Monday is Memorial Day, a solemn day for Americans to remember those who died in order to protect our freedom to enjoy days such as this, peacefully in the greatest country on the face of the Earth. But many Americans may not the know the history of Memorial Day and how it came to be a national holiday.
Here are five things you need to know about Memorial Day:
1. Memorial Day originated from Americans honoring those who lost their lives in the Civil War. The Civil War was the deadliest war in American history, with an estimated 620,000 American troops lost in the war. Many towns around the country held some sort of day of remembrance for the fallen troops following the war, but Waterloo, New York, has been dubbed as the birthplace of Memorial Day by the federal government because every year the town’s residents would place flowers and flags on the graves of soldiers.
2. Memorial Day was first known as “Decoration Day.” The name came from General John A. Logan, who led a veterans organization called Grand Army of the Republic, as Logan called for Decoration Day to be a national day of remembrance for the troops that had died in the Civil War on May 30, since that day didn’t necessarily commemorate any particular battle. Decoration Day eventually became known as Memorial Day; Decoration Day is now another name for the holiday.
3. The first Decoration Day ceremony occurred in 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery. Around 5,000 people attended the event, which was officiated by President Ulysses S. Grant. The most notable speech given at the ceremony was from future President James Garfield, who at that time was an Ohio Republican congressman and a general in the Civil War.
Here is a passage from Garfield’s speech:
“I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion,” Garfield began, and then continued to utter them. “If silence is ever golden, it must be 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.” It went on like that for pages and pages.
At the end of the ceremony, 20,000 soldier graves were decorated.
4. Memorial Day was initially a holiday observed in the states before it became a federally recognized holiday. The federal government allowed their workers to have the day off in 1882, but for everyone else it was a state holiday. The first state to adopt the holiday was New York in 1873; by 1890 all the northern states had implemented the holiday. The Southern states had their own holiday to honor the fallen Confederate soldiers, but they eventually adopted the holiday in the aftermath of World War I. By then, Memorial Day was expanded to honor all fallen soldiers.
In 1968, Congress passed a law declaring Memorial Day a nationwide holiday on the last Monday in May.
5. On December 28, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed into a law an act that recognized 3 p.m. local time as the National Moment of Remembrance on Memorial Day. It’s also worth noting that American flags begin the day at half-mast and are then raised to full mast at noon, where they remain until dusk.
Memorial Day also unofficially marks the beginning of summer, so as you’re enjoying your barbecue and looking forward to warm days at the beach and the pool, remember to thank all of those brave Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that we could enjoy our summer in peace and freedom.
H/T: History.com