On this day in 1884, The Atlanta Constitution reported an event that occurred in New York on the previous day. Fifteen hundred people gathered in Cooper Union to take part in the inaugural public ceremonies relating to the establishment of a home for disabled ex-confederate soldiers at Richmond, Virginia. One speaker, a Corporal Tanner, stood for the absence of General Grant at these proceedings.
Corporal Tanner, of Brooklyn, had both legs amputated after having received wounds during the Civil War. He walked on two wooden legs, and he opened his address with a gracious tribute to ex-confederates in that war. After stating that he was “with the movement [to care for confederate veterans] with his heart and soul and from the crown of his head as far down as he went,” he ventured further into the land of graciousness:
He did not forget General Grant’s word to General Lee at Appomattox, when he said to the great confederate general to tell his men to take their horses home, as they would need them for the spring ploughing [sic], and then distributed 100,000 rations among the defeated army. Grant, in thus, epitomized the feeling of every man who is willing to give credit to those who have stood the knocks of the battlefield in the cause that they believed to be just.
Tanner then went on to relay a ‘joke’ that has become a standard amongst southerners…one that I heard my grandmother (who was born in Baltimore) and my grandfather (who was born in Botetourt County) repeat:
Tanner told an anecdote of a little son of his and the child of an ex-confederate who lived next door to him. One Sunday evening he and his friend were sitting on his front porch, where the little ones had taken up a position on the “picket fence” in front. Presently a kiss passed between the youngsters…’John,’ said the corporal to his neighbor, ‘I guess the union will be all right in the next generation.’”
Bitterness, however, remained rife for a long time, and equal rights for Black Americans took even longer. Bigotry knows no boundaries politically, by gender or by race. While many feel this country has come a long way since the end of the Civil War with the election of President Obama, hatred and fear mongering still remain strong in pockets of this country.
Does a rift remain between north and south? I’ve lived in the north and I was born and lived in the south. I have my own opinions, how about you?
