Rouviere Media

America’s oldest black church building and arguably most important African American historic site, the African Meeting House in Boston, is reopen to the public after a $9 million restoration. Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and other prominent abolitionists used the pulpit of the building to rail against slavery and free African American men gathered there to form the famed 54th Massachuesetts regiment.

The building  is in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. The restoration was badly needed because although Boston was pivotal in the abolitionist movement that led to the Civil War, there are few signs of commemoration of the abolitionist movement on the city's landscape although several buildings that still exist in Boston were sites of abolitionist activities. 

The original floorboards of the meeting house are still in the building, while the curved pews are recreations of the originals based on sketches from the time but enlarged to accommodate average modern day heights and weights.  

African American author Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in a special issue of  The Atlantic commemorating the Civil War that few African Americans are interested in the Civil War although they benefited from it. Part of the reason, he feels, is that the interpretation of the war at many Civil War sites ignores the great battle to end slavery that was the war's main point. The interpretations largely focus on white soldiers, and blacks are mere props who are invited to listen but never to speak for the slave world and to say how happy they are for the freedom they gained because of the Civil War. 

African Americans need to reclaim their history and point out that slaves represented a huge portion of  the U.S. economy, the greatest financial resource in America. That’s why so many people were willing to fight and die, he says. 

He notes that for African Americans,  the war started not in 1861, but in 1661 when Virginia began passing America’s first black codes which rendered blacks slaves. See his blog: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/08/143291199/black-scholar-of-the-civil-war-asks-whos-with-me

Critics of Newt Gingrich’s new novel, The Battle of the Crater, say the book is an example of the way in which African American Civil War history is obscured. The book tells the story of a battle fought on July 30, 1864, in the Petersburg campaign. It appears to be sympathetic to blacks because its main character is a black soldier, but critics claim it paints a picture of whites as unrealistically sympathetic to whites, including Confederate General Robert E. Lee, although there is no historical evidence that he was, and  it does not address the substantial historical evidence that the battle included a calculated massacre of black soldiers that Confederates believed was justified.

Civil War Casualty

A statue of a Civil War soldier has been behaeded and the head, worth about $3,000, is missing.The statue in Bridgeton, N.J., now looks like an illustration from Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow, standing headless in Bridgeton City Park. 

More Christmas 

At the Washington County Rural Heritage Museum in Maryland, actors in period dress have been portraying residents preparing for Chrsitmas in the aftermath of the 1862 battle of Antietam.  More than 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or declared missing in the Sept. 17, 1862 clash.  The show precedes the annual illumination of the battlefield by 23,000 candles for a drive-through tour.

Local residents suffered from hunger and disease for months after the battle, there were many wounded to be cared for, and the area smelled od death.

In North Carolina at Four Oaks, Confederate reenactors and historians will offier a program on Saturday at the Bentonville Battlefield on how Christmas was marked during the war.  The program will take place at Harper House, the 1850s home that was turned into a field hospital during the Battle of Bentonville. Explanations will be given of what Civil War soldiers did for the holidays when home on furlough.

At the Historic Rosco Village Christmas Candlelighting in Ohio, the ceremony has a Civil War theme this year, including an explanation by a musician and historian on the historical significances of Civil War-era Christmas songs including  I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day and Up on the Housetop.

In Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, more than 50 people attended a service in which they remembered the first wartime Christmas in 1861, reading letters that described soldiers’ perspectivies. They laid a wreath at  Burn’s Hill Cemetery, where the names of more than 60 Wynesboro residents who fought in the Civil War were read.

The Civil War Trust is suggesting five historic sites for holiday travelers, ranging from the Wilderness in Virginia to Prairie Grove Battlefield in Arkansas.The nonprofit's pitch says many Civil War sites plan special holiday programs during December, such as candlelight Christmas tours at Gettysburg and other events at Harpers Ferry in West Virginia. At the Wilderness in northern Virginia, a 19th century Christmas is being celebrated at Ellwood Manor. Wilson's Creek in Missouri has holiday activities. The Macculloch Hall Historical Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, has a Christmas exhibit and a Civil War Christmas exhibit in December.Reynoldsburg, Ohio, is enacting a Civil War holiday homecoming for soldiers from both the Union and Confederacy as part  of its Christmas on the Towne.  

A Civil War Monument in Hightstown, N.J. was lit up with holiday deocrations and lights during a short Christmas ceremony on Nov. 26. Some, including all but one of the Hightstown Historic Preservation Commission, had decried the decorations as inappropriate for a war monument.  The ceremony included a military tribute  with bagpipers and carolers on Friday, December 2.

Saving Battlefields 

Virginia is spending a million dollars to help organizations preserve 530 acres of Civil War battlefields. The money is well spent, officials say, because the site attract tourists. 

Southern Baptists

The Southern Baptists, who supported slavery during the Civil War, are still struggling to overcome a racist image even though they long ago renounced slavery. Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright appointed a study group earlier this year to look into changing the Southern Baptist Convention’s name.
The convention was founded in 1845 over a dispute with northern Baptists over whether missionaries could own slaves. The Triennial Convention to which both belonged refused to appoint a slaveowner as a missionary. This angered the Southern Baptists and the two groups split.  Southern Baptists long ago renounced lsavery and their past support of segregation in the South and passed a resoluton at their 160th anniversary in 1995 asking for forgiveness.