The Civil War in America
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Frederick Douglass feared that national reconciliation after the war seemed to require Americans to forget what the conflict had been about in the first place. In a Memorial Day address given at Arlington Cemetery in 1871, he lamented that for the sake of patriotism Americans were asked to honor all the men who fought, regardless of the side they had chosen. But after so much blood and sacrifice, Douglass wondered, what was worth remembering if not the death of slavery and the triumph of the Union?
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(Transcription)

We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism . . .


Frederick Douglass feared that national reconciliation after the war seemed to require Americans to forget what the conflict had been about in the first place. In a Memorial Day address given at Arlington Cemetery in 1871, he lamented that for the sake of patriotism Americans were asked to honor all the men who fought, regardless of the side they had chosen. But after so much blood and sacrifice, Douglass wondered, what was worth remembering if not the death of slavery and the triumph of the Union?