How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

I was fascinated by the conciliatory equivocation of his tone, and his desire, it seemed, not to push a demarcation between the Confederacy and the United States but to assimilate the memory of the Confederacy more fully into the country’s historical consciousness. Confederate soldiers, according to this narrative, were US military veterans just as those who had fought in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq. It did not seem to matter that they had fought against the US; he believed they should be remembered as US veterans themselves. Gramling’s speech sounded so much like similar Memorial Day celebrations after the end of Reconstruction, when orators exclaimed that this day should be one of reconciliation, paying tribute to the sacrifices made by both Confederate and Union soldiers without accounting for what the war had actually been fought over.