{"id":457,"date":"2015-11-11T11:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T15:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/rbsc\/?p=457"},"modified":"2026-06-29T10:38:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:38:02","slug":"veterans-day-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/veterans-day-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Commemorating Civil War Veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by\u00a0Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Americans celebrate November 11th<\/sup> as Veterans\u2019 Day. It commemorates Armistice Day\u2014November 11, 1918\u2014when, at the eleventh hour that day, France, Great Britain, and the United States (the Allied powers) and Germany signed an armistice that ended hostilities of the Great War (1914 – 1918). After World War II the United States officially designated November 11th<\/sup> as a day to remember veterans of all wars. However, its WWI origins remain in the Arlington National Cemetery ceremony, which includes a wreath placed on the Tomb of the Unknowns at 11 am.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Letter,<\/a>
Letter, Thomas Francis McGrath to his mother, January 20, 1863 (MSN\/CW 1001-16), and Veteran\u2019s Badge, Dedication of NY State Monument, Antietam, September 17, 1920 (MSN\/CW 1001-44).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Hesburgh Libraries’ Rare Book and Special Collections department holds many unique or rare items by soldiers about war remembrance. The Civil War (1861-1865) created a lot of soldiers who, even as they fought, reflected and recorded. Thomas Francis McGrath (1839 – 1922) traveled from Ireland to enlist in the 69th<\/sup> New York Infantry, a part of the Irish Brigade. In an 1863 letter to his mother, he contrasted Irish and Irish-American soldiers who died fighting for the United States, “that land, which gives a home . . . to the . . . oppressed of all nations,”<\/a> with Irish men who lost their lives in the British army, fighting “under a Foreign Flag . . . for a government that robs his country and banishes her sons to a distant land.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Carte-de-visite<\/a>
Carte-de-visite portrait of Lt. James C. Woodworth, 1865 (MSN\/CW 1014-16), and 25th Massachusetts Infantry annual reunion ribbon, October 17, 1899 (MSN\/CW 1014-31).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

James C. Woodworth<\/a> (1839 – 1900) served in the 25th<\/sup> Massachusetts Infantry. He kept an 800-page diary of his wartime experience and collected miniature tintype portraits of soldiers in his company (an opening of which\u00a0is this blog post’s lead image, MSN\/CW 1014-15). After the war both McGrath and Woodworth attended soldiers’ reunions until the end of their lives; McGrath appeared at a monument dedication at Antietam in 1920, when he was in his early eighties, and two years after the end of World War I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Creative<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian Americans celebrate November 11th as Veterans\u2019 Day. It commemorates Armistice Day\u2014November 11, 1918\u2014when, at the eleventh hour that day, France, Great Britain, and the United States (the Allied powers) and Germany signed an armistice that ended hostilities of the Great War (1914 – 1918). After World War II the United States … Continue reading Commemorating Civil War Veterans<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1936,"featured_media":764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75052],"tags":[73938,77948],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-history-culture","tag-manuscripts","tag-otd-holidays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1936"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11627,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/11627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}