Memorial Day

Memorial Day. Officially it's a day set aside to honor our country's fallen from all wars the United States fought, while in the line of duty. It is observed the last Monday in May.

Unofficially, it's the first unofficial weekend of summer. It's picnics, bar-b-ques, small three-day weekend trips, beaches, etc. You can 

start wearing white if you're a woman who cares for such things. Shoes and pants. And you better wear them a lot, because, after Labor Day, it's over for the year. Unless you just don't care and will wear whatever you want.


But what is the history of Memorial Day? The origins go back to the Civil War. The country was trying to absorb the horrors of over 620,000 Americans dead - the most killed in all of the other wars the United States participated combined. The number of dead lead to the establishment of our national cemeteries in order to gather the war of the dead in special areas set aside as opposed

to impromptu burials at battle sites. In order to process it, commemorations popped up all over the country, where residents decorated soldiers' graves with flowers and flags while singing hymns and praying. 

Several towns claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day.
Boalsburg, PA claims that they started observing it when women started gathering to honor those fallen at the very recent Gettysburg, PA cemetery. Carbondale, IL insists they are the first because, in 1866, they held their first parade. One that was led in part by Major General John A. Logan. The very same Major General who commemorated it two years later it became known as the Official Birthplace of Memorial Day: Waterloo, NY.

On May 5, 1868, in Waterloo, NY, Major General Logan, who was also the leader of the Union Civil War group Grand Army of the Republic, called for Decoration Day (later changed to Memorial) to be observed on May 30, 1868. A day set aside to place flags and

Major General John Logan

lay flowers at the graves of Civil War dead - all those that had fallen, regardless of side, were honored. Waterloo was chosen because they already had a day to honor the fallen that was community-wide with a parade where businesses were closed that began in 1866. Logan spoke about cemeteries strewn with so many flowers that the grass could not be seen. In 1966, Lyndon B Johnson officially declared Waterloo, NY the birthplace of Memorial Day.

Later, the Major General's wife stated that he was influenced by the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus, GA. Also one of the towns garnering for the birthplace of the holiday, a group of ladies went to decorate Confederate gravesites, which were awash with colors. They never intended to decorate the Union dead, but after gazing on the barren Union side, the went over and did their graves, too. They said later that those graves held someone's son, husband, or brother and if the situation was reversed, they hoped that some kind group of women would decorate their loved ones' graves.

Whatever the case may be, Memorial Day was to honor the Civil War dead only for 50 years until WWI brought home more dead. It then expanded to include any soldier that was killed in the line of duty defending the United States. In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day to the fourth Monday of May to create a  three day weekend

for federal employees. For quite a few veterans, it should remain on May 30th...simply because Americans aren't going to honor Memorial Day. They're going to take advantage of a three-day weekend and spend the day doing everything but honoring our fallen. And I can't say as they're wrong. Late Senator of Hawaii and WWII vet Daniel Inouye agreed, and at the beginning of each term he served, he would present a bill proposing that Memorial Day be changed back to May 30th. In 1971, Memorial Day became a federal holiday, which is also the first year it was observed on the 4th Monday.

It caught on like wildfire. The 27 Union states adopted Memorial Day as a holiday, while the former Confederate states celebrated

their own day, and indeed, would not join in on the May 30th holiday until World War 1, when it went from honoring just Civil War casualties to all of the fallen men and women in any war. They did honor their dead, though, with Confederate observances for Confederate President Jefferson Davis' birthday or the day that Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson died in battle.

Incidentally, why May 30? One reason why it is said to be chosen was that it was one of the few dates that a battle doesn't fall on. Another theory is that by the end of May, most flowers would have bloomed.

Sailors folding a flag at the USS Arizona
memorial. Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Major General John A. Logan served in the House and the Senate before and after the war. He also unsuccessfully ran as Vice-President and upon his death, was honored with being one of 33 people to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol rotunda. Many things are named after

American Red Cross on Memorial
Day in France. 1945

him, most notably Logan's Circle in Washington D.C.

Some of the observed traditions on Memorial Day are flags lowered to half-mast until noon, ceremonies and commemorations at cemeteries, and parades. Taps is played at every military funeral and was started when a group of soldiers tweaked "Light's Out". Often was used instead of the three volleys because of the proximities of enemy lines.

The tradition of wearing artificial red poppies came from a poem called "Flander's Field" by John McCrea.  In 1915, a Georgia teacher and war volunteer worker Moina Michael started lobbying for the poppy to be the symbol of a tribute to veterans and to "keeping the faith with all who died." Today, selling artificial poppies has supported the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

On that first observance of Memorial Day in 1868, at Arlington National Cemetary, 5,000 people listened to a number of speakers before going out to decorate the 20,000 grave markers. By all accounts, the Pre-President James A. Garfield spoke the longest, so I thought I should share a quote from him.

"On May 30, 1868: "I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here, beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. With words, we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept, plighted with faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept, plighted faith may be broken, and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke: but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of me and citizens. For love of country, they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue."

Of course, there's a second "unofficial" observance of what is Memorial Day. One that I think that is much more about America and why the Civil War was fought.

This begins at the end of the war in Charleston, SC (where the war opened with the first shots fired.) Confederate troops were hastily throwing together POW camps and moving prisoners around. One of these camps was a former racecourse and jockey house. Disease

1917 Greater Lakes Naval Training
in Illinois took 10,000 men.

was everywhere, and they probably weren't getting few rations, if any. Many soldiers died, around 257. They were buried in a mass grave. If you've ever seen the pictures of Civil War POWs that are skeletons with animated faces, then you can imagine the deplorable conditions they were kept in. And they were carelessly thrown into a pit just as easily.

Three weeks after the war ended, on May 1, 1865, approximately 1,000 freed slaves entered that camp and spent more than two weeks making sure each soldier that died had a proper burial in a neatly lined cemetery. Around it, they built a very tall fence. 

Martyrs of the Race Course

According to Yale historian David W. Blight, the procession to consecrate the grounds had around 10,000 people. In the front were schoolchildren holding roses and singing Union anthem "Jim Brown's Body." Behind them were thousands of women holding baskets full of flags, flowers, wreaths, and crosses. the African American men and troops (including the Massachusetts 54th Infantry) marched behind. Once inside, there was a children's choir singing spiritual and

Procession for Martyrs of the Race Course

patriotic songs. The cemetery was named "Martyrs of the Race Course" and unfortunately, it no longer exists. The 257 soldiers so respectfully buried, were disinterred again to be moved to a nearby national cemetery.

For these people, those Union soldiers quite literally died for their freedom. They were honor bound to do what they did. Evidence

Sgt. William Harvey Carney
54th Mass Infantry Regiment
1863 Medal of Honor

suggests that indeed, they looked at it as a ritual of remembrance and consecration. David Blight stated, "The war, they had boldly announced, had been about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholder's republic." For recently freed people, they definitely knew the true meaning of the word "patriotism."

However, and not surprisingly, what happened around the south, not just in Charleston, was stifled when Reconstruction was over and the South once more had a say, and that say is that Memorial Day was a holiday of reconciliation and for marking the sacrifices of both the Union and the Confederacy...the white ones.

Frederick Douglass said on one Memorial Day:

"We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic. We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation's destroyers."

In 2000, Congress passed a bill calling for a minute of remembrance at 3:00 p.m. 

I hope everyone has a blessed Memorial Day and does take a minute to remember our fallen soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice protecting our rights. Let's use the opportunity they have given us to come together as a country and heal.