Memorial Day rooted in disunity
Gannon: What we celebrate today is much different than the first one.
The Memorial Day we celebrate this year is very different from the first Memorial Day over 150 years ago honoring the Civil War dead. It was not even about all those who died in that conflict; instead, it was about those who served in the United States Army and Navy. The Confederate dead were honored by their own communities on their own unofficial memorial days.
This changed when men and women from all states, including the former Confederate states, sacrificed their lives for the “United” States in the many wars of the 20th and now 21st centuries.
When Memorial Day began, no one on either side could have envisioned this future. The survivors of America’s deadliest war were still burying hundreds of thousands of dead. No one is certain how many American died during the war but the official count is 620,000 dead. Comparing the current U.S. population with that of the 1860 population, the same level of casualties in a war today would generate 6 million dead.
Even more tragic, most of these men were buried far from their families, many in unmarked or shallow graves. After the war, the U.S. government and formerly Confederate communities gathered the known and the unknown dead for burial. When they did so, each side memorialized their dead separately.
The nation had been politically reunited but grief and bitterness lingered; in 2020, some Southern states — including Florida — still honor their Civil War dead as part of Confederate Memorial Day holidays.
Officially, U.S. Memorial Day began when the commander of the Union Army’s largest veterans’ organization, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), ordered its members to honor their fallen comrades on May 30, 1868.
His directive was clear: These ceremonies were to honor the men whose “soldiers’ lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains” and for their deceased comrades who ended “a rebellious tyranny” that had threatened the Union. It was a day for those who fought for the United States and the Union cause.
Initially, it was not called Memorial Day. Instead, it was “Decoration Day” because people placed flowers on soldier graves. Because some local communities adorned soldiers’ graves before the GAR issued their order, many towns claim that they originated Memorial Day. In fact, newly freed slaves were among the first to decorate Union soldiers’ graves. By the end of the 19th century, all Northern states had officially recognized this holiday.
As the decades passed, Americans fought and died in other wars. These new wars created the Memorial Day we know today.
Critical to this change, the dead came from all regions: states of the former Confederacy, states that had stayed in the Union and even from areas that had not been states during the Civil War. In the Spanish-American War, Americans
from all regions served, including some former Confederate generals who received U.S. Army commissions. Almost 5,000 Northerners, Southerners and Westerners died during this conflict, making regional commemorations inappropriate given all of these soldiers and sailors served under the same flag.
Despite their sacrifice, it was not until World War I, when the wartime dead were in the hundreds of thousands, that the day expanded. Local celebrations, often led by the American Legion and World War I veterans, became more inclusive. Elderly Civil War veterans, middle-aged Spanish-American War veterans, and their sons and grandsons who served in World War I marched together to honor the dead of all wars. Twenty-seven years later, Americans had hundreds of thousands more dead to honor after World War II.
Despite this death toll, Memorial Day did not become a federal holiday. Instead, in 1954, just after the Korean War ended, the government recognized Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day, to honor all veterans of all wars. It may have been lingering regional feelings that delayed Memorial Day’s national recognition.
Fourteen years later, Congress made Memorial Day a federal holiday as a new generation of American soldiers sacrificed their lives in Vietnam. In 1968, the government designated Memorial Day as the last Monday in May to memorialize the dead of all American wars.
Since that date more than 50 years ago, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, men and women, all regions and all races have joined their comrades as honorees on Memorial Day. As long as no war ends all wars, these ranks will likely grow.
As you go about your day the last Monday in May, remember the men and women who, as Abraham Lincoln so eloquently explained, “gave the last full measure of devotion.”