ABSTRACT
On the eve of the Centennial, Frederick Douglass looked back on the great human losses suffered during the Civil War and issued this urgent call to the nation. Warning his audience about the dangers of forming a collective memory of the war that depended on burying crippling memories under patriotic rhetoric of a regained national unity, he reminded them that inherent in and critical to the sectional conflict was the nation’s long history of slavery and its ultimate eradication. Preserving the memory of the war-not extinguishing itwould be essential for establishing a viable future for the newly established African American segment of the population. Equally important to Douglass was recognizing the active role that African American men played in securing their own freedom, as he expressed in his in writings in support of the war: “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, US, let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States.”2
