Happy Memorial Day
I personally hate that traditional holidays have been made into Monday holidays in order to give government employees an additional vacation day. Memorial Day is May 30th and I will celebrate it on that day rather than on May 26 this year. I admit that I thought that Abraham Lincoln originated Memorial Day at his speech at Gettysburg in November 1863 saying “we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” Yet it was not Lincoln but Union General John Logan who imitated the holiday to commemorate Union dead. He proclaimed May 30,1868 as Decoration Day – a day at which the graves of the Union soldiers would be decorated with flowers.
Why May 30th? Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on April 9,1865 but the war was not officially ended until August 20, 1866. Logan broached the idea of a Decoration Day on May 3,1868 and said that it should be observed on May 30th. All of the Union states soon adopted May 30th as the date to honor the fallen soldiers that wore blue. Logan said “Their soldier lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains, and their deaths the tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance.” So obviously, he was excluding southern dead.
But what about the southern states? They did not observe Memorial Day as a holiday. Rather growing up in the segregated south, in Georgia we “celebrated” Confederate Memorial Day on April 26 and did not recognize the Union one. Imagine that. In our all-black schools we were supposed to celebrate southern dead. Rather we celebrated the south’s losing the war. I remember our outrage when Georgia changed its state flag to incorporate the rebel banner after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Georgia was saying “Segregation now. Segregation forever.” In Atlanta, I don’t recall the new state flag ever flying at our schools.
I have somewhat mixed feelings. Although I hated segregation and despised the confederate battle flag, both of my mother’s great grandfathers were white and one served in the 6th Georgia militia. He is buried in a confederate cemetery in Atlanta one mile from my home house. My mother told me he never was a slave holder and was an honorable man who visited his black son every other Sunday for Sunday dinner and took his black grandchildren into town the following Monday to buy them stuff. Although he had a white family he never disowned his black son and grandchildren. That is to be admired especially in rural Georgia in the 1800s. So a part of me doesn’t mind when the celebration of Memorial Day started to include all American dead, not just Union Dead.
Yet, returning to Lincoln, no finer words have been said to commemorate those who have served and those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Happy Memorial Day
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