Civil War Memorial Day ceremony

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki will concelebrate an outdoor Mass and nationally known book author Lance Herdegen will be the keynote speaker at a Civil War Memorial Day ceremony on Monday, May 27, at historic Calvary Cemetery in Milwaukee.

The event is sponsored by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and its Auxiliary, and draws a crowd of several hundred each year.

The Mass will begin at 10 a.m. and will include some attendants in Civil War period attire. The patriotic ceremony will immediately follow at about 11 a.m. The ceremony will include a speech by Herdegen, and then Listecki and Herdegen each will fire a Civil War cannon of the Cushing’s Battery A, 4th U.S. Artillery. The ceremony also will include the Gettysburg Address by President Abraham Lincoln, along with rifle and musket salutes.

At both the Mass and the ceremony, the First Brigade Band will play songs and hymns on original musical instruments that were used during the Civil War. The band recently performed in Virginia on the 150th anniversary of the battle of Chancellorsville.

Herdegen, of Burlington, has written acclaimed books about the war, particularly about the Iron Brigade and Wisconsin regiments in it. He is chairman of the Wisconsin Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission.

At this time 150 years ago, the war had entered its third year, and the battle of Gettysburg was a few weeks away, along with the fall of Vicksburg, Miss. More than 90,000 soldiers from Wisconsin, about 20 percent of the state’s male population, served in the war, and 10,868 would die.

The C.K. Pier Badger Camp #1 of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War has been a Milwaukee institution since 1901. It was formed in the merger of two camps that were established in the 1880s. The Sons are the successor to the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union veterans of the war.

Calvary Cemetery, at 5503 W. Bluemound Road, is an Archdiocese cemetery that dates to 1845 and includes the graves of several dozen Civil War veterans, including two who earned the Medal of Honor.

In case of bad weather, the Mass and patriotic ceremony will be held inside at St. Vincent Pallotti church, 5502 W. Bluemound Road.