Today is Memorial Day — the day that traditionally kicks off the beginning of the summer season. Of course that isn’t what Memorial Day is all about. It’s an American holiday, observed on the last Monday of May that honors the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military.
Even though the “holiday” originated in the years following the Civil War, it only became an official federal holiday in 1971.
The Civil War ended in 1865 and claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history… so many that it required the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries. By the late 1860s, people in various towns and cities had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and holding prayer services.
Most people probably know that Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day. On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan, leader of an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, called for a nationwide day of remembrance — “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and who’s bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.” Logan called the the occasion Decoration Day, and the date was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.
On that first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there.
Many Northern states held similar commemorative events and by 1890 each state had made Decoration Day an official state holiday. Southern states continued to honor their dead on separate days until after World War I.
Confederate Memorial Day is still celebrated in several states and this year it was April 26 in Floriday, April 27 in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi and May 11 in parts of South Carolina.
John Logan selected May 30 as the date for Decoration Day and it continued to be the date the day was observed even after it became to be referred to as Memorial Day. But in 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May — in order to create a three-day weekend for federal employees. The change went into effect in 1971, and Memorial Day was made an official federal holiday.
You may not know that every year on Memorial Day a national moment of remembrance takes place at 3:00 p.m. local time.
Old records show that one of the earliest Memorial Day commemorations was organized by a group of freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. But Charleston isn’t acknowledged as the official birthplace of Memorial Day. That honor goes to Waterloo, New York. Waterloo first celebrated the day on May 5, 1866. Apparently the New York location was chosen because it hosted an annual, community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags.
The first year or so after we moved to Shepherdstown, we were out and drove by the Elmwood cemetery here in Shepherdstown where many Confederate soldiers that were killed in the battle at Antietam, are buried. [Even though there is an Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, no Confederate soldiers were allowed to be buried there — because they fought for the South.] Small Confederate flags had been placed on all those graves here in Shepherdstown. Claire was initially a little shocked, and wondered why they weren’t American flags. The reason is because the Confederate flag is the flag they fought under — and died for. I know that the Confederate flag has caught a lot of flack lately, and rightfully so, but I think in this instance, and on Memorial Day, decorating those graves with the Confederate flag is fitting and proper. Like everything else in this blog, it’s my opinion….
Anyhow, happy Memorial Day to everyone — it’ll probably be a little more subdued this year, but the reason we celebrate it hasn’t changed at all, and this year it just may be more meaningful to everyone…..
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