The Real Story of Memorial Day
Anyone who grew up in this country understands Memorial Day as a celebration of sacrifice and patriotic valor during war. This holiday has its origins in the Civil War, a time of unspeakable division, death and disease, and the supposed triumph of equality (in theory if not in practice) over slavery.
The “Official” History of Remembrance Day
Most people probably don’t think about the origins of Memorial Day when planning their long weekends and family picnics, but the general story goes something like this: A year after the end of the Civil War, in 1866, a group of women began celebrating 620,000 soldiers and civilians. those killed in the conflict or succumbed to disease while fighting it laid wreaths on their graves in the hospital town of Columbus, Mississippi. In 1868, the annual Remembrance Day was born and has since been celebrated on the last Monday of May. General John A. Logan, a veteran Union leader, did so by declaring “Decoration Day” a national holiday.
While all of this is true, it is technically a piece of revisionism (as evidenced by the many cities claiming first Memorial Day tributes ) and one that puts white people at the forefront of a treasured American pastime. The official version erases what Yale historian David W. Blythe has long argued are the original roots of Memorial Day, a tribute organized by black members of the infantry union that has, so to speak, been bleached by time and the whitewashing of history. .
Why do we celebrate Memorial Day?
Unlike Veterans Day, which pays tribute to all military personnel at home and abroad, Memorial Day actually refers specifically to the Civil War. It is hard to imagine that the United States, separated from the carnage by nearly 200 years, was previously divided by two independent governments, divided not only by opposing ideologies, but also by the agrarian economy of the South and the rising industrialism of the North. (Although, admittedly, every time it becomes easier to imagine .)
The Civil War remains the deadliest conflict in U.S. history, with more than 620,000 civilians and soldiers killed, either in battle or from disease, between the war’s outbreak in 1860 and the emancipation of slaves in 1865. and the Confederacy, both technically fielding American troops and 19th century warfare methods that led to much more direct confrontation on the battlefield.
The scale of the destruction is almost unfathomable in modern terms: the total population in 1860 was about 31 million, meaning the death toll was two percent of that total. Cities in the South lie in ruins, as historian David W. Blythe intuitively described for the Zinn Education Project in 2011.
At the end of the Civil War, the dead were everywhere, some in half-buried coffins and some visible only as unidentified bones scattered across the killing fields of Virginia or Georgia. Americans, both north and south, faced the enormous spiritual and logistical challenge of memorialization.
Traditionally, Remembrance Day marks a day of mourning for those killed on both sides of the conflict. However, according to Blight’s research, its basis is based on the actions of freed enslaved people and their symbolic tribute to fallen Union soldiers.
Memorial Day truly began in Charleston, South Carolina.
In a sense, Charleston recorded the Civil War: It was here that the first shots of the conflict were fired at Fort Sumter in 1861, and it was in this city that thousands of freed enslaved people paid their first respects to the war’s dead amid the ruins. strewn streets about four years later.
During the final days of the war, most white residents left the city, but many black residents remained. Among the first Union forces to enter Charleston was the Twenty-first U.S. Colored Infantry, which quickly accepted the city’s surrender, Blythe writes.
In the intervening days, these liberated men and women “held a series of commemorations to declare their understanding of the meaning of the war,” but none were as poignant or as indicative of the immeasurable suffering of the conflict as the tributes offered at the city’s races in Washington. Field and Jockey Club. The site was converted into a prison by the Confederacy during the war, and at least 257 Union soldiers died there from disease and exposure, their bodies placed in mass graves.
Many of the still-naked bodies were given proper burial by a few black workers, who erected a fence around the burial ground and an arch emblazoned with the inscription “Martyrs of the Hippodrome,” Blythe’s research shows. Several attempts to memorialize the dead followed, including a massive parade of 10,000 people at the site of the racetrack and another march on May 1 led by a procession of 3,000 black schoolchildren singing “John Brown’s Body.” in honor of the famous abolitionist.
Blythe describes the following scenes in detail:
Behind the children walked several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Black men then marched, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many people as possible gather on the cemetery fence; a children’s choir sang “We Rally Around the Flag,” “The Star-Spangled Banner” and several spirituals before several black ministers read passages of scripture.
The parade dispersed, giving way to picnics and social gatherings—the very things we now consider the lifeblood of Memorial Day. This was the birth of the annual celebration, which was first named a nationally recognized holiday two years later in 1868. The day’s roots as a tribute paid by newly freed black men and women of the South have been erased by more than a century of history. objections of the ancestors of Confederate families . But if we remember the very first attempts to perpetuate the memory of those killed during the Civil War, we get a completely different story.
From the Civil War to the Great Economy: Modern Memorial Day Celebrations
It may have begun as a solemn occasion to remember the forgotten dead of the Civil War, but in the America of 2024, we mostly celebrate Memorial Day by picnicking and going shopping.
Every year there are public reproaches about the lost meaning of Memorial Day, but it is also an American tradition, almost as old as the holiday itself. A New York Times editorial writer in 1869 was one of the first to publicly wring his hands over the holiday, urging readers to “always remember the original purpose of the day, indicated in its very name,” lest the holiday become “not sacred, but blasphemous.” .
The 1954 establishment of Veterans Day (formerly known as “Armistice Day”) took some of the wind out of Memorial Day’s sails, and the 1971 Congressional decision to schedule Memorial Day so that we would have a three-day weekend cemented the day as the ideal time to watch a big car race . to the beach or get a great deal on a new TV .
This pattern of solemn remembrance turning into celebration is common to all holidays to one degree or another. Time passes and people forget. But it’s cool. The reason many Americans fought in wars from the beginning was the belief that they would help ensure that future generations would have the freedom to go to the lake and grill their family’s cheeseburgers.
As veteran Jason Redman writes :
Enjoy this time with your family. Enjoy these barbecues. Enjoy these sales. But recognize that every barbecue, every party, every sale, every drop of freedom and opportunity we have is the result of the sacrifice of an American service member.
Marked. Now let’s have a Mai Tai.