It is the unofficial beginning ofsummer in the United States.[3]
Memorial Day is a time for visiting cemeteries and memorials to mourn the military personnel who died in the line of duty. Volunteers will placeAmerican flags on the graves of those military personnel innational cemeteries.[4]
The first national observance of Memorial Day occurred on May 30, 1868.[5] Then known asDecoration Day and observed on May 30, the holiday was proclaimed by Commander in ChiefJohn A. Logan of theGrand Army of the Republic to honor theUnion soldiers who had died in theAmerican Civil War.[6] This national observance followed many local observances which were inaugurated between the end of the Civil War and Logan's declaration. Many cities and people have claimed to be the first to observe it. However, theNational Cemetery Administration, a division of theDepartment of Veterans Affairs, creditsMary Ann Williams of the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus, Georgia with originating the idea of an annual date to decorate the graves of Civil War veterans with flowers.[7]
Official recognition as a holiday spread among the states, beginning with New York in 1873.[7] By 1890, every Union state had adopted it. Theworld wars turned it into a day of remembrance for all members of the U.S. military who fought and died in service. In 1968, Congress changed its observance to the last Monday in May, and in 1971 standardized its name as "Memorial Day.” Two other days celebrate those who have served or are serving in the U.S. military:Armed Forces Day, which is earlier in May, a ceremonial U.S. day of commemoration for honoring those currently serving in the armed forces, andVeterans Day on November 11, a legal holiday which honors all those who have served in theUnited States Armed Forces.[8]
A variety of cities and people have claimed origination of Memorial Day.[5][9][10][11] In some such cases, the claims relate to documented events, occurring before or after the Civil War. Others may stem from general traditions of decorating soldiers' graves with flowers, rather than specific events leading to the national proclamation.[12] Soldiers' graves were decorated in the U.S. before[13] and during theAmerican Civil War. Other claims may be less respectable, appearing to some researchers as taking credit without evidence, while erasing better-evidenced events or connections.[14][7]
On April 26, 1865, inJackson, Mississippi,Sue Landon Vaughan decorated the graves ofConfederate andUnion soldiers according to her account. The first reference to this event however did not appear until many years later.[17] Mention of the observance is inscribed on the southeast panel of theConfederate Monument in Jackson, erected in 1891.[18] Vaughan's account is contradicted by contemporary sources.[19]
On May 1, 1865, inCharleston, South Carolina, the recently freed Black population held a parade of 10,000 people to honor 257 dead Union soldiers. The soldiers had been buried in a mass grave at the Washington Race Course, having died at the Confederate prison camp located there. After the city fell, the freed Black population unearthed and properly buried the soldiers, placing flowers at their graves. The event was reported contemporaneously in theCharleston Daily Courier and theNew-York Tribune.[20] HistorianDavid Blight has called this commemoration the first Memorial Day. However, no direct link has been established between this event and GeneralJohn Logan's 1868 proclamation for a national holiday.[21][22][14]
. . . [W]e can keep alive the memory of debt we owe them by dedicatingat least one day in the year, by embellishing their humble graves withflowers, therefore we beg the assistance of the press and the ladiesthroughout the South to help us in the effort to set apart a certain dayto be observed, from thePotomac to theRio Grande and be handeddown through time as a religious custom of the country, to wreathe thegraves of our martyred dead with flowers. . . Let the soldiers’ graves,for that day at least, be the SouthernMecca, to whose shrine hersorrowing women, like pilgrims, may annually bring their gratefulhearts and floral offerings. . .
The holiday was observed in Atlanta, Augusta, Macon, Columbus and elsewhere in Georgia as well as Montgomery, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; New Orleans, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi, and across the South.[17] In some cities, mostly in Virginia, other dates in May and June were observed. General John Logan commented on the observances in a speech to veterans on July 4, 1866, inSalem, Illinois.[30] After General Logan's General Order No. 11 to theGrand Army of the Republic to observe May 30, 1868, the earlier version of the holiday began to be referred to asConfederate Memorial Day.[17]
Following Mary William's call for assistance,[7] four women ofColumbus, Mississippi a day early on April 25, 1866, gathered together atFriendship Cemetery to decorate the graves of the Confederate soldiers. They also felt moved to honor the Union soldiers buried there, and to note the grief of their families, by decorating their graves as well. The story of their gesture of humanity and reconciliation is held by some writers as the inspiration of the original Memorial Day.[31][32][33][34]
According to theUnited States Library of Congress, "Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers even before the Civil War’s end. Records show that by 1865, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina all had precedents for Memorial Day."[35] The earliest Southern Memorial Day celebrations were simple, somber occasions for veterans and their families to honor the dead and tend to local cemeteries.[36] In following years, the Ladies' Memorial Association and other groups increasingly focused rituals on preserving Confederate culture and theLost Cause of the Confederacy narrative.[37]
The 1863 cemetery dedication atGettysburg, Pennsylvania, included a ceremony of commemoration at the graves of dead soldiers. Some have therefore claimed that PresidentAbraham Lincoln was the founder of Memorial Day.[38] However, Chicago journalist Lloyd Lewis tried to make the case that it was Lincoln's funeral that spurred the soldiers' grave decorating that followed.[39]
On July 4, 1864, ladies decorated soldiers' graves according to local historians inBoalsburg, Pennsylvania.[40] Boalsburg promotes itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day.[41] However, no published reference to this event has been found earlier than the printing of the History of the 148th Pennsylvania Volunteers in 1904.[42] In a footnote to a story about her brother, Mrs. Sophie (Keller) Hall described how she and Emma Hunter decorated the grave of Emma's father, Reuben Hunter, and then the graves of all soldiers in the cemetery. The original story did not account for Reuben Hunter's death occurring two months later on September 19, 1864. It also did not mention Mrs. Elizabeth Myers as one of the original participants. A bronze statue of all three women gazing upon Reuben Hunter's grave now stands near the entrance to the Boalsburg Cemetery. Although July 4, 1864, was a Monday, the town now claims that the original decoration was on one of the Sundays in October 1864.[43]
... Let us then gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of Springtime; let us raise above them the dearold flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us as a sacred charge upon a Nation's gratitude—the soldiers' and sailors' widow and orphan.
On May 5, 1868, GeneralJohn A. Logan issued a proclamation calling for "Decoration Day" to be observed annually and nationwide; he was commander-in-chief of theGrand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of and for Union Civil War veterans founded inDecatur, Illinois.[45] With his proclamation, Logan adopted the Memorial Day practice that had begun in the Southern states two years earlier.[17][29][19][46][47][48][49] The northern states quickly adopted the holiday. In 1868, memorial events were held in 183 cemeteries in 27 states, and 336 in 1869.[50]: 99–100 One author claims that the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of any particular battle.[51] Logan's wife noted that the date was chosen because it was the optimal date for flowers to be in bloom in the North.[19][52]
In 1873, New York made Decoration Day an official state holiday and by 1890, every northern state had followed suit.[7] There was no standard program for the ceremonies, but they were typically sponsored by theWomen's Relief Corps, the women's auxiliary of theGrand 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 areGettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania andArlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.[53]
On May 26, 1966, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson designated an "official" birthplace of the holiday by signing the presidential proclamation namingWaterloo, New York, as the holder of the title. This action followed House Concurrent Resolution 587, in which the 89th Congress had officially recognized that the patriotic tradition of observing Memorial Day had begun one hundred years prior in Waterloo, New York.[54] The legitimacy of this claim has been called into question by several scholars.[55]
In April 1865, followingLincoln's assassination, commemorations were extensive. The more than 600,000 soldiers of both sides who fought and died in the Civil War 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 also began creating theUnited States National Cemetery System for the Union war dead.[56]
Orphans placing flags at their fathers' graves inGlenwood Cemetery in Philadelphia on Decoration Day
By the 1880s, ceremonies were becoming more consistent across geography as the GAR provided handbooks that presented specific procedures, poems, and Bible verses for local post commanders to utilize in planning the local event. Historian Stuart McConnell reports:[57]
on the day itself, the post assembled and marched to the local cemetery to decorate the graves of the fallen, an enterprise meticulously organized months in advance to assure that none were missed. Finally came a simple and subdued graveyard service involving prayers, short patriotic speeches, and music ... and at the end perhaps a rifle salute.
In 1868, some Southern public figures began adding the label "Confederate" to their commemorations and claimed that Northerners had appropriated the holiday.[58][17][59] The first official celebration of Confederate Memorial Day as a public holiday occurred in 1874, following a proclamation by the Georgia legislature.[60] By 1916, ten states celebrated it, on June 3, the birthday ofCSA PresidentJefferson Davis.[60] Other states chose late April dates, or May 10, commemorating Davis' capture.[60]
TheLadies' Memorial Association played a key role in using Memorial Day rituals to preserve Confederate culture.[37] 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 dead. The most important of these was theUnited Daughters of the Confederacy, which grew throughout the South.[36] 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,David Blight argues, the theme of American nationalism shared equal time with the Confederate.[50]: 265
The March of Time, byHenry Sandham depicting Civil War veterans parading during Decoration Day, 1896
By the 20th century, various Union memorial traditions, celebrated on different days, merged, and Memorial Day eventually extended to honor all Americans who fought and died while in the U.S. military service.[1] Indiana from the 1860s to the 1920s saw numerous debates on how to expand the celebration. It was a favorite lobbying activity of theGrand Army of the Republic (GAR). An 1884 GAR handbook explained that Memorial Day was "the day of all days in the G.A.R. Calendar" in terms of mobilizing public support for pensions. It advised family members to "exercise great care" in keeping the veterans sober.[61]: 352
Memorial Day speeches became an occasion for veterans, politicians, and ministers to commemorate the Civil War and, at first, to rehash the "atrocities" of the enemy. They mixed religion and celebratory nationalism, allowing Americans to make sense of their history in terms of sacrifice for a better nation. People of all religious beliefs joined, including German and Irish soldiers – ethnic minorities whoat the time faceddiscrimination – who had become true Americans in the "baptism of blood" on the battlefield.[62]
"On Decoration Day" Political cartoon c. 1900 byJohn T. McCutcheon. Caption: "You bet I'm goin' to be a soldier, too, like my Uncle David, when I grow up."
In the national capital in 1913 the four-day "Blue-Gray Reunion" featured parades, re-enactments, and speeches from a host of dignitaries, including PresidentWoodrow Wilson, the first Southerner elected to theWhite House since the War.James Heflin ofAlabama gave the main address. Heflin was a noted orator; 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 good will, winning him praise from newspapers.[63]
The name "Memorial Day", which was first used in 1882, gradually became more common than "Decoration Day" afterWorld War II[64] but was not declared the official name by federal law until 1967.[65] On June 28, 1968, Congress passed theUniform Monday Holiday Act, which moved four holidays, including Memorial Day, from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a three-day weekend.[66] 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.[66]
In 1913, an Indiana veteran complained that younger people born since the war had a "tendency ... to forget the purpose of Memorial Day and make it a day for games, races, and revelry, instead of a day of memory and tears".[61]: 362 In 1911, the scheduling of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway car race, later named theIndianapolis 500, was vehemently opposed by the increasingly elderly GAR. The state legislature in 1923 rejected holding the race on the holiday. However, the newAmerican Legion and local officials wanted the race to continue, so GovernorWarren McCray vetoed the bill and the race went on.[61]: 376
Memorial Day endures as a holiday which most businesses observe because it marks the unofficial beginning of summer. (Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer.) TheVeterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) andSons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) advocated returning to the original date. The VFW stated in 2002:[67]
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.
Scholars,[72][73][74][75] following the lead of sociologistRobert 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 theChurch 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.[76]
Since 1867, Brooklyn, New York, has held an annual Memorial Day parade which it claims to be the nation's oldest.Grafton, West Virginia, andIronton, Ohio have also had an ongoing parade since 1868. However, the Memorial Day parade inRochester, Wisconsin, predates both the Doylestown and the Grafton parades by one year (1867).[77][78]
In 1915, following theSecond Battle of Ypres, Lieutenant ColonelJohn McCrae, a physician with theCanadian Expeditionary Force, wrote the poem "In Flanders Fields". Its opening lines refer to the fields ofpoppies that grew among the soldiers' graves inFlanders.[79] Inspired by the poem,YWCA workerMoina Michael attended a YWCA Overseas War Secretaries' conference three years later wearing a silk poppy pinned to her coat and distributed over two dozen more to others present. TheNational American Legion adopted the poppy as its official symbol of remembrance in 1920.[80]
Decoration Days in SouthernAppalachia andLiberia are a tradition which arose by the 19th century. Decoration practices are localized and unique to individual families, cemeteries, and communities, but common elements that unify the various Decoration Day practices are thought to representsyncretism of predominantly Christian cultures in 19th century Southern Appalachia with pre-Christian influences from Scotland, Ireland, and African cultures. Appalachian and Liberian cemetery decoration traditions are thought to have more in common with one another than with United States Memorial Day traditions which are focused on honoring the military dead.[81] Appalachian and Liberian cemetery decoration traditions pre-date the United States Memorial Day holiday.[82]
According to scholars Alan and Karen Jabbour, "the geographic spread ... from the Smokies to northeastern Texas and Liberia, offer strong evidence that the southern Decoration Day originated well back in the nineteenth century. The presence of the same cultural tradition throughout the Upland South argues for the age of the tradition, which was carried westward (and eastward to Africa) by nineteenth-century migration and has survived in essentially the same form till the present."[45]
While these customs may have inspired in part rituals to honor military dead like Memorial Day, numerous differences exist between Decoration Day customs and Memorial Day, including that the date is set differently by each family or church for each cemetery to coordinate the maintenance, social, and spiritual aspects of decoration.[81][83][84]
Armed Forces Day, third Saturday in May, a more narrowly observed remembrance honoring those currently serving in the U.S. military
Armistice Day, November 11, the original name of Veterans Day in the United States
Confederate Memorial Day, observed on various dates in many states in the South in memory of those killed fighting for the Confederacy during the American Civil War
ANZAC Day, April 25, an analogous observance in Australia and New Zealand
Armistice Day, November 11, the original name of Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in Canada, the United Kingdom, and other Commonwealth nations
Decoration Day (Canada), a Canadian holiday that recognizes veterans of Canada's military which has largely been eclipsed by the similar Remembrance Day
Heroes' Day, various dates in various countries recognizing national heroes
Memorial Day (South Korea), June 6, the day to commemorate the men and women who died while in military service during the Korean War and other significant wars or battles
Remembrance Day, November 11, a similar observance in Canada, the United Kingdom, and many other Commonwealth nations originally marking the end of World War I
Victoria Day, a Canadian holiday on the last Monday before May 25 each year, lacks the military memorial aspects of Memorial Day but serves a similar function as marking the start of cultural summer
Volkstrauertag ("People's Mourning Day"), a similar observance in Germany usually in November
^L'Hommedieu Gardiner, Mary (1842)."The Ladies Garland". J. Libby. p. 296.Archived from the original on September 19, 2017. RetrievedMay 31, 2014 – viaGoogle Books.
^In 1817, for example, a writer in theAnalectic Magazine of Philadelphia urged the decoration of patriot's graves. E.J., "The Soldier's Grave", inThe Analectic Magazine (1817), Vol. 10, 264.
^abcdefGardiner, Richard; Jones, P. Michael; Bellware, Daniel (Spring–Summer 2018)."The Emergence and Evolution of Memorial Day".Journal of America's Military Past.43–2 (137):19–37.Archived from the original on October 27, 2020. RetrievedMay 25, 2020.
^Muffly, Joseph W. (1994) [Originally published 1904].The Story of Our Regiment: A History of the 148th Pennsylvania Vols. Butternut and Blue. p. 45.ISBN0935523391.OCLC33463683.
^"Interments in Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Cemeteries"(PDF). Washington, DC: National Cemetery Administration – Department of Veterans Affairs VA-NCA-IS-1. January 2011.Archived(PDF) from the original on May 13, 2017. RetrievedJune 1, 2014.After the Civil War, search and recovery teams visited hundreds of battlefields, churchyards, plantations and other locations seeking wartime interments that were made in haste. By 1870, the remains of nearly 300,000 Civil War dead were reinterred in 73 national cemeteries.
^abcSacco, Nicholas W. (2015). "The Grand Army of the Republic, the Indianapolis 500, and the Struggle for Memorial Day in Indiana, 1868–1923".Indiana Magazine of History.111 (4).
^abJabbour, Alan (May 27, 2010)."What is Decoration Day?".University of North Carolina Blog. Archived fromthe original on May 22, 2013. RetrievedMay 27, 2019.
Albanese, Catherine. "Requiem for Memorial Day: Dissent in the Redeemer Nation",American Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Oct. 1974), pp. 386–398in JSTORArchived January 12, 2017, at theWayback Machine
Bellah, Robert N. "Civil Religion in America".Daedalus 1967 96(1): 1–21.online edition
Blight, David W. "Decoration Day: The Origins of Memorial Day in North and South" in Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh, eds.The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (2004),online edition pp. 94–129; the standard scholarly history
Buck, Paul H.The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900 (1937)[ISBN missing]
Cherry, Conrad. "Two American Sacred Ceremonies: Their Implications for the Study of Religion in America",American Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter, 1969), pp. 739–754in JSTORArchived January 12, 2017, at theWayback Machine
Dennis, Matthew.Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar (2002)[ISBN missing]
Jabbour, Alan, and Karen Singer Jabbour.Decoration Day in the Mountains: Traditions of Cemetery Decoration in the Southern Appalachians (University of North Carolina Press; 2010)[ISBN missing]
Myers, Robert J. "Memorial Day". Chapter 24 inCelebrations: The Complete Book of American Holidays. (1972)[ISBN missing]
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