Memorial Day – In Remembrance of those who died.

By Linda Stewart, 27 May 2019

“Roughly 1,264,000 American soldiers have died in the nation’s wars–620,000 in the Civil War and 644,000 in all other conflicts. It was only as recently as the Vietnam War that the amount of American deaths in foreign wars eclipsed the number who died in the Civil War.”

Per Barbara Maranzani in her History article “8 Things You May Not Know About Memorial Day”, it reads in part … “In May 1868, General John A. Logan, the commander-in-chief of the Union veterans’ group known as the Grand Army of the Republic, issued a decree that May 30 should become a nationwide day of commemoration for the more than 620,000 soldiers killed in the recently ended Civil War. On Decoration Day, as Logan dubbed it, Americans should lay flowers and decorate the graves of the war dead “whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

According to legend, Logan chose May 30 because it was a rare day that didn’t fall on the anniversary of a Civil War battle, though some historians believe the date was selected to ensure that flowers across the country would be in full bloom. Even before the war ended, women’s groups across much of the South were gathering informally to decorate the graves of Confederate dead. In April 1886, the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus, Georgia resolved to commemorate the fallen once a year—a decision that seems to have influenced John Logan to follow suit, according to his own wife.”

Today across America, people are placing flags on the graves of our fallen soldiers so that we will never forget.

Reference: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-facts  and  https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-memorial-day?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *