EX-UNION COLONEL WHO WAS PROMINENT ABOLISTIONIST SUPPORTED CONFEDERATE PLAQUES AT HARVARD IN 1904
A Harvard alumnus who served as a Union colonel and had been a leader of the Abolitionist movement in New England predicted in 1904 that the Harvard Confederate dead would receive equal memorial recognition at the University nearly 100 years ago, contemporary sources indicate.
The August, 1904, issue of “The Confederate Veteran”, official magazine of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, reported as follows:
“Harvard May Honor Confederates “(Confederate Veteran, August 1904, page 378)
“A telegram to the New York Tribune from Cambridge, Massachusetts says Col.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his annual Memorial Day address at Harvard, predicted that in time tablets would be placed in Memorial Hall for the fallen Confederate Harvard men beside the tablets bearing the sons of Harvard who fell in the Union ranks. In connection therewith he said, ‘We have ceased calling the war of 1861 the rebellion, and instead speak of it as the Civil War. We have also come to see that the men who fought for the South bled and died for a principle that was as sacred to them as the preservation of the union was to us---the love of their State and the belief in her sovereign rights.’”
Higginson’s espousement of equal recognition for the Harvard Confederate dead is particularly interesting in light of his biography: He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard at the age of sixteen and entered Harvard Divinity School, but withdrew to devote full time to abolitionist activities. He was one of the “Secret Six” who helped raise money for John Brown’s raid. He served as Colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first authorized Union regiment to be comprised of ex-slaves. Yet, eighty-four years before Harvard professor emeritus Mason Hammond suggested a Confederate memorial at Harvard, Higginson remarked on the validity of Harvard Confederates’ service and urged the memorializing of those who had died wearing gray.
The “Confederate Veteran” passage relating Higginson’s remarks was submitted by SLRC Board Member Bernhard Thuersam.
The August, 1904, issue of “The Confederate Veteran”, official magazine of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, reported as follows:
“Harvard May Honor Confederates “(Confederate Veteran, August 1904, page 378)
“A telegram to the New York Tribune from Cambridge, Massachusetts says Col.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his annual Memorial Day address at Harvard, predicted that in time tablets would be placed in Memorial Hall for the fallen Confederate Harvard men beside the tablets bearing the sons of Harvard who fell in the Union ranks. In connection therewith he said, ‘We have ceased calling the war of 1861 the rebellion, and instead speak of it as the Civil War. We have also come to see that the men who fought for the South bled and died for a principle that was as sacred to them as the preservation of the union was to us---the love of their State and the belief in her sovereign rights.’”
Higginson’s espousement of equal recognition for the Harvard Confederate dead is particularly interesting in light of his biography: He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard at the age of sixteen and entered Harvard Divinity School, but withdrew to devote full time to abolitionist activities. He was one of the “Secret Six” who helped raise money for John Brown’s raid. He served as Colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first authorized Union regiment to be comprised of ex-slaves. Yet, eighty-four years before Harvard professor emeritus Mason Hammond suggested a Confederate memorial at Harvard, Higginson remarked on the validity of Harvard Confederates’ service and urged the memorializing of those who had died wearing gray.
The “Confederate Veteran” passage relating Higginson’s remarks was submitted by SLRC Board Member Bernhard Thuersam.
posted by Chuck Demastus at
11:50 AM
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