Decoration day being the original name for the holiday we now call Memorial Day.
Earlier today I shared this link on G+ and Facebook:
Frederick Douglass on Decoration Day 1871. I've been pondering somethings about this address, and the context in which he gave it, since.
In 1871, Reconstruction was in what passed for full cry. Ulysses Grant had been president for 2 years. It was Grant's avowed goal that he would accomplish two things - reconciliation, and protection of the rights of the former slaves. The great tragedy of Grant's administration doesn't have anything to do with political cronyism or corruption. It has to do with the fact that Reconstruction succeeded in bringing the ex-confederate states back into the Union, while failing to do very much to protect the Freedmen.
At the time of Douglass's speech, many still had hope. They believed that Grant, still a popular hero, could pull it off. The problem was that the best opportunity to take care of the former slaves came at the end of the war in 1865, and and it was already gone, lost in the disputes between Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans. Civil government was being restored to the southern states too quickly, on terms that were too easy, resulting in political and racial violence that was very difficult to deal with.
So when I read Douglass's speech, I think about the hope for the future he had at the time, and I am saddened for all the death and destruction of the Civil War, and doubly saddened that the opportunity to provide protection and justice to the Freedmen, gained at such a terrible cost, was fumbled.
