The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Reflections on The Centennial ALL OF MY memories of the postCivil War period seemed to justify the expectation that a Centennial celebration could be an...
...But actually, they had been only partly freed...
...The great struggle had been forgotten...
...For example, a Methodist bishop made a career of delivering a lecture on life in the Confederate Libby Prison...
...the country was happily reunited...
...This little difference was, in the end, straightened out...
...I well recall some of the editorials of those days...
...But all except the deep Southerners were shocked by what happened in Charleston...
...Distinguished Southern statesmen, clergymen and educators made speeches and wrote editorials which seemed to carry the South back to the bad old days...
...They were not free in the sense in which white men were free...
...Yet, there were some sore spots, and some individuals did their best to spread and deepen the hurt...
...They had given Lincoln the power he needed to preserve the nation...
...Suddenly, the Southern attitude on race relations—of which we had not been more than half conscious—was revealed to us...
...We learned all over again that the Civil War has not yet been concluded...
...Last month, there was a series of silly incidents in that loveliest of American cities, Charleston, South Carolina...
...The Supreme Court decision on segregation brought about a shocking revelation and an unfortunate introduction to what was supposed to be a triumphant celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War...
...But then came a sudden jolt...
...Later, just before each of the two world wars, Southerners seemed more ready to make the necessary sacrifices than Northerners...
...the wounds had been healed...
...In my youth the Grand Army of the Republic was a powerful and unifying national organization...
...If there was some lingering hate in the South because of the blunders of Reconstruction, most of us knew little about it...
...After this racist foolishness, I may never again be able to view Charleston's lovely gardens and romantic facades with my old feelings of pleasure...
...The Negroes, who had a rather conspicuous part as one of the causes of the sacrificial carnage, were to be represented at the Charleston ceremonies...
...The Old South, though it lost the war, was to have a conspicuous and honorable part as host of the first chapter in the anniversary...
...But whatever animosity there was between the men of the two sections seemed to melt away rather rapidly...
...All the preparations were undertaken and the right people were to make the appropriate speeches...
...How confident the patriotic editors felt...
...The war, as every sixth-grader knows, began in Charleston harbor, and that was a natural spot to begin the Centennial Celebration...
...I can remember asking my older brothers about the Confederate soldiers...
...By that time, the Negroes may really be emancipated...
...When the High Court handed down its decisions, the white South—or most of it—suddenly stood up for a theory of race relations which went back to the pre-Civil War days...
...It was as if the result of the great struggle had been reversed, and after shedding all that blood, we had, after all, lost the war a century later...
...No one who watched the nation enter into either of these wars could conclude that the South was the less patriotic section of the country or that it was less devoted to the national welfare...
...Then came the foreign wars...
...Perhaps there will be another celebration a hundred years from now...
...On such occasions we did not, as far as I can recall, pay much attention to the people of the South...
...These were the men who restored the Union and freed the slaves...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Reflections on The Centennial ALL OF MY memories of the postCivil War period seemed to justify the expectation that a Centennial celebration could be an agreeable and useful affair...
...Constitutionally and theoretically, the Negro slaves had been freed...
...They might go to schools, but to different, inferior schools...
...Many of them could not vote...
...The recent bestseller about Andersonville may have given the general impression that the soldiers of the South were ruthlessly cruel to their prisoners...
...they had not all the privileges that go with American citizenship...
...Just what happened is known to almost all of us...
...When its members marched down the street at convention time, we took for granted that we were seeing and hearing authentic heroes...
...The committee of Southern gentlemen in charge of the arrangements learned of this with some dismay and hurriedly informed the Northern delegates that it would be impossible for the dark-skinned celebrators to enjoy the hospitality of the same hotel which was to house the whites...
...A number of Confederate officers participated in the little fracas with Spain...
...They would answer seriously that the men of the South had thought that they were doing right, they were good fighters and we should have nothing against them...
...That was true, at least, of the North...
...The crisscross sword marks on my brother's head had been suffered in vain...
Vol. 44 • May 1961 • No. 22
