Memorial Day: Honoring the Legacy of Sacrifice
USA Today News
Memorial Day is the most solemn and most important of the United States' holidays, a remembrance and holiday honoring the men and women of the USA military who have made their last full measure in service to their country. Seen annually on the last Monday in May, Memorial Day is more than unofficially marking the start of summer or a parade and barbecue day—it's a day of thanks, remembrance, and reflection. Through its history, practices, and USA contemporary significance, we can appreciate the rich heritage of Memorial Day and the sacrifices that constitute Americans' liberties.
Historical Origins of USA Memorial Day
The origins of Memorial Day are found in the post-American Civil War era, when greater numbers of American military died than during any other war, necessitating that the country establish national cemeteries as well as new rites of mourning. Initially referred to as Decoration Day, the holiday was first celebrated across the nation on May 30, 1868. That day, Union veterans' organization Grand Army of the Republic General John A. Logan declared a national day of remembrance. Americans were asked to put flowers on the graves of dead soldiers, a practice that provided the holiday with its original title.
Though all cities and towns claimed to be the birthplace of Memorial Day, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared Waterloo, New York, to be the birthplace of the holiday in 1966. Waterloo was honoring an annual, community remembrance of Civil War veterans since 1866 with businesses shutting down for the day and individuals decorating graves.
Originally, the Memorial Day was employed primarily to USA commemorate those who died in the Civil War. But following World War I, the holiday came to honor Am:strip_icc()/american-flags-in-ground-f518a4ab0b6749f69017a254b24098fb.jpg)
erican military members who died in all wars. It later became a national holiday from a regional day of remembrance and got further institutionalized in American life.
Memorial Day Becomes a Federal USA Holiday
Memorial Day remained widely observed for several decades, though it was not established as a federal USA holiday until 1971 when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act designated it as a federal holiday. It was a piece of congressional legislation that moved the observance of Memorial Day to the last Monday in May in an effort to make a three-day weekend for federal employees convenient. While this movement increased the visibility and observance of the holiday, it also created apprehension that the solemn purpose of the day would be lost in its USA commercialization.
In response to this, numerous veterans' organizations have petitioned to reverse the original date to May 30, saying the dignity and significance of Memorial Day must be preserved. Other individuals prefer the existing form but urge Americans to practice acts of remembrance in order to make the day meaningful.
Traditions and Customs
Memorial Day is marked by several traditions, rituals, and public events that honor the seriousness and respect of the holiday for those who have died in combat. Perhaps the most solemn of these is placing flags and flowers on the graves of dead soldiers. National cemeteries across the country are transformed into sites of serious reflection and patriotic commemoration, and volunteers—veterans some, scouts some, civic groups some—performing these acts of remembrance.
The American flag is also accorded a special treatment during Memorial Day. It is quickly hoisted to the staff top at sunrise and then lowered solemnly to half-staff, where it remains until noon. This is a symbol of mourning the dead in the morning and honoring the living veterans in the afternoon by returning the USA flag to full-staff.
In USA Washington, D.C., there is an annual tradition of the National USA Memorial Day Concert and wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. These are occasions when politicians, military personnel, artists, and members of the public come together to honor the deceased through music, speech, and quiet contemplation.
Parades are also a common phenomenon, especially in small towns and cities throughout the United States. These typically include veterans' groups, military troops, marching bands, and local civic associations, creating a public and celebratory element to the day and still maintaining its central sense of respect and honor.
Modern Observance and Issues
Although the long-term meaning of Memorial Day still exists, there is greater concern that its original intent is being lost in today's times. To many Americans, the holiday has rather become identified with beach holidays, discount shopping, and the beginning of summer vacation. Although rest and partying are not necessarily disrespectful, there is a possibility that the day's fundamental message of honoring the dead might be lost in commercial and sporting pursuits.
This disappointment has led to a number of efforts to reassert the USA solemnity of Memorial Day. Among the most meaningful is the National Moment of Remembrance, enacted by Congress in 2000. Americans are requested to pause for one minute at 3:00 PM local time on Memorial Day and remember the sacrifices of armed USA services members. This simple but potent act is an inclusive moment of national reflection.
Teachers and civic leaders also play a role in stimulating USA public knowledge of the holiday's significance. Schools, museums, and historical societies frequently sponsor events or curriculum designed to educate younger generations of the importance and significance of Memorial Day. Veterans organizations like the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) also do public education and outreach to maintain the health of Memorial Day.
Memorial Day in a Multicultural America
As America persists to change as a multicultural and pluralistic nation, the histories and customs related to Memorial Day also broaden. Immigrants and new Americans are apt to participate in Memorial Day ceremonies, an indication of universal devotion to American ideals and the acceptance of military service as an across-the-board national virtue. In addition to this, the service and sacrifices of minority soldiers, who have frequently fought for the country despite discriminatory treatment at home, are coming to be emphasized ever more in Memorial Day observances.
For example, Native American, African American, Latino, and Asian American veterans have all had significant roles to play in U.S. military history, ranging from the Buffalo Soldiers to the Navajo Code Talkers and the 442nd Infantry Regiment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Honoring these contributions on Memorial Day helps to make the holiday more resonant and ensure that everyone who has given their life is remembered.
Originally called Decoration Day, from the early tradition of decorating graves with flowers, wreaths and flags, Memorial Day is a day for remembrance of those who have died in service to our country. It was first widely observed on May 30, 1868 to commemorate the sacrifices of Civil War soldiers, by proclamation of Gen. John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of former Union sailors and soldiers.
During that first national commemoration, former Union Gen. and sitting Ohio Congressman James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who were buried there.
This USA national event galvanized efforts to honor and remember fallen soldiers that began with local observances at burial grounds in several towns throughout the United States following the end of the Civil War, such as the May 1, 1865 gathering in Charleston, South Carolina organized by freed slaves to pay tribute and give proper burial to Union troops.
In 1873, New York was the first state to designate Memorial Day as a legal holiday. By the late 1800s, many more cities and communities observed Memorial Day, and several states had declared it a legal holiday.
After World War I, it became an occasion for honoring those who died in all of America’s wars and was then more widely established as a national holiday throughout the United States.
In 1971, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act and established that Memorial Day was to be commemorated on the last Monday of May.
USA Memorial Day is commemorated at Arlington National Cemetery each year with a ceremony in which a small American flag is placed on each grave. Traditionally, the President or Vice President lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Personal Acts of Remembrance
While patriotic observances and public events are important, Memorial Day is also a family holiday for many American families. For the families of those in the military who have lost a loved one in service, Memorial Day is a sacred and bittersweet moment. Grave visiting, recalling memories, and spending quiet moments in silence are intimate personal ceremonies that preserve the memory of the dead.
Many families also take the opportunity for acts of service or charity in honor of the deceased. Through volunteering, charitable donation, or whatever for the causes of the veterans, these activities translate remembrance into action and reassert the values of service and sacrifice.
Memorial Day is a sobering reminder of the cost of freedom and the courage of those who have given their lives to its preservation. From its genesis in the aftermath of the Civil War to its modern-day celebration as a national holiday, Memorial Day continues to be a day when Americans come together in thanksgiving, grief, and remembrance.
As we enjoy a day with friends and loved ones or bask in the liberty that has been established by others' efforts, it is necessary that we are reminded of the actual cause of the day. Whether through attending a ceremony, stopping at a burial site, observing a moment of silence, or passing on the next generation the importance of the holiday, every act of remembrance contributes to a collective heritage of respect and honor.
In doing so, we ensure the existence of those who passed away serving the nation not be forgotten—and their sacrifice to keep inspiring unity, purpose, and patriotism among all Americans.
USA Memorial Day, a federal holiday held the last Monday in May, is the nation's foremost annual day to mourn and honor its deceased service men and women. Originally called Decoration Day, it was formalized by a "Memorial Day Order" issued by Grand Army of the Republic Commander-in-Chief John A. Logan in 1868.
In the waning years of the Civil War (1861–1865) and immediately afterward, communities in the USA North and South, Black and White, decorated soldiers' gra
ves with floral honors on springtime "decoration days." The practice of strewing flowers on graves has been documented from Classical Roman times to western Europe in the nineteenth century.
On May 5, 1868, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a politically powerful organization of Union veterans led by Major General John A. Logan — issued General Orders No. 11 or the "Memorial Day Act." This issuance formally established "Memorial Day" as a Decoration Day on which the nation would remember its war dead and decorate their graves with flowers.
In subsequent decades competition flourished to USA claim when and where the first such gathering occurred — in one way or another. Recent scholarship, however, points to the ladies of Columbus, GA, who in April 1866 lobbied for a clearly defined Memorial Day on which to place flowers on the graves of Civil War dead.
One early USA memorial day account occurred in Boalsburg, PA, where a trio of women decorated the graves of fallen soldiers in October 1864. Another was held in Charleston, SC, where Black freedmen and White "Northern abolitionist allies" hosted an enormous and historically significant program on May 1, 1865, at the "Martyrs of the Race Course" cemetery where 257 Union dead were buried.
The message conveyed by this largely Black assembly honoring U.S. troops on land previously occupied by wealthy White southerners expressed the same message as Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs when he appropriated the Robert E. Lee estate to become Arlington National Cemetery. Unlike that scenario, Charleston organizers could not have foreseen the temporary aspect of the racecourse site; the Army removed the dead to nearby Beaufort National Cemetery within a few years.
The idea of strewing the Civil War graves of USA soldiers
Union and Confederate — can be traced to Columbus, GA, whose city cemetery was in disarray. A Ladies Memorial Association formed to improve it, which included a media campaign. Secretary Mary Ann Williams' letter was published first in the local newspaper on March 11, advocating "to set apart a certain day to be observed...and be handed down through time as a religious custom of the country, to wreathe the graves of our martyred dead with flowers." Their chosen date was April 26, 1866.
However, the Mississippi city of Columbus (an ongoing source of historic confusion), held its event one day earlier than the Georgia association planned; thus it claims to being the first actual memorial day event. The Mississippi program was later immortalized in a popular poem by Francis Miles Finch, "The Blue and the Gray," and national reporting — in contemporary terms — went viral. The April 25–26, 1866, memorial day events honoring Confederate and Union dead in the South was a step toward reconciliation that reverberated nationwide, though it was predictably uncomfortable for some northerners.
USA General Logan was aware of these memorial efforts and their origin. In a speech given at an 1866 Independence Day celebration in Salem, IL, he spoke of the practice of floral tributes in the context of post-war Black civil rights, and compares "traitors in the south [that] have their gatherings day after day to strew garlands of flowers upon the graves of the Rebel soldiers" to a Black man "who has gained his liberty by the march and prowess of American arms, [who] shall come along with a basket of flowers to strew upon the grave of some poor loyal soldier that he shall have the right to do it."
Nonetheless, the GAR officially credited an "anonymous comrade" who had written Adjutant General Norton P. Chipman and recounted how in his native Germany it was customary to visit cemeteries and strew flowers on the graves. Then Chipman elevated it to General Logan, who added "several paragraphs" and issued it as General Orders 11.
Mrs. John Logan, a force in her husband's successful career, also took credit. In her autobiography, Mary S. Cunningham Logan presented the idea of placing flowers on soldiers' graves to her husband after returning from a Confederate cemetery in Virginia. Then recounted that General Logan felt it was "not too late for t
he Union men of the nation to follow the example of the people of the South in perpetuating the memory of their friends who had died for the cause which they thought just." General Logan's "adoption of the Southern custom was transparent to nearly everyone living in America in 1868," but as the author of G.O. 11, he was truly responsible for making it a national responsibility.
There will always be more to discover in the written record about the evolution of USA Memorial Day, but with the perspective of more than 150 years, "it may be less important to identify the holiday's first observation," observes one scholar, "than to understand how profoundly the large number of claimants to its origin indicates the ubiquity of the impulse, North and South, white and black, to commemorate the dead."
The first national Decoration Day celebration took place a few weeks after the USA GAR promulgated its G.O. 11, on May 30, 1868, at Arlington National Cemetery, VA. Approximately 11,250 White and Black Union soldiers were buried along with about 350 Confederate soldiers; more than half were buried as unknowns. The ceremony was held around the Arlington mansion, decorated with flags and draped for mourning. Nearby was the "very profuse decoration of the main tomb where the remains of 2,111 unknown soldiers are buried." Once the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the dwelling and land around it was designated a national cemetery in 1864 by General Meigs.
The commemorative program in 1868 included remarks by General and Congressman James A. Garfield (and later twentieth U.S. president), prayers, dirges, hymns, recitation of the Gettysburg Address and G.O. 11, and playing the "Star-Spangled Banner." Children of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphan Asylum were "deployed...to the decoration of the graves throughout the cemetery, strewing flowers and raising miniature flags over the graves." Notable Union generals and prominent Washington officials were in attendance, and employees of the federal government were permitted "free leave" to attend.
Chipman, the GAR adjutant general who oversaw the arrangements, also reported that "a small box" of flowers picked from "all the USA public gardens" were distributed to several regional national cemeteries: Gettysburg, PA; Fredericksburg, Poplar Grove, and Winchester, VA; and Loudon Park, MD. For posterity, the GAR published a compendium describing the hundreds of Memorial Day events its posts organized in local cemeteries, mostly in Northern states, and community enthusiasm even where only a few veterans were buried. Former Confederate states recognize memorial days on different dates from April to June.
In 1873, USA New York became the first state to officially recognize the holiday. All of the other Union states recognized Decoration Day by 1890. The GAR's success at ensuring that graves of Union soldiers and sailors were attended to on Memorial Day is demonstrated by Army policy as early as 1891. If the GAR or other patriotic organizations were unable to organize a ceremony and decorations at a national cemetery, that responsibility fell to the cemetery superintendent. This remains true today; the coordination of Memorial Day gravesite traditions remains the managing agency's responsibility, and the federal government often provides miniature flags to be placed on graves.
The commemoration of Decoration Day, or, as it increasingly became known, Memorial Day, continued through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as an informal patriotic holiday. After World War I, the event was expanded to honor those who died in all American wars. The twentieth-century appearance of tablets with Logan's G.O. 11 promoted this association.
The duties of the Woman's Relief Corps (WRC), the GAR auxiliary organization chartered in 1883, eventually included collecting flowers to make wreaths and bouquets, and decorating graves of the unknowns. The WRC sought to reaffirm Logan's patriotic Memorial Day message by issuing cast-iron tablets with a bas-relief portrait of Logan above the text of his G.O. 11.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the USA organization donated these to states for placement in USA prominent locations — state houses, courthouses, and schools. In a fiftieth anniversary publication, WRC reported that by 1933 its chapters had already placed thirty-five "General Logan Bronze Tablets" across the country. More were donated after that date. The tablets are found at Wood National Cemetery, WI, and Andersonville National Cemetery, GA.
Woman's Relief Corps Memorial Day Act tablet at USA
The U.S. Army placed its own version of the Memorial Day Act tablets at most of the national cemeteries it developed between the world wars in urban areas, including at Baltimore, MD, and Long Island, NY. These were among twenty-eight tablets that Levering Brothers Inc. produced in York County, PA, in 1939. The design replicates the dimensions and appearance of iron tablets cast with the Gettysburg Address that the Army installed in all existing national cemeteries in 1909 as a centennial project to honor President Abraham Lincoln. The Memorial Day Act and Gettysburg Address tablets complement a handful of official issuances the Army had installed in the late nineteenth century to orient USA visitors to the origin and rules of the relatively new cemeteries. These include Civil War-era bronze shields originally placed on inverted cannon "monuments" about 1873; and in 1881–1882, cast-iron tablets with the General Orders No. 80 of 1875 and the National Cemeteries Act of 1867.
The federal USA government continued to recognize Memorial Day through legislative actions. "The Congressional joint resolution approved May 11, 1950 (64 Stat. 158), has requested the President to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe each Memorial Day as a day of prayer for permanent peace and designating a period during each such day when the people of the United States might unite in such supplication."
A congressional resolution in 1966 officially recognized a century of USA Memorial Day events held on May 30 in Waterloo, NY, officially proclaimed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Thus the federal government declared this location as the "birthplace" of Memorial Day. Shortly after that, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, legislation enacted in 1968 — effective in 1971 — designated Memorial Day a national holiday and moved it from May 30 to the last Monday in May.
John Alexander Logan (1826–1886) was born in Murphysboro, IL. He fought in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), then returned home where he was admitted to the bar and elected to the Illinois house of representatives. He and Mary Simmerson Cunningham (1838–1923) married in 1855 and they would have two children. Logan's lifelong military and varied political career often overlapped. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat (1859–1862) but resigned to serve in the Civil War in which he was commissioned a brigadier general, then major general of Volunteers.
The first GAR post was organized and chartered in Decatur, IL, on April 6, 1866. It quickly became the preeminent Union veterans' organization, but its original USA fraternal mission evolved into something more powerful. Membership peaked in 1890 with more than 400,000 members whose ranks included U.S. Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley. In the late nineteenth century, few private organizations — and no other veterans USA organization — wielded the political clout that the GAR did. The organization died out along with its last member in 1956, but its legacy is preserved by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW), which was organized in 1881 and chartered by Congress in 1954.
“We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.”
– James A. Garfield, May 30, 1868, Arlington National Cemetery
Posted on 2025/05/27 08:54 AM