Drum Barracks on Remembrance Day – Wilmington 2018

I visited the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum last November for the Remembrance Day Ceremony. I planned a birthday adventure for my father and towed my oldest kiddo along for a history lesson.

The Drum Barracks is one of very few Civil War facilities in Southern California. Phineas Banning donated the land which became Camp Drum to quell pro-Confederacy sentiment in the southland. The Union garrison moved from Fort Tejon to Camp Latham, near Culver City, and eventually to Camp Drum. Stop by Overland Avenue and Virginia Avenue in Culver City to see the historic marker for Camp Latham.

The only remaining structure is the Junior Officer’s Quarters. This last structure was almost demolished in the 1960s. There remains a partial Powder Magazine structure within walking distance at the corner on the corner of Eubank Ave and E Opp Street.

Arriving early to the Drum Barracks, we took the last docent led tour before the Ceremony. We learned the site was not named after a musical instrument, but Colonel Richard Drum. And, by the mid- 1860s, the camp was already referred to as the Drum Barracks rather than Camp Drum. The tour was fantastic, and the young docent was chock-full of info. Also, she answered every question my kiddo asked.

We stopped in at the gift shop after the tour and before the Ceremony. I purchased my customary coffee mug for my wife and my kiddo discussed earrings and ear piercing with the docent in the gift shop.

After our shopping spree, the small crowed was gathering on the yard for the Ceremony. People were dressed and respective historical societies were present. And there was Abraham Lincoln.

The Ceremony was touching with Innovation, Pledge of Allegiance and “a few appropriate remarks” from Abraham Lincoln. The Gettysburg address is short and I’m always struck by the exquisite mastery of language and the beauty of his words. I know there is a historical dispute of the exact wording. Below is the Bliss version and considered the current standard because he affixed his full signature and date.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

After the ceremony there was refreshments. My father wanted to take more pictures while me and my kiddo approached Abraham Lincoln. My oldest was excited when she first saw him as a couple years back, the family visited the Lincoln Shrine in Redlands for President’s Day and she was positive it was the same Abraham Lincoln. He was generous of his time and affirmed he was at the Lincoln Shrine.

With the conclusion of the Ceremony, we wandered over to the Powder Magazine and then back to the park across from the Drum Barracks. The park has a camel motif. The army’s “Camel Corps” and Lt. Edward Beale’s experience with the animals is an interesting bit of California history. In June 1861, the “Camel Corps” transferred from Fort Tejon than to Camp Fitzgerald then to Camp Drum for a time. Look for the fabulous picture with the camel within the museum or pick up a reproduced postcard with the image. My oldest kiddo loved the story. The Museum has a statue of a camel named Ayesha on the grounds.