The Real Story of Memorial Day
Memorial Day has a traditional place in American history. Everyone who grew up in this country understands that this is a celebration of wartime victims and patriotic valor. It is a holiday that has its origins in the Civil War, a time of innumerable divisions, deaths and diseases, but also the supposed triumph of equality (in theory if not in practice) over slavery.
Most people probably don’t think about the origins of Memorial Day when they plan their long weekends and family dinners, but the overall story goes something like this: One year after the end of the war, in 1866, a group of women began celebrating Memorial Day. 620,000 soldiers and civilians were killed in the conflict or died of disease while fighting, laying wreaths on graves in the hospital town of Columbus, Mississippi. In 1868, the annual Memorial Day was born, which has since been celebrated on the last Monday in May. General John A. Logan, a Union veteran, did so by declaring Decorating Day a national holiday.
While all of this is true, it is technically a revisionism (as evidenced by many cities vying for the first Memorial Day tributes ) that puts whites at the forefront of the cherished American pastime. Official history obliterates what Yale historian David W. Blythe has long claimed to be the original roots of Memorial Day – a homage given by black members of the Allied Infantry, which, so to speak, have been discolored by time and the whitewash of history. …
Why are we celebrating Memorial Day?
Unlike Veterans Day, which pays tribute to all military personnel at home and abroad, Memorial Day refers specifically to the civil war. Separated from the carnage by nearly 200 years, it is difficult to imagine that the US 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. (Though, admittedly, it’s getting easier to imagine all the time .)
The Civil War remains the deadliest conflict in US history, with more than 620,000 civilians and soldiers killed between the outbreak of war in 1860 and the liberation of slaves in 1865, whether through battle or disease. and Confederation, both technically the deployment of American troops and the methods of warfare of the 19th century, which led to much more direct confrontation on the battlefield.
The scale of the destruction is almost incomprehensible in modern terms: the total population in 1860 was about 31 million, representing 2 percent of the total death toll. The cities lay in ruins in the south, as historian David Blythe intuitively described in the 2011 Zinn education project.
At the end of the Civil War, the dead were everywhere, some in half-closed coffins, and some only visible as unidentified bones scattered on the death fields in Virginia or Georgia. Americans in both the north and south are faced with the enormous spiritual and logistical challenge of memorializing.
Traditionally, Memorial Day is a day of mourning for those killed on both sides of the conflict. However, according to Blythe’s research, it is based on the actions of the freed slaves and their symbolic tribute to the fallen Union soldiers.
It all started in Charleston, South Carolina.
In some way, Charleston supported the Civil War: it was there that the first shots of the conflict were fired at Fort Sumter in 1861, and it was in this city that thousands of freed slaves paid tribute to the fallen in the war. streets about four years later.
In the last days of the war, most of its white inhabitants left the city, but many of its black inhabitants remained. Among the first Union forces to enter Charleston were the 21st American Colored Infantry, which quickly accepted the city’s surrender, Blythe writes.
Over the past few days, these freed men and women have “held a series of commemorations to proclaim their understanding of the meaning of war,” but none were more poignant or indicative of the immeasurable suffering of the conflict than the tribute at the city races in Washington. Course and Jockey Club. This place was converted by the Confederation into a prison during the war, at least 257 Union soldiers died there from disease and infection, their bodies were thrown into mass graves.
According to Blythe’s research, many of the still-nude bodies were appropriately buried by several black workers, who erected a fence around the burial ground and an arch adorned with the words “Martyrs of the Racetrack.” This was followed by several attempts to commemorate the victims, including a massive 10,000 parade 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 details the scenes that followed:
The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came the black men, followed by the Union infantry squads and other black and white citizens. As many meetings as possible in the graveyard enclosure; the children’s choir sang “We Rally Around the Flag,” “The Star Banner,” and several spirituals before several black ministers read the scriptures.
The parade dispersed to make way for picnics and social gatherings — this is where we now recognize the lifeblood of Memorial Day. These were the nascent beginnings of the annual celebration, first called a nationally recognized holiday two years later, in 1868. The roots of this day as a tribute to the newly freed black men and women of the south have been erased over more than a century. objections of the ancestors of confederate families . But if you remember the very first attempts to perpetuate the memory of those killed during the Civil War, then this is a completely different story.