Memorial Day
In the spring of 1865, the American Civil War came to an end and the nation began a long healing process that some today has never fully ended. Because that conflict was at the time the bloodiest and deadliest in American history, large cemeteries were built across the country to facilitate the burying of the dead from both the North and the South.
Later in the decade, many would go out together to decorate and remember the fallen soldiers from that conflict, until the tradition spread across the entire country. By May of 1868, people like General John A. Logan were calling for a more organized holiday, which Logan named as Decoration Day, the official date of which would be the 30th of May, due to the fact that no battles from the Civil War had taken place on that particular date.
Five thousand people showed up at Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C. for that first memorial service, decorating the twenty thousand soldiers buried on the former estate of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s estate. By the end of the decade, every state in the North had some kind of Decoration Day service.
Heading into World War One, the holiday once again came into morbid prominence when the day was expanded to include American soldiers who died serving in the ‘Great War.’
Eventually as America found itself involved in other conflicts like World War Two and The Korean War, the holiday was expanded even further in scope, honoring all American Soldiers that died in the call of duty.
Waterloo, New York was branded the official city to start the tradition of Memorial Day in the country, although many cities and states had been doing their own memorial services almost immediately after the Civil War ended. This may have more to do with the fact that Waterloo had the entire town get into the tradition of decorating the entire town each year and making it a proper community event.
In 1968, while the United States was at war with Vietnam, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which would go into effect in 1971. The act made Memorial Day a Federal holiday and also moved the holiday from May 30th, where it had resided for over one-hundred years, to the last Monday in May, making for a three day weekend for some workers to mourn and remember the fallen as well as becoming the unofficial date that marked the beginning of the Summer.
In the year 2000, more updates to the holiday were made, with the official ‘moment of silence’ across the country being declared as 3:00 p.m. local time, a moment former President Obama released a Presidential Proclamation about, saying that all Americans should observe that moment of silence diligently.
Many of us, if not most of us, had a relative or various branches of our family tree, both past and present, who has died in an American conflict, fighting for their fellow countrymen…Be sure you remember to honor these men for their brave sacrifices this May.
