Tree
"A great battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it."
--Frederick Douglass, 1864
"So they sought first to deprive the day [Memorial Day] of any significance to the living. Only the manhood and valor of the dead were to be commemorated. The dead were to be mourned; the cause for which they died forgotten. There was no other way by which the desired object could be accomplished, and the future taught to honor the soldier for his deeds, regardless of his motive."
--Albion Tourgee, May 30, 1885
"Americans . . . have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle."
--James Baldwin, "Many Thousands Gone," 1951
IN JULY, 1863, IN THE WAKE of the battle of Gettysburg, the New York City draft riots, and a series of failed recruiting speeches, Frederick Douglass seemed embittered, even disoriented about his own role (as recruiter, orator, and editor) in the war effort. He had run out of ways to explain away the unequal pay and other discriminations practiced against black soldiers in the Union forces. But of one thing he was still completely clear: the motives or purposes for which black men might fight in this war. "They go into this war to affirm their manhood," declared Douglass, "to strike for liberty and country. If any class of men in this war can claim the honor of fighting for principle, and not from passion, for ideas, not from brutal malice, the colored soldier can make that claim preeminently" (italics mine). Fifteen years later, in the wake of the Compromise of 1877, and as the victories of emancipation, the preservation of the Union, and radical Reconstruction seemed increasingly abandoned, Douglass gave a
--Frederick Douglass, 1864
"So they sought first to deprive the day [Memorial Day] of any significance to the living. Only the manhood and valor of the dead were to be commemorated. The dead were to be mourned; the cause for which they died forgotten. There was no other way by which the desired object could be accomplished, and the future taught to honor the soldier for his deeds, regardless of his motive."
--Albion Tourgee, May 30, 1885
"Americans . . . have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle."
--James Baldwin, "Many Thousands Gone," 1951
IN JULY, 1863, IN THE WAKE of the battle of Gettysburg, the New York City draft riots, and a series of failed recruiting speeches, Frederick Douglass seemed embittered, even disoriented about his own role (as recruiter, orator, and editor) in the war effort. He had run out of ways to explain away the unequal pay and other discriminations practiced against black soldiers in the Union forces. But of one thing he was still completely clear: the motives or purposes for which black men might fight in this war. "They go into this war to affirm their manhood," declared Douglass, "to strike for liberty and country. If any class of men in this war can claim the honor of fighting for principle, and not from passion, for ideas, not from brutal malice, the colored soldier can make that claim preeminently" (italics mine). Fifteen years later, in the wake of the Compromise of 1877, and as the victories of emancipation, the preservation of the Union, and radical Reconstruction seemed increasingly abandoned, Douglass gave a