We Of The South Remember: Keatchie, Mansfield, Pleasant Hill
No less than the grandest cities of stone for the heroes who fought “to defend the Union,” once the bodies were gathered from the fields where they lay. That task fell to those the dead ostensibly came to “liberate”: the black Southerners who had rushed1 to answer Mr Lincoln’s call for Freedom! The 111th Colored Infantry, for example, got the gig at Murfreesboro. This image is from the Cold Harbor battle in 1864. Not the worst slaughter of the war — that would be the Confederate charge at Franklin in November 1964 ordered by General John Bell Hood — but even Grant (who by that time was hurling companies composed of German tuba players into the meatgrinder) admitted regret.
The American cemeteries are managed by the National Park Service, and their upkeep paid for by you and I. Here’s the one in Vicksburg.
Southern cemeteries are altogether m…
