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When
Americans pause at the ceremonial beginning of summer to honor those who gave
their lives in military service they are participating in our national version
of ancient rites. Greeks had their March Commemoration of the Dead, Roman’s placed
flowers on the graves of parents, and the Japanese Feast of Lanterns paid homage
to ancestors, all in ritual reconciliation of the rebirth associated with spring.
Our version came from the Civil War, and many places candidate as the “first”
remembrance of the nearly 700,000 deaths that war produced. Miss Emma Hunter decorated
the tomb of her father, Col. James Hunter, commander of the 49th Pennsylvania
Regiment at Gettysburg, in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, and then the graves of all
soldiers in the graveyard. At Belle Isle in the James River, bouquets appeared
on the graves of Union dead from the Confederate prison there on May 30, 1866.
And the ladies of Columbus, Mississippi, placed flowers on soldier’s graves—Union
and Confederate—on April 25, 1866.
Most credit pharmacist Henry C. Wells,
who suggested decorating the graves of Union dead in Waterloo, New York, with
beginning the process that resulted in a national day of remembrance. Wells interested
Union General John B. Murray in the project, and there, on May 5, 1866, flags
few at half-mast, black draperies mingled with evergreen adorned gravesites, and
veteran and civic groups marched to Waterloo’s three cemeteries for religious
observances.
Waterloo repeated the ceremony in subsequent years and the
Grand Army of the Republic, the Union army’s version of our later American Legion
and Veterans of Foreign Wars, joined them in 1868 but changed the date to May
30. General John A. Logan gave the order to all GAR posts to do so, but many believe
that Mrs. Logan was the reason why. In Richmond, Virginia, she had seen flowers
placed on graves of war dead, was touched by the thoughtfulness it revealed, and
suggested to her husband that the GAR should do the same.
Logan’s order
was dated May 5—date of the original Waterloo ceremony—but activities shifted
to the later date and were observed for the first time at the National Cemetery
in Arlington, Virginia. Then, feeling that the occasion justified it, the GAR
called on government to make the observance permanent. New York became the first
state to legalize May 30 as Memorial Day, although then it was called Decoration
Day because of the placing of flowers on graves.
As the United States
accumulated more wars, Civil Warriors lost their exclusive remembrance. In 1958,
May 30 was selected for two Unknown Soldiers from World
War II and from Korea—one from the European Theatre and one from the Pacific—to
share the tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World
War I in Arlington National Cemetery.
Some think of the day as the
annual return of the Indianapolis 500 automobile race or the occasion for an outing
at the beach or lake before the hot, grinding days of summer. But it is much more
than that. In many communities there are parades, speeches, and prayers; flowers
decorate graves of military veterans; and for a day we are united as Americans
who acknowledge our debt for nationhood and freedom by remembering, as was done
first in November 1863 by A. Lincoln, “that these honored dead shall not have
died in vain.”
© Archie P. McDonald
All
Things Historical
May 12, 2008 column
A syndicated column in over 70 East Texas newspapers
(The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service.
Archie P. McDonald is director of the Association and author of more than 20 books
on Texas.)
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