Honoring the Civil War dead

[David Lockmiller]

In May 1865, just after the war ended, a large procession was held in the ruined city of Charleston, S.C. There, thousands of Black Americans, many of whom had been enslaved until the city was liberated just months earlier, commemorated the lives of Union captives buried in a mass grave at a former racecourse. The service was led by some 3,000 schoolchildren carrying roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Hundreds of women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses, according to historical accounts.

The Tangled Roots of Memorial Day and Why It’s Celebrated
New York Times - May 26, 2023 - by Livia Albeck-Ripka

[Dennis Urban]

These Union POWs who had been transferred from Andersonville were actually buried in individual graves. A picture of the grave lot is in the Library of Congress collection. They were known as the "Martyrs of the Race Course." Google that name to see and read more. This was the first memorial day commemoration and was organized by the Charleston African American community. Graves were later removed and relocated. Nothing remains of the gravesite. Area is now Hampton Park, named after CSA General Wade Hampton! Imagine that!

[David Lockmiller]

(05-30-2023 02:09 PM)Dennis Urban Wrote:  These Union POWs who had been transferred from Andersonville were actually buried in individual graves. A picture of the grave lot is in the Library of Congress collection. They were known as the "Martyrs of the Race Course." Google that name to see and read more. This was the first memorial day commemoration and was organized by the Charleston African American community. Graves were later removed and relocated. Nothing remains of the gravesite. Area is now Hampton Park, named after CSA General Wade Hampton! Imagine that!

I did as you suggested and found this material that is consistent with the New York Times article in my previous post:

The park is named in honor of Confederate General Wade Hampton III who, at the time of the Civil War, owned one of the largest collections of slaves in the South.

During the closing days of the American Civil War, the area was used as a prisoner-of-war camp. More than two hundred Union soldiers died in the camp and were buried in a mass grave at the site.

In an article titled "The First Decoration Day", David W. Blight of Yale has written:

"The city was largely abandoned by white residents by late February. Among the first troops to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the 21st U. S. Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the formal surrender of the city.

"Thousands of black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865.

During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters' horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.

Some twenty-eight black workmen went to the site, re-buried 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'. [There is also a photograph of individual graves.]

"Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders' race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy's horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing 'a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.'

"At 9 am on May 1, the procession stepped off led by three thousand black schoolchildren carrying arm loads of roses and singing 'John Brown's Body.' The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many as possible gathering in the cemetery enclosure; a children's choir sang 'We'll Rally around the Flag,' the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture. No record survives of which biblical passages rung out in the warm spring air, but the spirit of Leviticus 25 was surely present at those burial rites: 'for it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you … in the year of this jubilee he shall return every man unto his own possession.'

Among the full brigade of Union infantry participating was the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite. The war was over, and Decoration Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been all about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders' republic, and not about state rights, defense of home, nor merely soldiers' valor and sacrifice."

This has been cited as the first Memorial Day celebration.