Happy Memorial Day

           Different Kind of Memorial Day

       The Memorial Day we celebrate this year is very different from the first Memorial Day over 150 years ago in honor of those who died in the Civil War. It was not even about all those who died in that conflict; instead, it was about those who served in the United States Army and Navy. The Confederate dead were honored by their own communities on their own unofficial memorial days.

        This changed when men and women from all states, including the former Confederate states, sacrificed their lives for the United States in the many wars of the 20th and 21st centuries.

         When Memorial Day began, no one on either side could have imagined this future. The survivors of America's deadliest war were still burying hundreds of thousands of dead. No one is sure how many Americans died during the war, but the official count is 620,000 dead. Comparing the current population of the U.S. with that of the 1860s, the same level of casualties in a war today would result in 6 million dead.

         Even more tragic, most of those men were buried faraway from their families, many in unmarked or shallow graves. After the war, the U.S. government and formerly Confederate communities gathered the known and therefore the unknown dead for burial. once they did so, all sides memorialized their dead separately.

         The nation had been politically reunited but grief and bitterness lingered; in 2020, some Southern states (including Florida) still honor their war dead as a part of Confederate Memorial Day holidays.

         Officially, U.S. Memorial Day began when the commander of the Union Army’s largest veterans’ organization, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), ordered its members to honor their fallen comrades on May 30, 1868.

         His directive was clear: These ceremonies were to honor the lads whose “soldiers’ lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains” and for his or her deceased comrades who ended “a rebellious tyranny” that had threatened the Union. it had been each day for those that fought for the us and therefore the Union cause.

          Initially, it had been not called Memorial Day . Instead, it had been “Decoration Day” because people placed flowers on soldier graves. Because some local communities adorned soldiers’ graves before the GAR issued their order, many towns claim that they originated Memorial Day . In fact, newly freed slaves were among the primary to embellish Union soldiers’ graves. By the top of the 19th century, all Northern states had officially recognized this holiday.

          As the decades passed, Americans fought and died in other wars. These new wars created the Memorial Day we all know today.

          Critical to the present change, the dead came from all regions: states of the previous Confederacy, states that had stayed within the Union and even from areas that had not been states during the war . within the Spanish-American War , Americans from all regions served, including some former Confederate generals who received U.S. Army commissions. Almost 5,000 Northerners, Southerners and Westerners died during this conflict, making regional commemorations inappropriate given all of those soldiers and sailors served under an equivalent flag.

            Despite their sacrifice, it had been not until war I, when the wartime dead were within the many thousands, that the day expanded. Local celebrations, often led by the American Legion and war I veterans, became more inclusive. Elderly war veterans, middle-aged Spanish-American War veterans, and their sons and grandsons who served in war I marched together to honor the dead of all wars. Twenty-seven years later, Americans had many thousands more dead to honor after war II.

           Despite this price , Memorial Day didn't become a federal holiday. Instead, in 1954, just after the Korean War ended, the govt recognized Veterans Day, formerly Veterans' Day , to honor all veterans of all wars. it's going to are lingering regional feelings that delayed Memorial Day’s national recognition.

            Fourteen years later, Congress made Memorial Day a federal holiday as a replacement generation of yank soldiers sacrificed their lives in Vietnam. In 1968, the govt designated Memorial Day because the last Monday in May to memorialize the dead of all American wars.

            Since that date quite 50 years ago, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, men and ladies , all regions and every one races have joined their comrades as honorees on Memorial Day . As long as no war ends all wars, these ranks will likely grow.

             As you set about your day the last Monday in May, remember the lads and ladies who, as Lincoln so eloquently explained, “gave the last full measure of devotion.”

            Barbara A. Gannon is an professor of history at the University of Central Florida.

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