For most people, it seems, Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer: the schools close, the swimming pools open; the rates at resorts in Wisconsin go up.  The Holiday weekend also provides opportunities for sales at the shopping malls and in the big box stores.  Others, probably a minority today, spend some time over the weekend visiting local cemeteries to mark the graves of departed relatives.  Very few, it seems, devote a thought, let alone an hour or two, to recognize the true purposes of this day.

The origin of Memorial Day lies in the waning months of the American Civil War.  There is evidence that women’s groups in the South organized before the war’s end in 1865 to decorate the graves of the fallen; an 1867 hymn, “Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping,” carried the dedication “To the Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead.”  A similar practice appears to have sprung up in several dozen Northern cities.  Several decades ago, the federal government formally recognized the town of Waterloo, New York, as the birthplace of Memorial Day. 

The nation observed the first official Memorial Day in 1868, when the former Union General John Logan, now national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued a proclamation:

“The 30^th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in the defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land….

“[These] soldier lives were the reville of freedom to a race in chains, and their deaths the tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms.  We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance….Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed ground.  Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners.  Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”

He added: “At the time appointed, [let us] gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring time.”  

General Logan’s declaration was the statement of a Victor, focused on the Union side.  All the same, the first Memorial Day celebration held at the then new Arlington National Cemetery saw the decoration of the graves of 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there; it was in this way an act of reconciliation.

The first state formally to acknowledge the day was New York, in 1873; by 1890, it was recognized by all of the northern States.  However, given the nature of Gen. Logan’s decree, every Southern state refused to acknowledge Memorial Day.  They declared their own days for honoring the Confederate dead.

However, American entry into the First World War, 1917, changed the nature of Memorial Day: it would now honor Americans who had died fighting in any war.  With this shift, the Southern states began to give the day recognition. 

All the same, observance of Memorial Day declined during the latter half of the Twentieth Century.  The last Civil War veteran died in 1959, ending a direct human link to that event.  At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen became neglected.  Memorial Day morphed into a day of remembrance for all dead, not just those fallen in service to the nation.  Perhaps in consequence of this change, the U.S. Congress transformed the day into a “three day” weekend through the National Holiday Act of 1971, shifting its observance from May 30 to the last Monday of May.

All the same, Memorial Day observances continued, particularly in places still attached in some special way to the agony of the Civil War.  In 1974, as a graduate student at Ohio University in the southeast part of that state—and as a new 2^nd Lieutenant in the Ohio National Guard—I remember marching my company from our Armory in the small, poor, coal-mining town of Caldwell, up a hill to an old cemetery peppered with Civil War graves, for a flag ceremony and a traditional oration.

Indeed, to regain true appreciation for Memorial Day, I think we need to return to the occurrence that started it all: The American Civil War.  If that seems like an alien event to you, lost in the distant past, I suggest that you consider a day trip, sometime, to Arsenal Island, off Rock Island, IL.  There you will find a cemetery containing the graves of nearly 2000 Confederate soldiers who died while held on the island as prisoners of war.  As Betsy and I and our children walked among the markers, some years back, there were many surprises: one that impressed my adventure-oriented son was a grave for one John Rambo (the very name used by Sylvester Stallone in his Rambo films).  According to the grave stone, this John Rambo served the southern cause in the Irregular Missouri Cavalry, just as had the title character in the great Clint Eastwood adventure film, The Outlaw Josie Wales. 

This cemetery will also underscore for you the scope or scale of this war.  As these neat rows of graves testify, over 600,000 Americans perished in the Civil War.  Adjusted to our current population size, this would mean the death of 6 million persons: a staggering number.  The armies of the Union and the Confederacy numbered over 3 million combatants.  The equivalence today would be 30 million marching off to war.

What was this terrible conflict actually about?  Historians sympathetic to the Southern cause—such as M.E. Bradford, Willmoore Kendall, and (to a lesser degree) James McPherson—downplay the slavery issue.  They say that the Civil War was over the nature of the U.S. Constitution.  On critical questions, which took precedence: States Rights?  Or Federal Authority?  Could a state which had entered the Union later leave it?  They also see the Civil War as being over the nature of the economy: the Agrarian South holding to free trade vs. the industrial North holding to high, protectionist tariffs.  And they emphasize the high regard held in the South for the ties of family and for good manners, compared to the individualism and the growing coarseness of the urban North.  As a historian, I think these views deserve respect.  Even a hard bitten New England Yankee such as the poet Robert Frost is said to have remarked concerning the Civil War:  “The South was right about everything…except Slavery.”

For the North, though, the war was about two other issues.  On assuming the Presidency in early 1861, Lincoln’s first priority was to preserve the union.  While he loathed slavery, to prevent the rupture of union Lincoln was even ready to write the protection of slavery where it existed into the Constitution.  Politically he opposed only its spread.  Remember that remarkable passage in his First Inaugural Address:

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle field and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

After the Union victory at the bloody Battle of Antietam in 1862, though, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, and the End To Slavery joined The Preservation of Union as the reasons for war. 

The reality and danger of the so-called Slave Power came home to me ten years ago when, as President of this Club, I was preparing my historical monologue for the weekly meeting: a predecessor to Gloria Lundin’s weekly tales of Rockford in 1905.  Looking at an old Rockford paper from 1860, I came across a short article that struck me cold: a report that the Senate of the Minnesota Legislature had defeated a bill that would have permitted slavery in Minnesota.  Lincoln’s words from his “House Divided” speech in Springfield, 1858, came roaring back to memory:  “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”

The Slave Power in the United States already held four million persons in bondage.  Now it worked to expand this system to the Western territories; indeed, as the Minnesota example implies, into every state. 

The meaning of this War can also be grasped through two statements, one very personal and the other quite radical.  I borrow the first from the documentary, The Civil War, produced by Ken Burns.  It features a letter by Major Sullivan Ballou of the 2^nd Rhode Island Regiment.  It is dated July 14, 1861:

My dear Sarah.

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow.  Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure—and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me.  Not my will, but thine O God, be done.  If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready.  I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter.  I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution.  And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.

I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death—and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country, and thee.

I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my breast, for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness of those I loved and I could not find one.  A pure love of my country and of the principles have often advocated before the people and “the name of honor that I love more than I fear death” have called upon me, and I have obeyed.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with might cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long.  And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you.  How thoughtless and foolish I have oftentimes been!  How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm.  But I cannot.  I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah!  If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

Sullivan Ballou died one week later, at the battle of First Bull Run.

The second statement is better known.  It comes from the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg where, in early July, 1863, Robert E. Lee’s invading Army of Northern Virginia met a Union force commanded by George Meade.  This little town has a special meaning for our family.  For several years, we lived literallyon the battlefield there.  Our home was on the site of a skirmish on the battle’s first day.  My office at Gettysburg College was in a building that had served as a field hospital over those terrible days.  Thousands of amputated arms and legs, we were told, still lay buried nearby.  

Almost every weekend, we walked through the battlefield park that surrounds the town. Living in its spirit, we soon had our favorite places: (1) Little Round Top, where Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of Maine saved the Union’s left flank on the battle’s 2^nd day—and arguably so won the Civil War—through remarkable acts of daring, including the 20^th Maine’s audacious downhill bayonet charge; (2) an old farmstead, still kept in operation, occupied by the Confederate force on the first day; and (3) the Virginia memorial to General Lee, marking the spot where on the battle’s 3^rd Day he met the shattered remnants of General Pickett’s Division in the aftermath of its gloried, and ruinous charge.

When our family lived there, at least, this town still marked Memorial Day with a special tribute.  All the school children of the town and nearby hamlets came together.  Hundreds walked, class after class, from the center of Gettysburg out the road to the cemetery with bouquets of cut spring flowers from their yards.  My wife and small son watched with their own flowers from our back yard, and joined the parade.  The children spread across the cemetery, “strewing” their flowers on each grave.  And they listened to the retelling of the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln’s brief remarks at the November 19, 1863 dedication of the Cemetery.

You have probably all heard or read this speech, of course.  It is celebrated for its shortness:  a mere 272 words.  Yet today, it is also increasingly recognized by historians for another quality: as the third founding document of this nation; as important, in its way, as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  On this, historians sympathetic both to the Union and the Confederate causes agree:  The Gettysburg Address was a radical document; it announced and defined a new nation, one where the claim that all persons are truly “equal” would become a true guiding principle.

In his book, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, historian Garry Wills explains this new consensus:

The Gettysburg Address has become an authoritative expression of the American experience, as authoritative as the Declaration itself, and perhaps even more influential, since it determines how we read the Declaration.  For most people now, the Declaration means what Lincoln told us it means, as a way of correcting the Constitution itself without overthrowing it….By accepting the Gettysburg Address, its concept of a single people dedicated to a proposition, we have been changed.  Because of it, we live in a different America.

So, allow me to read to you the true Gettysburg Address, the one that most historians agree was actually delivered on that November day.  The version we normally read or hear is somewhat edited and embellished: a few good adjectives added here and there, once Lincoln realized that he had a hit on his hands.  The actual delivered text, recorded by two newspaper reporters that day, is a bit leaner; and for that, perhaps more powerful:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  We are met on a great battle-field of that war.  We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final-resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract.  The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.  It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

So, how should we celebrate Memorial Day in 2005?

• First, take time to visit the gravesites of Civil War veterans in a local cemetery.  In this very building, you will find brass plaques that list the Civil War soldiers buried in Winnebago County, by cemetery name.  As General Logan asked, “gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring-time.”

• Second, support his building: Memorial Hall.  According to an authority no less than President Theodore Roosevelt, in all of America there is no other structure quite like this one, dedicated to the memory of those such as Major Sullivan Ballou who gave up their lives, their dreams, and their futures to the building of this nation.  Support the memorial work being done here with your interest, your volunteer time, and your donations.

• Third, study again the founding documents of this nation: the Declaration of Independence; the Constitution; and—yes—the Gettysburg Address.  Consider their interplay, and the issues still raised in our day about the meaning of nationhood and equality. 

• Fourth, participate in one of the area events scheduled for this weekend:  (a) a service honoring fallen veterans at North Burritt Union Cemetery, on Sunday, 1 pm; (b) a parade in downtown Rockford on Monday at 9 am, followed by a ceremony in the library; (c) in this building at 11:15 am, speeches by Mayor Morrisey and County Board Chairman Christensen, followed by patriotic songs; and (d), a dedication at 2 pm of the new LZ Peace Memorial, honoring those who fell in Vietnam, held out at Midway Village.

• And fifth, consider giving your support to a bill in Congress—first introduced by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii in 1999—that would restore the traditional day of observance for Memorial Day back to May 30^th, instead of “the last Monday of May.”  Like the 4^th of July, this is a day that should not be subordinated to commercial convenience.