By: Carl H. Block, Esq.
May 27, 2023
Memorial Day, originally known as Decoration Day, is unique and special to the American people.
The idea of Decoration Day did not come from the government or from a politician. It started as an idea and an act of the American people to remember those who had sacrificed their lives for the United States of America. The Civil War ended in 1865, a conflict that had more American fatalities than any war before or since. The 620,000 fatalities in the Civil War dwarfed the previous 20,000 fatalities in the war of 1812, and the 25,000 fatalities in the Revolutionary War.
After the Civil War, the American people formed small groups of friends and neighbors to recognize the sacrifices made by those who had died. In 1866, citizens of Waterloo New York organized Decoration Day to honor the community’s Civil War dead. They decorated the town and the graves of soldiers to honor the sacrifices made by soldiers, sailors, and their families during the war.
Later, an organization of Union army veterans – the Grand army of the Republic – established May 5, 1868 as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers as a memorial to their sacrifice and service.
Shortly thereafter, on May 30, 1968, a crowd of over 5,000 people gathered at Arlington Cemetery for the first official Decoration Day ceremony in Washington D.C.
Congressman, and later President, James A. Garfield, who had served as a Major General in the Union Army, gave a speech at Arlington Cemetery. Below, I have extracted some of his stirring words:
“If silence is ever golden, it must be here, beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung . . . 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.”
Please join me this Memorial Day in honoring those who gave all so that we may live in the greatest nation of earth, the United States of America.
