The turmoil of Soldiers Reunions and family connections to the Lost Cause
“When the great civil war came on the Keener’s enlisted in the Southern cause and were good confederate soldiers.” — Alfred Nixon (October 7, 1908)
In August every year, my local community still continues camp meeting traditions that date back to 1794 and 1853 and a “Soldiers Reunion” tradition that dates back to 1889. Started as a militia rally to honor the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, the soldiers reunion in Newton, North Carolina also served to encourage Southerners to “correct the history of the south” as Fitzgerald Fournoy of Richard, Virginia urged in his “dramatic appeal to the rising generation” at the 1921 soldiers reunion in Durham (Durham Morning Herald, August 25).
Today, the reunion in Newton includes a symphony on the square with a laser light show (Sunday, August 13) and various recreational events (August 10 - 20) in addition to the parade. As a local historian notes, it has essentially evolved over time into a European street festival. But after last year’s attempt to return it to its past, I decided to investigate my own family’s connections to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
The ‘Soldiers Re-Unions’ in Northern and Western States are political…
