Artifacts of Centennial Commemorations, 1962-1970

In the 1960’s, most of the souvenir tokens, calendars, and other items presented in this section helped mark the 100th-year anniversaries of Civil War events. A survey of some of these commemorative devices, issued by historical committees or business firms in the Franklin County towns of Chambersburg and Waynesboro, reveals a tension between adopting a reconciliationist tone that stressed postwar North-South harmony and a harsher tone that stressed the wartime traumas that Franklin civilians suffered at the hands of Confederate soldiers.

The souvenir programs, pictorial calendars, and tokens pictured in the sampling below functioned as commemorative devices to help Franklin County residents observe the centennials—100-year anniversaries—of various local Civil War events.

1962 Centennial of J.E.B. Stuart’s Raid of Chambersburg

Chambersburg’s Civil War Centennial Committee chose a crossed Union-and-Confederate-flags/J.E.B -Stuart-profile logo to promote the 100th year commemoration of Confederate cavalry general Stuart’s raid on Chambersburg in October 1862. The observance of 1962 culminated in a one or two-day event whose features echoed the logo by incorporating North-South reconciliation gestures.

The committee invited reenactors from Southern states and portraying Confederate soldiers to join their Northern counterparts in a “colorful” portrayal of Stuart’s raid, which was followed by a “Blue-Gray Military Ball” in honor of the visiting reenactors from all states. On the same day or another, “The Blue-Gray Minstrels” performed Southern as well as Northern songs from the Civil War period.¹

Yet the committee balanced the reconciliationist tone of the event with a harsher historical perspective in a booklet it issued as an accompanying souvenir: General J.E.B. Stuart’s Raid on Chambersburg Pennsylvania. Although Stuart’s men had destroyed only military and railroad facilities in Chambersburg, the booklet noted that, as the fires they set burned “only a short distance from the thickly populated section of the town the conflagration caused great alarm.” The booklet also speculated that Stuart’s raid was notable more “for arousing bitterness and crushing pride” than accomplishing “any military objective.”²

On the inside of the General J.E.B. Stuart’s Raid booklet, the Centennial Committee gave a statement of purpose for the commemoration:

1963 Centennial of the Occupation of Waynesboro

Waynesboro, Pennsylvania’s Civil War Commission chose a clasped-Union-and-Confederate-hands/crossed-Union-and-Confederate-flags logo, supplemented by tiny portraits of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses Grant, to promote the 100th-year commemoration of Waynesboro’s occupation by Confederates. The observance of 1963 culminated in a two-day event that featured a fireworks display, a battle reenactment, a reenactment of the town’s occupation, and a “Beard and Moustache Contest.”³

The clasped-hands, crossed-flags, and Confederate portrait motifs reflected the strongly reconciliationist tone of the centennial in Waynesboro—an emphasis on North-South harmony that surpassed even that of the previous year’s commemoration of Stuart’s raid on Chambersburg. The Waynesboro commission’s reconciliationist sentiment found embodiment in Fifteen Days Under the Confederate Flag, a souvenir booklet that it issued to accompany the occupation-observance and that featured the clasped-hands/crossed-flags logo prominently on the back cover.⁴

Characterizing the conflict of 1861-1865 as a “war between brothers,” the booklet’s foreword called “attention to the great struggle from which our nation emerged united.” The text that followed acknowledged local feelings, prior to and after the Confederate occupation, “of intense antagonism toward the Southern soldier,” due to his willingness to kill Northerners in uniform. Yet the booklet asserted that the view of a typical Waynesboro area-civilian—a Northerner out of uniform, in other words—in the wake of “noticing the courtesy and politeness of the southern visitors\205often changed to that of respect and in a certain degree to that of politeness” during the occupation of 1863.⁵

1964 Centennial of the Burning of Chambersburg

Waynesboro residents had experienced nothing near the Civil War trauma of Chambersburg’s massive conflagration of 1864, a Confederate-set blaze that had overshadowed the comparatively tiny fire set by J.E.B. Stuart’s Confederate raiders there in 1862. A century later, Chambersburg residents formed a Bicentennial-Centennial Corporation to direct both the 100th-year commemoration of the burning and the 200th-year commemoration of the town’s founding—observances occurring simultaneously in 1964. For the burning-commemoration logo, the corporation adopted an image of Confederate troops setting the Franklin County courthouse ablaze.⁶

The observations produced at least one souvenir token and a souvenir booklet, “From This Valley”: Crossroads of Destiny, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania Bicentennial-Centennial. Both carried the Confederate-burning logo prominently.

Those sections of From This Valley devoted to the fire of 1864 followed the harsh symbolism of the burning-logo by offering little of the reconciliationist sentiment that was present in the Chambersburg Stuart’s-raid centennial booklet and prominent in the Waynesboro Confederate-occupation centennial booklet. From This Valley asserted that the Southern troops who set Chambersburg ablaze gave “[n]o consideration\205to the sick or infirm” among the townspeople. Confederates seeking to fuel the conflagration moved non-combustibles to streets and yards, “making haste more difficult” for the fleeing residents.⁷

Overall, however, Chambersburg’s bicentennial-centennial planners muted this sectional antagonism. They commemorated the burning and other Civil War events in only one of 17 historical pageants. Those featured local residents, who starred in six days of performances that portrayed characters from local history in chronological episodes, ranging from European-Native American contact (“Land of the Redman”) through World War II (“For One Cause—Freedom”).⁸

From This Valley, moreover, carried advertisements from its sponsors that offered various historical messages on the burning of 1864:

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Franklin County Centennial Calendars

Throughout and in the immediate aftermath of the centennial years of the 1960’s, a Chambersburg business issued calendars commemorating Civil War events.