Richmond was to be his home for the rest of his life, and no inducement ever sufficed to make him leave it. His scholarship can only be understood as an individualized response to youthful experiences he could have encountered nowhere else, for Richmond at the turn of the century stood at the center of the South's commemorative movement, its ceremonial remembrance of the Confederate past. Reunions of veterans, dedications of monuments, mock battles, and military funerals of Confederate leaders provided the most vivid experiences of Freeman's boyhood. He early acquired a passionate interest in all particulars of the war.
The enthusiasm of the boy's response to these events bore a direct relationship to the values of his family as exemplified by his admired father, a veteran of the Army of Northern Virginia and a loyal participant in all activities of Richmond's R. E. Lee Camp, United Confederate Veterans. Walker Burford Freeman supported his family as the Virginia agent of a national insurance company, but Douglas saw him primarily as the heroic survivor of war and economic dislocation.
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