{"id":12261,"date":"2018-05-28T21:30:02","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T21:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=12261"},"modified":"2018-05-28T21:30:02","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T21:30:02","slug":"the-forgotten-history-of-memorial-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-forgotten-history-of-memorial-day\/","title":{"rendered":"The forgotten history of Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Gardiner<\/a>, Columbus State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country. <\/p>\n

The holiday was Memorial Day, and this year\u2019s commemoration on May 28 marks the 150th anniversary of its official nationwide observance. The annual commemoration was born in the former Confederate States in 1866 and adopted by the United States in 1868. It is a holiday in which the nation honors its military dead.<\/p>\n

Gen. John A. Logan<\/a>, who headed the largest Union veterans\u2019 fraternity at that time, the Grand Army of the Republic<\/a>, is usually credited as being the originator of the holiday.<\/p>\n

Yet when General Logan established the holiday, he acknowledged its genesis among the Union\u2019s former enemies, saying, \u201cIt was not too late for the Union men of the nation to follow the example<\/a> of the people of the South.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a scholar who has written \u2013 with co-author Daniel Bellware \u2013 a history of Memorial Day<\/a>. Cities and towns across America have for more than a century claimed to be the holiday\u2019s birthplace, but we have sifted through the myths and half-truths and uncovered the authentic story of how this holiday came into being.<\/p>\n

Generous acts bore fruit<\/h2>\n

During 1866, the first year of this annual observance in the South, a feature of the holiday emerged that made awareness, admiration and eventually imitation of it spread quickly to the North. <\/p>\n

During the inaugural Memorial Day observances which were conceived in Columbus, Georgia<\/a>, many Southern participants \u2013 especially women \u2013 decorated graves of Confederate soldiers as well as, unexpectedly, those of their former enemies who fought for the Union. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Civil War Union Gen. John A. Logan.<\/span>
\n Library of Congress Glass negatives<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shortly after those first Memorial Day observances all across the South, newspaper coverage in the North was highly favorable to the ex-Confederates. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe action of the ladies on this occasion, in burying whatever animosities or ill-feeling may have been engendered in the late war towards those who fought against them, is worthy of all praise and commendation,\u201d wrote one paper<\/a>. <\/p>\n

On May 9, 1866, the Cleveland Daily Leader<\/a> lauded the Southern women during their first Memorial Day. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe act was as beautiful as it was unselfish, and will be appreciated in the North.\u201d <\/p>\n

The New York Commercial Advertiser<\/a>, recognizing the magnanimous deeds of the women of Columbus, Georgia, echoed the sentiment. \u201cLet this incident, touching and beautiful as it is, impart to our Washington authorities a lesson in conciliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Power of a poem<\/h2>\n

To be sure, this sentiment was not unanimous. There were many in both parts of the U.S. who had no interest in conciliation. <\/p>\n

But as a result of one of these news reports, Francis Miles Finch<\/a>, a Northern judge, academic and poet, wrote a poem titled \u201cThe Blue and the Gray<\/a>.\u201d Finch\u2019s poem quickly became part of the American literary canon<\/a>. He explained<\/a> what inspired him to write it: <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt struck me that the South was holding out a friendly hand, and that it was our duty, not only as conquerors, but as men and their fellow citizens of the nation, to grasp it.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Finch\u2019s poem seemed to extend a full pardon to the South: \u201cThey banish our anger forever when they laurel the graves of our dead\u201d was one of the lines. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Not just poems: Sheet music written to commemorate Memorial Day in 1870.<\/span>
\n Library of Congress<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Almost immediately, the poem circulated across America in books, magazines and newspapers. By the end of the 19th century, school children everywhere were required to memorize Finch\u2019s poem. The ubiquitous publication of Finch\u2019s rhyme<\/a> meant that by the end of 1867, the southern Memorial Day holiday was a familiar phenomenon throughout the entire, and recently reunited, country. <\/p>\n

General Logan was aware of the forgiving sentiments of people like Finch. When Logan\u2019s order establishing Memorial Day<\/a> was published in various newspapers in May 1868, Finch\u2019s poem was sometimes appended to the order. <\/p>\n

\u2018The blue and the grey\u2019<\/h2>\n

It was not long before Northerners decided that they would not only adopt the Southern custom of Memorial Day, but also the Southern custom of \u201cburying the hatchet.\u201d A group of Union veterans explained their intentions in a letter<\/a> to the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph on May 28, 1869:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWishing to bury forever the harsh feelings engendered by the war, Post 19 has decided not to pass by the graves of the Confederates sleeping in our lines, but divide each year between the blue and the grey the first floral offerings of a common country. We have no powerless foes. Post 19 thinks of the Southern dead only as brave men.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Other reports of reciprocal magnanimity circulated in the North, including the gesture of a 10-year-old who made a wreath of flowers<\/a> and sent it to the overseer of the holiday, Colonel Leaming, in Lafayette, Indiana, with the following note attached, published in The New Hampshire Patriot on July 15, 1868:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWill you please put this wreath upon some rebel soldier\u2019s grave? My dear papa is buried at Andersonville, (Georgia) and perhaps some little girl will be kind enough to put a few flowers upon his grave.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s wish that there be \u201cmalice toward none\u201d and \u201ccharity for all\u201d was visible in the magnanimous actions of participants on both sides, who extended an olive branch during the Memorial Day observances in those first three years. <\/p>\n

\"TheAlthough not known by many today, the early evolution of the Memorial Day holiday was a manifestation of Lincoln\u2019s hope for reconciliation between North and South.<\/p>\n

Richard Gardiner<\/a>, Associate Professor of History Education, Columbus State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Gardiner, Columbus State University In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country. The holiday was Memorial Day, and this year\u2019s commemoration on May 28 marks the 150th anniversary of its official nationwide observance. The annual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[991,1918,2935,2412,2382],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12263,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12261\/revisions\/12263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}