Today the premier observance takes place in Arlington National Cemetery, where the president lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier followed by an address in the amphitheater. Some assert that first observance there was actually in 1868 and not 1866. Nevertheless, there still is contention that Waterloo was not first. What helped Waterloo’s cause to be first was the consistency of the celebration from year to year in 1866, 1867, and 1868 and thereafter? Other municipalities did not have a tradition of annual celebration or observance where businesses closed as they did in Waterloo. Johnson endorsed the designation as he similarly declared the hamlet the birthplace of Memorial Day.
Congress agreed when both House and Senate passed House Concurrent Resolution 587 on May 19, 1966. Rockefeller signed a proclamation on March 7, 1966, recognizing the birth of the holiday there. Waterloo, New York, is the birthplace of Memorial Day as decreed by the state and federal governments. The new graves were blanketed by flowers and dedicated, with thousands of people parading down the racetrack that had been the site of the prison camp.ĭespite these conflicting claims of who was first, the issue has been seemingly settled. He explains that in May 1865, newly freed African Americans reburied 257 Union soldiers, who had died in a prison camp and were hastily buried, in order to give them the proper honors in death. David Blight book, Race and Reunion:The Civil War in American Memory. However, one of the earliest and perhaps largest ceremonies was held in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. They wished to annoy the Yankees, and now the Grand Army of the Republic in retaliation and from no worthier motive, have determined to annoy them by adopting their plan of commemoration.” Furthermore, the New York Times from June 5, 1868, states the following: “The ladies of the South instituted this Memorial Day. Authors Richard Gardiner and Daniel Bellware presented their case in an academic study. The Columbus, Mississippi, observance received further attention when lawyer Francis Miles Finch learned of the conciliatory gesture and was moved to compose the poem “The Blue and the Gray.” The Atlantic Monthly published it in 1867.Īnother Columbus, in Georgia, asserts that the honor of the first Memorial Day should be theirs. It was on April 25, 1866, that four women decided to honor the Confederate and Union war dead in the local cemetery with flowers. The town was the site of a hospital and also a burial ground for Union and Confederate soldiers from the Battle of Shiloh. Carbondale, Illinois, and Petersburg, Virginia, also vie to be first.Ĭolumbus, Mississippi similarly is not to be out done. Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, cites October 1864 as the beginning for cemetery decorating in the locale. Many towns claim the privelege of being the first one to celebrate Memorial Day. Welles is credited with the inspiration that “it would be honorable and appropriate to recall the sacrifice of the patriotic dead by displaying floral tributes on the gravestones of the fallen.” A pharmacist in Waterloo Village, New York, Henry C. With the conclusion of the divisive Civil War in 1865, there was a yearning for remembrance of those lost -for healing the wounds of war. They decorated the graves of their fallen heroes with flowers. The government established national cemeteries for the Union fallen, while cemeteries were established in cities and towns across the country. In four years of fighting, more than more than 622,000 Americans, from the North and the South, had died.
It is about gratitude.Īlthough placing flowers on graves is a very old tradition, the modern Memorial Day observance began with the end of the Civil War. Memorial Day is in remembrance of soldiers who fell in combat risking their lives for their country. Parades take place, the grill is dusted off for the first time. Memorial Day is often considered the unofficial beginning of summer. “Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.” Grant and General John Logan seated at the flag-draped Old Amphitheater, Arlington Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, for Decoration Day ceremonies on May 30, 1873.
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