to erect monuments to their dead at Gettysburg. Virginia was first, erecting a statue of General Robert E. Lee on his mount, "Traveller." But this didn't take place until 1917, a full fifty four years after the battle!

In the South during Reconstruction, things weren't much better. The Southern people immediately began to make plans to erect monuments in their home states to their Confederate dead, but they all had the same obstacle to overcome - the Federal military governor of each state. In most of the Southern states, any monument that was erected during Reconstruction could not contain any reference to the Confederacy or the South in any way, at the direction of the military governors. If you've ever seen an old Confederate monument in any of the Southern states that simply stated, "TO OUR HONORED WAR DEAD" or "TO OUR HONORED DEAD," this is why.

Another interesting factoid about those Southern monuments concerns the dress, pose, and direction of the soldiers on top of them. Monuments that were built during Reconstruction and prior to 1903 that had soldiers on top of them all had the soldier dressed in the uniform he would have worn during the war; he would also be posed in such a manner as to be "at the ready," rifle held in both hands across his body in an "on guard" pose, or with the butt on the ground, bayonet fixed, as he would have stood when on "picket" (guard) duty. And without fail, the soldier would have been facing North - guarding the South against another invasion.

Around 1903 the Confederate veterans started passing away, so a few things about the monuments changed. The first was the wording - instead of saying "To Our Honored Dead," the wording would say something like, "To Our Honored Veterans" or "To Our Confederate Veterans." (By 1903 it was OK to use the word "Confederate" in the wording since Reconstruction was long gone and the Southern states were being controlled by Southerners.)

Another thing that changed was the dress of the soldier on top of the monument - now he would be wearing what came to be the standard uniform of the United Confederate Veterans, that being a long frock coat and slouch hat. The pose of the soldier also changed, going from an aggressive "on guard" pose with rifle at the ready, to an "at ease" pose, rifle butt on the ground, no bayonet, with the soldiers standing in a relaxed stance with one knee bent, hands on top of the muzzle. Lastly, the soldiers were sometimes placed facing South, looking towards the land they defended and loved instead of watching the North for another invasion.

Kinda makes you look at that old monument in the town square in a different way, doesn't it? We have one of those old monuments in the town where I live, and I now know that it was erected after 1903 because it honors "Our Confederate Veterans." There's no soldier on top; not now, anyway. Not sure if there ever was, but maybe I'll do some digging and see what I can find out about that....should be interesting.

And that's it for today, boys and girls. Class dismissed!

IHC