Memorial Day

Honoring the dead has been a practice of many civilizations. The ancient Druids, Greeks, and Romans decorated the graves of their loved ones with garlands of flowers. Among the Chinese, the centuries-old Festival of Tombs, an ancestral remembrance day known as Ch'ing Ming, has long been a special occasion for visiting cemeteries and for performing rituals in memory of the dead. So has Japan's ancient Feast of Lanterns, or Bon, when Japanese welcome the visiting souls of the departed and light their way back to the hereafter with lanterns sent across the waters in miniature boats. In Christian countries, there is All Souls' Day. It is a day for decorating graves with wreaths, flowers, or candles.

In the United States, the dead veterans of the nation's various wars have been honored on a secular holiday now known as Memorial Day since the time of the Civil War. The location and date of the first ceremony paying tribute to the dead is disputed, but even before the fighting in the Civil War had ended, women in many communities of the South had begun the practice of placing flowers on the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers.

Spontaneous gestures of remembrance also took place in the North, as in the village of Waterloo, New York, which honored its war dead on May 5, 1866, by closing its businesses for the day, flying the flag at half-mast, decorating the graves of fallen soldiers, and holding other ceremonies at the three cemeteries in the area. In 1967, a proclamation of President Lyndon B. Johnson and a joint congressional resolution officially recognized Waterloo as “the birthplace of Memorial Day.” The community responded on May 30 of that year by dedicating the Waterloo Memorial Day Museum, which contained relics of the 1866 event and Civil War memorabilia.

“Firsts” are difficult to establish, however, particularly for an observance like Memorial Day, which had its origins in numerous, widely separated, individual acts of commemoration. It is not surprising, therefore, that Waterloo's claim to priority is disputed by a number of other communities. One such is Boalsburg in central Pennsylvania, which some years ago erected a sign proclaiming itself “Boalsburg, an American village, birthplace of Memorial Day.” The claim dates to a Sunday in October 1864 when Emma Hunter, placing flowers on the grave of her father (Colonel James Hunter, who had commanded the 49th Pennsylvania Regiment in the battle of Gettysburg the previous year) encountered a Mrs. Meyer paying similar tribute at the grave of her son. The two women agreed to meet the following year to again decorate the burial places, and their idea, gradually adopted by others, was an established custom in Boalsburg by May 30, 1869. Other early observances took place in Vicksburg, Mississippi; Petersburg, Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina; Columbus, Mississippi; Lynchburg, Virginia; and on Belle Isle at Richmond, Virginia.

In the years immediately following the end of the Civil War, an increasing number of memorial observances, similar to those held earlier, took place throughout the nation. Delegations of women from the North also visited cemeteries in the South where Union soldiers were buried and decorated their graves with flowers. Adjutant General Norton P. Chipman of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), the organization of Union veterans, realized that the nation was eager to honor those who had died in the fighting, and he suggested to General John A. Logan, the commander in chief of the G.A.R., that arrangements be made for the organization to decorate the graves of Union soldiers on a uniform date throughout the country. General Logan approved the plan and issued an order to all G.A.R. posts:

The thirtieth day 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 whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit. It is the purpose of the commander-in-chief to inaugurate this observance with the hope that it will be kept up from year to year while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades. He earnestly desires the public press to call attention to this order and lend its friendly aid in bringing it to the notice of comrades in all parts of the country in time for simultaneous compliance therewith. Department commanders will use every effort to make this order effective.

The first national Memorial Day on May 30, 1868, was the occasion of more than one hundred exercises honoring those who had died in the Civil War. The most noteworthy ceremonies of the day were held at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC. General Ulysses S. Grant was present at the services, and General James A. Garfield was the main speaker. Garfield noted, in part:

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 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 men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and virtue.

Observances of Memorial Day quickly multiplied in the years following 1868. In 1869, more than three hundred exercises marked the day, and in 1873 New York became the first state to designate May 30 a legal holiday. Rhode Island followed New York's lead in 1874, Vermont in 1876, New Hampshire in 1877, Wisconsin in 1879, and Massachusetts and Ohio in 1881. Memorial Day gained such rapid acceptance that by 1890 it was a legal holiday in all the northern states. Today, Memorial Day is a federal holiday and a legal holiday throughout the nation. The passage of time has brought about a number of changes in the observance, however. Most notable is that Memorial Day is no longer purely a Civil War event; it is an occasion for honoring all those men and women who have died in the service of the United States.

Moreover, the date of Memorial Day is no longer fixed on the traditional May 30. On June 28, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation shifting the dates of certain holidays to provide Americans with an increased number of three-day weekends. One provision of the new statute was that Memorial Day be observed on the last Monday of May every year. By 1971, most of the states had followed the federal precedent and set their particular state observances of Memorial Day for the last Monday of May as well.

The large national cemeteries, where thousands of war dead are buried, are the scenes of the most extensive ceremonies on Memorial Day. Arlington National Cemetery continues to be the site of one of the nation's most elaborate observances. On Memorial Day in 1958, the bodies of unknown servicemen who had died in World War II and the Korean War were interred next to the Unknown Soldier of World War I, and every year on Memorial Day the president or a representative places a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Near the austerely simple tomb, on a terrace commanding a dramatic view of the nation's Capitol across the Potomac in Washington, is the Greek-style Arlington Memorial Amphitheater. It is within this oval, open-air structure of white marble that a high-ranking government official addresses the several thousand onlookers who generally attend the Memorial Day services, which follow the wreath laying.

Memorial Day observances are by no means limited to the big national cemeteries. In towns and cities across the land, veterans' groups, civic organizations, family groups, and individuals decorate graves with flowers or with small American flags on and in advance of Memorial Day. On the day itself, flags fly at half-mast, and relatives and friends visit the final resting places of their loved ones. In many communities, large and small, there are parades, usually leading from the business center to the local cemetery. Alternatively, the parade destination may be a park or square where a monument or other special memorial stands. Parade participants include veterans, armed forces personnel, and members of various civic organizations.

Bibliography

Berenson, Tessa. "Why Do We Celebrate Memorial Day?" Time, 25 May 2018, time.com/3892630/why-do-we-celebrate-memorial-day/. Accessed 1 May 2024.

Matthews, Lauren, and Katie Robinson. "9 Memorial Day History Facts You Probably Didn't Know." Town & Country, 12 Apr. 2018, www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a6359/history-of-memorial-day/. Accessed 1 May 2024.

"The Unofficial History of Memorial Day." The New York Times, 26 May 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/05/26/us/the-unofficial-history-of-memorial-day.html. Accessed 1 May 2024.

Waxman, Olivia B. "Lots of Places Claim to Be the Birthplace of Memorial Day. Here's the Truth, According to an Expert." Time, 25 May 2018, time.com/5291026/memorial-day-started-birthplace-history/. Accessed 1 May 2024.