Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a US federal holiday
wherein the men and women who died while serving in the United
States Armed Forces are remembered.[1]
The holiday, which is celebrated every year on the final Monday of May,[2]
was formerly known as Decoration Day and originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. By the 20th century,
Memorial Day had been extended to honor all Americans who have died while in
the military service.[3]
It typically marks the start of the summer vacation season, while Labor Day
marks its end.
Many people visit cemeteries and
memorials, particularly to honor those who have died in military service. Many
volunteers place an American flag on each grave in national cemeteries.
Annual Decoration Days for
particular cemeteries are held on a Sunday in late spring or early summer in
some rural areas of the American South, notably in the mountains. In cases involving
a family graveyard where remote ancestors as well as those who were deceased
more recently are buried, this may take on the character of an extended family
reunion to which some people travel hundreds of miles. People gather on the
designated day and put flowers on graves and renew contacts with kinfolk and
others. There often is a religious service and a "dinner on the
ground," the traditional term for a potluck
meal in which people used to spread the dishes out on sheets or tablecloths on
the grass. It is believed that this practice began before the American Civil
War and thus may reflect the real origin of the "memorial day" idea.[4]
Memorial Day is not to be confused
with Veterans
Day; Memorial Day is a day of
remembering the men and women who died while serving, while Veterans Day
celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans.[5]
Civil War Veterans in Ortonville,
Minnesota, on the Fourth of July, 1880 - also called "Decoration Day"
prior to the Uniform
Monday Holiday Act almost a century later.
History
of the holiday
The practice of decorating soldiers'
graves with flowers is an ancient custom.[6]
Soldiers' graves were decorated in the U.S. before[7]
and during the American Civil War. A claim was made in 1906 that the first Civil War
soldier's grave ever decorated was in Warrenton, Virginia, on June 3, 1861, implying the first Memorial Day occurred
there.[8]
Though not for Union soldiers, there is authentic documentation that women in Savannah, Georgia, decorated Confederate soldiers' graves in 1862.[9]
In 1863, the cemetery dedication at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, was a ceremony of commemoration at
the graves of dead soldiers. Local historians in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, claim that ladies there decorated soldiers' graves on July
4, 1864.[10]
As a result, Boalsburg promotes itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day.[11]
Following President Abraham Lincoln's
assassination in April 1865, there were a variety
of events of commemoration. The sheer number of soldiers of both sides who died
in the Civil War, more than 600,000, meant that burial and memorialization took
on new cultural significance. Under the leadership of women during the war, an
increasingly formal practice of decorating graves had taken shape. In 1865, the
federal government began creating national military cemeteries for the Union
war dead.[12]
The first widely publicized
observance of a Memorial Day-type observance after the Civil War was in Charleston,
South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. During the war,
Union soldiers who were prisoners of war had been held at the Charleston Race Course; at least 257
Union prisoners died there and were hastily buried in unmarked graves.[13]
Together with teachers and missionaries, black residents of Charleston
organized a May Day ceremony in 1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers. The freedmen cleaned up and
landscaped the burial ground, building an enclosure and an arch labeled,
"Martyrs of the Race Course." Nearly ten thousand people, mostly
freedmen, gathered on May 1 to commemorate the war dead. Involved were about
3,000 school children newly enrolled in freedmen's schools, mutual aid
societies, Union troops, black ministers, and white northern missionaries. Most
brought flowers to lay on the burial field. Today the site is used as Hampton
Park.[14]
Years later, the celebration would come to be called the "First Decoration
Day" in the North.
David W. Blight described the day:
"This was the first Memorial
Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina.
What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing
to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had
been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a
Second American Revolution.”[15]
However, Blight stated he "has
no evidence" that this event in Charleston inspired the establishment of
Memorial Day across the country.[16]
On May 26, 1966, President Johnson
signed a presidential proclamation naming Waterloo, New York, as the birthplace
of Memorial Day. Earlier, the 89th Congress adopted House Concurrent Resolution
587, which officially recognized that the patriotic tradition of observing
Memorial Day began one hundred years prior in Waterloo, New York.[17]
According to legend, in the summer of 1865 a local druggist Henry Welles, while
talking to friends, suggested that it might be good to remember those soldiers
who did not make it home from the Civil War.[citation needed] Not much came of it until he mentioned it to General John
B. Murray, a Civil War hero, who gathered support from other surviving
veterans.[citation needed] On May 5, 1866, they marched to the three local cemeteries
and decorated the graves of fallen soldiers.[citation needed] It is believed that Murray, who knew General Logan, told
Logan about the observance and that led to Logan issuing Logan's Order in 1868
calling for a national observance.[citation needed]
In
the North
Copying an earlier holiday that had
been established in the Southern states,[18]
on May 5, 1868, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Grand
Army of the Republic, the veterans' organization for
Union Civil War veterans, General John A. Logan
issued a proclamation calling for "Decoration Day" to be observed
annually and nationwide.[19]
It was observed for the first time that year on Saturday May 30; the date was
chosen because it was not the anniversary of any particular battle.[20]
According to the White House, the May 30 date was chosen as the optimal date
for flowers to be in bloom.[21]
Memorial events were held in 183
cemeteries in 27 states in 1868, and 336 in 1869.[citation needed] The northern states quickly adopted the holiday. Michigan
made "Decoration Day" an official state holiday in 1871 and by 1890,
every northern state had followed suit. The ceremonies were sponsored by the Women's Relief Corps, the women's auxiliary of the Grand
Army of the Republic (GAR), which
had 100,000 members. By 1870, the remains of nearly 300,000 Union dead had been
reinterred in 73 national cemeteries, located near major battlefields and thus
mainly in the South. The most famous are Gettysburg
National Cemetery in Pennsylvania and Arlington
National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.[citation needed]
Memorial Day speeches became an
occasion for veterans, politicians, and ministers to commemorate the War and,
at first, to rehash the "atrocities" of the enemy. They mixed
religion and celebratory nationalism and provided a means for the people to
make sense of their history in terms of sacrifice for a better nation. People
of all religious beliefs joined together and the point was often made that the
German and Irish soldiers had become true Americans in the "baptism of
blood" on the battlefield.[citation needed] By the end of the 1870s, much of the war-time rancor was
gone, and the speeches usually praised the brave soldiers, both Blue and Gray.[citation needed] By the 1950s, the theme was American exceptionalism and
duty to uphold freedom in the world.[citation needed]
Ironton, Ohio, lays claim to the nation's oldest continuously running
Memorial Day parade. Its first parade was held May 5, 1868, and the town has
held it every year since; however, the Memorial Day parade in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, predates Ironton's by one year.[22]
In
the South
Evidence exists that shows General
Logan had adopted and adapted for the North the annual Confederate
Memorial Day custom that had been in practice in
the South since 1866.[23][24]
The U.S. National Park Service attributes the beginning to the ladies of Columbus, Georgia.[25]
The separate tradition of Memorial Day observance which had emerged earlier in
the South was linked to the Lost Cause
and served as the prototype for the national day of memory.[25][26]
Historians acknowledge the Ladies
Memorial Association played a key role in its
development.[27]
Various dates ranging from April 25 to mid-June were adopted in different
Southern states. Across the South, associations were founded, many by women, to
establish and care for permanent cemeteries for the Confederate dead, organize
commemorative ceremonies, and sponsor appropriate monuments as a permanent way
of remembering the Confederate cause and sacrifice. The most important was the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which grew from 17,000 members in 1900 to nearly 100,000
women by World War I. They were "strikingly successful at raising money to
build Confederate monuments, lobbying legislatures and Congress for the
reburial of Confederate dead, and working to shape the content of history
textbooks."[28]
On April 25, 1866, women in Columbus, Mississippi laid flowers on the graves of both the Union and
Confederate dead in the city's cemetery.[29]
The early Confederate Memorial Day celebrations were simple, somber occasions
for veterans and their families to honor the dead and tend to local cemeteries.
By 1890, there was a shift from the emphasis on honoring specific soldiers to a
public commemoration of the lost Confederate cause.[30]
Changes in the ceremony's hymns and speeches reflect an evolution of the ritual
into a symbol of cultural renewal and conservatism in the South. By 1913,
Blight argues, the theme of American nationalism shared equal time with the Lost Cause.[31]
At
Gettysburg
The ceremonies and Memorial Day
address at Gettysburg
National Park became nationally well known,
starting in 1868. In July 1913, veterans of the United States and Confederate
armies gathered in Gettysburg to commemorate the fifty-year anniversary of the
Civil War's bloodiest and most famous battle.[32]
The four-day "Blue-Gray
Reunion" featured parades, re-enactments, and speeches from a host of
dignitaries, including President Woodrow Wilson,
the first Southerner elected to the White House
after the War. James Heflin of Alabama gave the main address. Heflin was a noted orator; two of
his best-known speeches were an endorsement of the Lincoln Memorial and his call to make Mother's Day
a holiday. His choice as Memorial Day speaker was criticized, as he was opposed
for his support of segregation; however, his speech was moderate in tone and
stressed national unity and goodwill, gaining him praise from newspapers.
Since the cemetery dedication at
Gettysburg occurred on November 19, that day (or the closest weekend) has been
designated as their own local memorial day that is referred to as Remembrance Day.[33]
Name
and date
"On Decoration Day"
Political cartoon c 1900. Caption: "You bet I'm goin' to be a soldier,
too, like my Uncle David, when I grow up."
The preferred name for the holiday
gradually changed from "Decoration Day" to "Memorial Day",
which was first used in 1882.[34]
It did not become more common until after World War II,
and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967.[35]
On June 28, 1968, the Congress passed the Uniform
Monday Holiday Act, which moved four holidays,
including Memorial Day, from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in
order to create a convenient three-day weekend.[36]
The change moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last
Monday in May. The law took effect at the federal level in 1971.[36]
After some initial confusion and unwillingness to comply, all 50 states adopted
Congress' change of date within a few years.
Memorial Day endures as a holiday
which most businesses observe because it marks the unofficial beginning of
summer. The Veterans
of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) advocate returning to the original date, although
the significance of the date is tenuous. The VFW stated in a 2002 Memorial Day
Address:
Changing the date merely to create
three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this
has contributed a lot to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial
Day.[37]
Starting in 1987 Hawaii's Senator Daniel Inouye,
a World War II veteran, introduced a measure to return Memorial Day to its
traditional date. Inouye continued introducing the resolution until his death
in 2012.[38]
Traditional
observance
On Memorial Day, the flag
of the United States is raised briskly to the top of the
staff and then solemnly lowered to the half-staff position, where it remains
only until noon.[39]
It is then raised to full-staff for the remainder of the day.[40]
Memorial Day observances in small New England
towns
are often marked by dedications and remarks by veterans,
state legislators, and selectmen
The half-staff position remembers
the more than one million men and women who gave their lives in service of
their country. At noon, their memory is raised by the living, who resolve not
to let their sacrifice be in vain, but to rise up in their stead and continue
the fight for liberty and justice for all.
The National
Memorial Day Concert takes place on the west lawn of the
United States Capitol.[41]
The concert is broadcast on PBS and NPR. Music is performed, and respect is paid to the men and
women who gave their lives for their country.
For many Americans, the central
event is attending one of the thousands of parades held on Memorial Day in
large and small cities all over the country. Most of these feature marching
bands and an overall military theme with the National Guard and other
servicemen participating along with veterans and military vehicles from various
wars.
One of the longest-standing
traditions is the running of the Indianapolis 500, an auto race which has been held in conjunction with
Memorial Day since 1911.[42]
It runs on the Sunday preceding the Memorial Day holiday. The Coca-Cola 600
stock car race has been held later the same day since 1961. The Memorial Tournament golf event has been held on or close to the Memorial Day
weekend since 1976.
Interpretations
Scholars,[43][44][45][46]
following the lead of sociologist Robert Bellah,
often make the argument that the United States has a secular "civil religion" - one with no association with any religious
denomination or viewpoint - that has incorporated Memorial Day as a sacred
event. With the Civil War, a new theme of death, sacrifice and rebirth enters
the civil religion. Memorial Day gave ritual expression to these themes,
integrating the local community into a sense of nationalism. The American civil
religion, in contrast to that of France, was never anticlerical or militantly
secular; in contrast to Britain, it was not tied to a specific denomination,
such as the Church of England. The Americans borrowed from different religious traditions
so that the average American saw no conflict between the two, and deep levels
of personal motivation were aligned with attaining national goals.[47]
In
literature and music
Charles Ives's symphonic poem Decoration Day depicted the holiday
as he experienced it in his childhood, with his father's band leading the way
to the town cemetery, the playing of "Taps" on a trumpet, and a livelier
march tune on the way back to the town. It is frequently played with three
other Ives works based on holidays as the second movement of A New England Holidays Symphony.
There is also a 2012 film, Memorial
Day, starring James Cromwell, Jonathan
Bennett, and John Cromwell.
The entire wiki link with references and images can be found
at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day
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