When History Gets It Wrong

Misinformation metastasizes through the information ecosystem in ways large and small. My pet peeve is the number of people who attended the 1893 Columbian Exposition—27million individuals did not attend the fair. That number is everywhere, but it’s a misunderstanding of another stat. There were 27 million daily entrance tickets sold but no one came for a single day. Some people came every week. For a while the fair was closed on Sundays. Attendance was low until July. BUT does it matter that there were 6 million visitors instead of 27 million individuals? It’s so embedded now in literature about the Fair that the ship has sailed. I’m still irked.

I’ve just encountered another small one, but maybe it matters. I’m researching the Confederate Mound in Oakwoods Cemetery in Chicago. I dug through the newspaper accounts at the time, and I’m glad I did because I spotted the error as soon as I hit the recent newspaper articles.

The Confederate Mound is the resting place of thousands of prisoners of war. During the Civil War, it was fairly clear that neither side had a clue what the war would be like. Illinois used an old fairground on the estate of U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a pro-South slaveholding Democrat, to create a camp for mustering troops. After the Illinois volunteers headed off, they were dismantling the camp when the North suddenly had thousands of prisoners. They were dumped into Camp Douglas. Conditions were appalling though partly because no one was prepared. Partly there was the willingness to be inhumane. Of course all the soldiers met with horrible conditions. Two thirds of the dead died of disease. There’s no doubt some were given punishments that qualified as torture. The dead were buried in the swampy soil at Camp Douglas until citizens worried about smallpox and measles poisoning the groundwater. They were moved to the city cemetery north of the city until a few years later when the city fathers wanted to build Lincoln Park. An area was purchased in the lovely landscaped private cemetery Oakwoods in suburban Hyde Park township. The bodies were left in an unmarked mound in the far southwest corner. No one knows for sure how many bodies. Just over 4,000 have names. The very bad actions of the North unidentified.

The story leads through Copperhead Democrats in the North who supported the South, the threat of turning the prisoners into an armed uprising, the meaning of Decoration Day as a Union day of mourning, and a recognition of the common humanity of thousands of men under an unmarked mound. By the 1890s, times were changing. Chicago city fathers had tried to lure the South to the World’s Fair and generally failed. When ex-Confederates started showing up for Decoration Day and honoring Union graves and the mound, the push by Southerners to erect a monument was embraced by the economic giants of Chicago. The federal government donated four decommissioned Civil War cannons to mark the edges of the mound. Union veterans elsewhere, however, were appalled at the idea of dedicating a monument to Confederates on Decoration Day.

The business elite of Chicago pulled out all the stops to entertain the Southerners. The Inter Ocean pointed out the banquet menu was printed on silk, advertising the clams, planked whitefish, amontillado, potatoes Parisienne, beef chatelaine, imported sauternes, broiled snipe, and truffled pate as they listened to an ode to the Bivouac of the Dead.

The next day a huge parade led by the local units of the Grand Army of the Republic, the powerful organization of Union veterans, brought out thousands of spectators. There was a lot of oratory—but none of it was by President Grover Cleveland. And yet accounts now, discussing the current controversy about the meaning of the Confederate Mound, have said that President Cleveland was there. For instance, the 2018 Chicago Tribune said, “The Confederate Mound was first dedicated in 1895 by President Grover Cleveland with about 100,000 people in attendance.” That puts the full weight of the federal government into the dedication of the monument, which is more than a gravestone. It’s very much a representation of the Lost Cause, romanticizing the Late Unpleasantness (as the New Orleans Picayune referred to the Civil War).

The 2018 article was describing a confrontation between the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the supporters of Ida B. Wells, who is buried not far from the Mound. That clash seems particularly poignant because Ida B. Wells fought so hard in the 1890s against lynching and the Jim Crow laws that were destroying the gains that had been made by Black Americans. The cemetery is the resting place of much of Chicago’s Black leadership in so many fields.

On the day in 1895, there WAS a large crowd. There WAS reconciliation. And Grover Cleveland WAS in Oakwoods Cemetery. He just wasn’t part of the dedication of the Confederate Mound.

The huge gathering of Confederate generals and general onlookers had dissipated by the time Cleveland arrived on the train from Washington, D.C., with his cabinet—and the coffin containing Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham, who had died suddenly two days before. Gresham was being interred in Oakwoods Cemetery. It was just a coincidence that it was on the day of the dedication.

In fact, Gresham had been an officer in the Civil War, serving under Grant at the siege of Vicksburg and under Sherman during the march through Georgia to the sea. Gresham didn’t stay in Oakwoods long. It was soon determined that his rightful resting place as a former Brigadier General and public servant was in Arlington National Cemetery. Grover Cleveland’s presence in Oakwoods that day was not about the full weight of the Federal government embracing the Lost Cause.

So, does it matter? I feel like it does. The Confederate Mound is a complicated and controversial act of public memory. It’s a reminder that even the “good guys” committed horrible acts. It’s an attempt to rewrite the meaning of the Civil War. It was as complicated and controversial in 1895 as it is today.