Memorial Day – A history

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We celebrate a Monday off of work towards the end of May, well those of us that don’t work in Retail, Food Services or various other industries that are open 366 days a year (at least THIS Leap Year) and the name given to this holiday is Memorial Day.

Many people see the Memorial Day three-day weekend as the true beginning of the Summer season, even though by the calendar, true summer, which is marked by the longest day of the year, is nearly one month away on June 20th.

But what is Memorial Day, and what caused there to be a reason FOR a Memorial Day?  What memorial?  Join me for the history of Memorial Day.

From Wikipedia:

Memorial Day is a United States Federal Holiday that is observed on the last Monday of May (observed in 2008 on May 26). It was formerly known as Decoration Day. This holiday commemorates U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country. It began first to honor Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War. After World War I, it was expanded to include those who died in any war or military action.

Considering all of the Wars that the United States of America has spent soldiers lives and American taxpayers money on since the US Civil War that ended in 1865, there are a lot of people, both American and of other countries origins that have died as a result of conflict between countries, ideologies and in the case of our current “war”, profit.

Back to the history of Memorial Day.

Following the end of the Civil War, many communities set aside a day to mark the end of the war or as a memorial to those who had died. Some of the places creating an early memorial day include Charleston, South Carolina; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; Carbondale, Illinois; Columbus, Mississippi; many communities in Vermont; and some two dozen other cities and towns. These observances eventually coalesced around Decoration Day, honoring the Union dead, and the several Confederate Memorial Days.

According to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, the first memorial day was observed in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic race track in Charleston. The site was a former Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who had died while captive. A parade with thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers was followed by patriotic singing and a picnic.

The official birthplace of Memorial Day is Waterloo, New York. The village was credited with being the birthplace because it observed the day on May 5, 1866, and each year thereafter, and because it is likely that the friendship of General John Murray, a distinguished citizen of Waterloo, and General John A. Logan, who led the call for the day to be observed each year and helped spread the event nationwide, was a key factor in its growth.

General Logan had been impressed by the way the South honored their dead with a special day and decided the Union needed a similar day. Reportedly, Logan said that it was most fitting; that the ancients, especially the Greeks, had honored their dead, particularly their heroes, by chaplets of laurel and flowers, and that he intended to issue an order designating a day for decorating the grave of every soldier in the land, and if he could he would have made it a holiday.

General Logan first gave the day the name of “Decoration Day”, first celebrated on May 30, 1868.  The significance of this date was that there were NO battles or anniversarys of any battle in the US Civil War that had occured on this date.

The graves of fallen Union soldiers were decorated on this day to give recognition to those that had given their lives for the cause.

Many of the states of the U.S. South refused to celebrate Decoration Day, due to lingering hostility towards the Union Army and also because there were very few veterans of the Union Army who lived in the South. A notable exception was Columbus, Mississippi, which on April 25, 1866 at its Decoration Day commemorated both the Union and Confederate casualties buried in its cemetery.

The alternative name of “Memorial Day” was first used in 1882, but did not become more common until after World War II, and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967.

On Monday, when you are hopefully enjoying a day off from work and maybe even a get together with family and friends to celebrate the “beginning of Summer”, please take the time to remember the fallen soldiers of this country and maybe raise a toast to their memory.