100 years ago Governor Olcott urged the celebration of the 100th birthday of General and President Ulysses S. Grant.
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| Issued May 1st, 1923, via Smithsonian |
It will be interesting to see with our modest reassessment and revival of Grant's reputation if his 200th is celebrated much. There are intense cross-pressures at this moment in our history, and these may swamp any momentum to celebrate.
In 1922 Olcott noted indirectly that the generation of Veterans in the Civil War were nearly gone, and this might be "the last time we will have the opportunity of joining in a nation-wide celebration..."
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| April 8th, 1922 |
Olcott also said
The present generation may learn great lessons from the memory of General Grant, who as soldier, statesman, author is remembered throughout the world yet he arose from the common people and always was one with them.
May this day be fittingly observed that we may assist in the perpetuation of those lessons in our history which will keep our government and its principles inviolate for the generations yet to come.
This was written as the second Klan was gathering in Oregon.
Also in April is the anniversary of Lee's surrender, and it also should be more widely celebrated. |
| April 17th, 1865 |
The paper of April 17th, 1865 was of course absolutely bonkers with news. It's hard to imagine its wallop between Lee's surrender and Lincoln's assassination.
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| April 17th, 1865 |
In a few days the Oregon Historical Society will host a talk given by historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose latest book's subtitle is "oligarchy, democracy, and the continuing fight for the soul of America." Forget the Founders, it's all about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow these days.
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| How the South Won |
At Council on Monday, the City will consider approving "the addition of the federal and state holiday, Juneteenth Day, as an annual city-paid holiday benefit for eligible employees beginning June 19, 2022."
For all these reasons we should be thinking more of Grant's 200th birthday later this month.
Addendum, April 9th
Here's the paper's observance of Lee's surrender.
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| April 9th, 1922 |
"The Blue and The Gray" was first published in The Atlantic in 1867, and is linked to the development of Decoration Day and Memorial Day. (Modern notes at The Atlantic from 2014 and 2015 on it.) From here and now it reads like a kind of false equivalence, a harmonizing reading of tragedy and grief on "both sides," the emphasis as the paper understood it on "hand in hand as brothers." It was a tragic misunderstanding, the southern cause rehabilitated and scrubbed more than a little, a gesture easier to understand in the immediate aftermath of the war than now. They closed with "the philosophy of the poet's: Love and tears for the Blue/Tears and Love for the Gray."
2 comments:
(Updated with the paper's observation of Lee's surrender.)
Shoot, the birthday was a dud. Even after the long cycle of 150th anniversaries of the Civil War just a few years ago, it did not occasion much notice at all outside of institutions already associated with Grant. Here's the National Park Service and Library of Congress, for example, but hardly anything in the mainstream press and popular culture.
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