By Edwin Cooney
Memorial Day is, of course, like every other day in that it
ultimately is what you and I make of it.
It was officially proclaimed by General John A. Logan, Commander-in-Chief
of the Grand Army of the Republic, with General Order No.11 on Tuesday, May 5,
1868. The order stated in part:
It is the purpose of the Commander-in-Chief to inaugurate
this observance with the hope it will be kept up from year to year, while a
survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades. He
earnestly desires the public press to call attention to this Order, and lend
its friendly aid in bringing it to the notice of comrades in all parts of the
country in time for simultaneous compliance therewith.
(Note: several
factors are present here: it is Logan, a Brigadier General, who is “the
Commander-In-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic,” not the President of the
United States. Second, he refers
to the South as having been in “rebellion” with all its implications. May 1868 was indeed historic. As General Logan was giving his order,
Senator John A. Logan of Illinois was also managing the Republican Party’s
impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in the U.S. Senate. One can’t
help but wonder what that would look like in 2013!)
Meanwhile, it isn’t the least bit surprising that women led
the way in remembrance of those who made the “supreme sacrifice” in service
during that war. However, the
irony is that Confederate belles appear to have taken the lead over Union
sweeties in decorating the graves of the fallen. As early as 1862, Confederate graves were decorated with
flowers and flags by the mothers, sweethearts, and wives of Confederate
soldiers in Savannah, Georgia. In
1867,
according to Duke University’s History of Sheet Music
1850-1920, “Kneel Where Our Loves Are Sleeping,” a poem by Nella L. Sweet,
became a hymn to honor the fallen of the CSA (the Confederate States of America).
Upon proclaiming Memorial Day a Federal holiday in May 1966,
President Lyndon B. Johnson declared Waterloo, a small town in Western New
York, as the birthplace of Memorial Day.
However, the citizens of Boalsburg, Pennsylvania who claim to have been
celebrating Memorial Day since 1864 surely took exception to LBJ’s
proclamation. Perhaps Memorial
Day’s greatest glory is that spontaneity was its real parent. New York was the first state to
officially celebrate Memorial Day in 1873. By 1890, practically every northern state celebrated Memorial
or “Decoration Day.” However, in
the South, a number of states have celebrated a Confederate Memorial Day on
different days:
Texas celebrates Memorial Day on January 19th;
Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi celebrate it on
April 26th. (How about this irony, April 26th is one day
short of Ulysses S. Grant’s birthday—-what a near embarrassment is that!)
South Carolina celebrates it on May 10th;
Louisiana and Tennessee celebrate Memorial Day on June 3rd,
the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Many people today confuse Memorial Day with Veterans Day
which was proclaimed after World War I to honor veterans, living and dead, for
their wartime service. Memorial
Day became a national rather than merely a local day of both remembrance and
unity due in part to another southern belle, Moina Michael of Good Hope,
Georgia. In response to Canadian
John McCrae’s overwhelmingly popular 1915 poem “In Flanders Fields,” she
responded with her own poem which read in part:
We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor
led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.
With our entry into the war, Ms.
Michael took a temporary leave from her professorship at the University of
Georgia to volunteer in New York City to train YWCA workers for overseas
service. Upon her return to The
University of Georgia, she taught a class of disabled veterans and undertook to
make and sell silk poppies in cooperation with the Veterans of Foreign Wars for
the benefit of disabled veterans. In
1948, four years after her death, she would be honored for her work on behalf
of disabled veterans by the U.S. postal service which issued a red 3 cent stamp
baring Michael’s likeness.
Since passage of the 1971 Federal
Holidays Act that made holidays celebrated on certain dates into three day
holiday weekends, Memorial Day seems to have suffered from a greater degree of
obscurity than Columbus Day, Labor Day or Independence Day. Since 1989, there has been a movement
in Congress (originally headed by the late Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat of
Hawaii) to restore Memorial Day to May 30th.
For most Americans today, Memorial
Day is the beginning of the summer season just as Labor Day is its close. Many communities hold off parades until
the Fourth of July celebration.
For many years, Memorial Day was marked by baseball doubleheaders, the
Indianapolis 500 mile race, and the inevitable family picnic.
For millions of Americans, any
lessening awareness that too many young men and women have given their health
and their lives in our service is akin to a loss of patriotism. For many others, this observer
in particular, intense celebration of the deeds and losses on the battlefield
invariably aggravates our national sorrow and thus tends to glorify war. Thus, time both obscures and
heals. For me, that which heals
best honors best those who gave their very all and their very best.
If the meaning
of Memorial Day is growing increasingly obscure, John Alexander Logan, its
official founder, barely missed a special obscurity. As second man on the Republican national ticket in 1884 with
Senator James G. Blaine of the State of Maine, he was nearly elected America’s
21st Vice President!
RESPECTFULLY
SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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