 But when the band struck up to play, the Confederates joined the Union veterans to march as one under the US flag.This was at a time of increasing reconciliation nationwide between white soldiers of the North and South; historian David Blight notes that outstanding issues of race were pushed aside.In this period southern states had already begun to pass new constitutions that raised barriers to voter registration, following Mississippi's in 1890, and essentially disenfranchised most freedmen and many poor whites.