Memorial Day (Remembrance Day):
This post includes a song and a story from the southern U.S. at the end of the American Civil War, thought by some to be the origin of today's remembrance of those who died in U.S. wars, Memorial Day.
Here is a short explanation of the history of Memorial Day, keeping in mind that about 35% of those who pass this blog are from other countries.
Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day, a day when people placed flowers on soldiers' graves. While our Veteran's Day
originated in Armistice Day, at the end of World War I, Memorial Day
originated in the southern states at the end of the U.S. Civil War.
Both holidays originated in grieving the dead rather than celebrating a
victory. There is an earlier post on this blog about World War I from
last year's Veterans/Armistice Day (Requiem for the Fallen Soldiers).
While Armistice Day (Veteran's Day in the U.S.) is called "Poppy Day"
in South Africa and Malta, poppies are associated with Memorial Day in the U.S.
Memorial Day now remembers all Americans who died in wars, not just the Civil War. Since the 1950's, American flags have been placed on the graves in American military cemeteries on Memorial Day. The holiday is moved to a Monday or Friday to make a 3-day week-end, and it has become a day for the beach, a picnic or a barbecue, marking the beginning of summer and the end of the school year. As such, the original meaning is often forgotten.
Where the military meaning is observed, perhaps especially since World War II and the Korean War, the holiday has been combined sometimes with political support or opposition to a particular war. Those who remember World War II or the Korean War often combine it with their support for the U.S. military, while Viet Nam veterans and anti-war protesters have sometimes used the day to remember their opposition. In their origin, neither Memorial Day nor Veterans Day had to do with support for a particular war effort itself, or for a particular foreign policy. Rather, both originated in wars associated with great numbers of losses and great grief.
Of course, there is a movement toward a return to the original meaning of Memorial Day as a day of remembrance for those who died. As U.S. troops have died recently in Iraq, including those from Camp Pendleton near here, this post remembers their sacrifices and the sacrifices of their loved ones. A tribute to them does not necessarily imply support for either side of the present U.S. controversy. Rather, it celebrates the values of honor, duty, and self-sacrifice, and it remembers those who have grieved past losses, and those who grieve today.
A Civil War Song from the Origins of "Remembrance Day":
The following song remembers the southern wives and loved ones placing flowers on the graves of men who died in battle in the South, near the end, and after the South lost that war to the North, at the origin of Memorial Day:
Kneel Where Our Loves Are Sleeping
by Mrs. L. Nella Sweet, 1867
Kneel where our loves are sleeping,
Dear ones loved in days gone by,
Here we bow in holy revrence,
Our bosoms heave the heart-felt sigh,
They fell like brave men, true as steel,
And pour'd their blood like rain,
We feel we owe them all we have,
And can but kneel and weep again.
Kneel where our loves are sleeping,
They lost, but still were good and true,
Our fathers, brothers, fell still fighting,
We weep, tis all that we can do.
Here we find our noble dead,
Their spirits soar'd to Him above,
Rest they now about his throne,
For God is mercy, God is love,
Then let us pray that we may live
As pure and good as they have been,
That dying, we may ask of Him,
To ope the gate and let us in.
Kneel where our loves are sleeping,
They lost, but still were good and true,
Our fathers, brothers, fell still fighting,
We weep, tis all that we can do.
Source: Historic American Sheet Music from Duke University.
A Civil War Story:
My grandmother was a southern old lady, as I knew her, who was born around the turn of the last century when her father was 60 years old. As a young man, he had fought for the South in the Civil War, and he had told her about it when she was a little girl growing up in the Deep South.
I had difficulty listening to my grandmother's stories when I was an undergrad at Berkeley in the early 1970's. Her view of America's wars was so different from mine, and her view of the Civil War in particular was different from mine. I had come to love the writing of Abraham Lincoln and had a great respect for Martin Luther King, Jr. My favorite novelist was Henry James, who had two younger brothers who served as officers with the black regiments of Massachusetts in that war. My loyalties were with the North. I could not easily relate then to my grandmother, one of those old southern ladies in the Daughters of the Confederacy, who still remembered my family's southern Civil War heritage.
Over the years, I came to appreciate my great-grandfather who had fought for the wrong side in America's most deadly war. It is not an easy thing to do, to appreciate the sacrifices made by those who fought in combat for what I do not think was a moral or worthy cause. However, their values gave priority to honor, country, duty and self-sacrifice for what they believed was the good of their country. Those values are worth remembering.
My grandmother still had my great grandfather's discharge certificate from the Confederate Army, which she kept hidden in the back of a picture frame. She showed it to me one day, and told me having it had made it easy for her to prove her Civil War ancestry to get into the Daughters of the Confederacy. Her sister, who was in the Daughters of the American Revolution, had had a more difficult time proving her ancestry.
My great grandfather was very young when he volunteered for the Confederate Army. He was shot during one of the battles, and he told my grandmother about his time at an infirmary. It was not what we, today, would think of as an infirmary. It was just a place to stay until they were able to walk home, or until someone from their family came looking for them to take them home. There was no one there for medical assistance except two nuns and a medic to do those things for the wounded soldiers that the nuns could not do. The two nuns had rolled him up in a blanket and carried him off of the battle field to the nearby infirmary, where he stayed until he was able to get home.
Although he was a Baptist, for the rest of his life, my great grandfather showed honor to nuns whenever he saw them. He did not see many nuns in Mississippi, where my grandmother grew up. My grandmother remembered her first trip with her father to a "big city" -- Biloxi -- when she was a little girl. There, for the first time in her life, she saw nuns, in their heavy long habits, early in the 20th century. Her father went over to talk to them, as he always spoke to nuns whenever he saw them. My grandmother said she was afraid they would "swish me away in their skirts."
The story was told that way, in the late 20th century, in a tape that one of my cousins made of my grandmother's stories of the Old South. She also described the first time she saw an automobile, the first time she saw a flush toilet, and so forth. It may have been told that way, in part, because I had Catholic cousins, her Catholic great grandchildren. I did not remember hearing much about the nuns before, although I had heard my grandmother's civil war stories and my father's World War II stories so much as a small child that it was not until my first American History class in elementary school that I knew which of those two wars had come first.
War is a complicated matter, to say the obvious. Separating the value of duty and self-sacrifice from the value of a particular war is a complicated matter. Memorial Day remembers the sacrifice made and the loss of loved ones in wartime. This post has been an expression of that remembrance, with respect for those who died and for those who mourn their loss.
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