Happy Memorial Day
Happy Memorial Day! This holiday, which was originally known as Decoration Day (as in the caption of the image above) began as a way to honor the fallen soldiers of the Civil War. About 620,00 men died in the war, 2% of the total population of the U.S., a truly staggering number (again , I refer you to Drew Faust’s wonderful book This Republic of Suffering for more on the way these deaths impacted society and, unrelatedly, to this interesting blog post that relates the Civil War death toll to the current situation in Iraq)
After the war many different towns created their own days to remember the dead; in 1868 Memorial Day was officially proclaimed by Gen. John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic and wreaths were laid at Arlington National Cemetary on May 30 of that year. By 1890 all the northern states celebrated the day, although southern states maintained their own separate days until after WWI.
Here is the program for the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg in 1863. This was the first national cemetery to be created, Arlington and many others would follow. Although this predates the official start of Decoration/Memorial Day, the type of activites listed at the dedication were fairly similar to those at early Memorial Day celebrations. For more about this piece, check out the document viewer.
