by Edward Ellis, Special Correspondent
One hundred and fifty years ago this month, two local Memorial Days honored fallen warriors. One for the North and one for the South.
In 1872, seven years after the end of the War Between the States, New Bern – and the rest of the former Confederacy – was still under federal military rule. Firmly in the sway of occupying Unionists, the northern observance on May 30 garnered the bulk of coverage from the city’s newspaper.
A national cemetery was established on the outskirts of New Bern in February 1867 for the reinterment of the region’s Civil War dead. According to the era’s newspaper, a Memorial Day observance for Union troops was held that first year. By 1872, the May 30 observance had reached epic proportion with hundreds of attendees arriving by rail, steamboat, and a parade of wagons. A program of singing, organ music, prayers, poetry, and speeches lasted several hours among the adorned graves – “a profusion of flowers and wreaths” – of fallen troopers from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and many other states.
The New Bern Times observed, “Yesterday the ceremony of decorating the graves of the Union dead, who sleep their last sleep, to the number of over three thousand in the National Cemetery near the city, was observed in a manner becoming the day, and participated in by a large number of citizens.”
Nevertheless, on June 2, 1872, the newspaper’s editor appended an uplifting note to the end of another long article about the recent Union celebration. He said, “We are happy to chronicle the fact that, as time passes, an era of better feeling seems to exist and that many of our citizens both Northern and Southern annually take part in the memorial ceremonies of the Confederates May 10th, and the Union dead May 30th. We again express hope, that at no distant day, the friends of both may unite upon one day annually to strew flowers o’er the graves of the Union and Confederate dead, who fell during the heroic battles of our late civil war.”
Bear Talk – Eddie Ellis is the author of New Bern History 101 and other works about Craven County’s rich heritage. He can be reached at flexspace2@aol.com.