On December 2, 1872, the first day of the third session of the Forty-Second Congress, Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner introduced two bills on the floor of the U.S. Senate that were among his last. He expected the most important act he introduced that day to be the supplement to the Civil Rights Bill, which he had advocated since 1865. Although he expected little notice for the other bill he introduced that day, it caused a firestorm. Sumner sought to obliterate an aspect of the military memory of the U.S. Civil War.
Sumner’s proposed legislation sought to influence the memory of the U.S. Civil War by regulating the Army Register, the official record of conflicts and casualties, and the regimental flags of the United States. The very brief bill read, in full:
Whereas the national unity and good will among fellow-citizens can be assured only through oblivion of past differences, and it is contrary to the usage of civilized nations to perpetuate the memory of civil war: Therefore Be it enacted, &c. That the names of battles with fellow-citizens shall not be continued in the Army Register or placed on the regimental colors of the United States.
On its face, Sumner’s bill seemed concerned with national unity and recognized that Civil War memory—or the suppression thereof—would play an important role in the future “civilization” of the United States alongside the politics of African American equality that his Civil Rights Bill would seek to ensure. Sumner’s move against military memory, however, turned out to be one of the worst political blunders of his entire career, one that threatened his own legacy. He was censured by the Massachusetts legislature, while old friends and supporters turned on him.
Sumner underestimated the importance of the military conflict itself as the center of Reconstruction-era memory, favoring a political rather than military vision of the nation that he did not view as at odds with retaining an emphasis on emancipation and Black freedom. Sumner underestimated the allure of Civil War memory. Even though during the war he had twice proposed similar restrictions on regimental flags, his 1872 bill was considered a disavowal of Union heroism. A bitter enemy of President Ulysses S. Grant, Sumner had been effectively ejected from the Senate Republican caucus following his support of the Liberal Republican Horace Greeley in the 1872 presidential election just a month earlier. Sumner claimed that he had never abandoned the fight for African American freedom when he opposed Grant and supported the Liberal Republicans, but the Republican break and the Liberal Republican “new departure” further opened him to charges of disloyalty, especially when other Republicans might question his commitment to honor military accomplishments.