A Veteran’s Thoughts
By Ski Ingram
February 2025
February is Black History month. In order to recognize the month, I am re-posting a story from an article I wrote in May 2019. It is a wonderful but little-known story from the Civil War. Knowing this historical event helps us all appreciate the ending of slavery in America and the hope it gave to those who came out of slavery and comes down through the years to inspire all of us Americans.
David Blight, a Yale history professor, has uncovered lost evidence from old newspapers stating that Charleston South Carolina was the first city to observe Decoration Day on May 1, 1865. On February 15, 1865, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard ordered the evacuation of Confederate soldiers from Charleston, South Carolina in the wake of an impending attack by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. The city’s white population had also evacuated the city, leaving thousands of former Black slaves. Symbolically the first Union troops to enter the city were Black Union soldiers of the 21st Infantry Regiment and the 55th Massachusetts Infantry.
On May 1st, black workmen (recently freed slaves) voluntarily dug up every Union soldier who had died in the Charleston prisoner of war camp who had been buried in a hastily dug mass grave. They reburied them in properly dug graves and rendered the proper honors they were due. Afterward a memorial was celebrated with a parade of school children, citizens, and Union soldiers. Professor Blight argues that Memorial Day was founded by African Americans in order to remember the fact that the Civil War was fought to abolish slavery. During the Reconstruction era, as the white southern leaders returned to Charleston, the memory of the event was actively suppressed and has been lost to history until David Blight rediscovered it in those old newspapers.
Ski Ingram is a member of Lester Keate Post 90 of the American Legion in St. George, Utah. He now lives in Gilbert Arizona. He is a combat veteran and a life member of four different veteran’s organizations as well as the NRA. He can be reached at 435-313-2078 and Ski@Skiingram.com. He welcomes your comments.
