The origins of the Memorial Day holiday stem from a few years after the American Civil War.
In May of 1868, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan—head of an organization of Union veterans—established Decoration Day as May 30. It was a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers.
The First “Decoration Day”
The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. The keynote address was delivered by James A. Garfield (1831–81), who at the time was an Ohio congressman. He had also served as a major general in the Civil War and would eventually become the 20th president of the United States.
In this first of what would become annual Memorial Day addresses at Arlington, he set a standard by explaining what the day was all about and why it should be commemorated. Keep reading for some key excerpts from his remarks of 1868.
Today as we honor and mourn the military personnel who have died while serving in the US Armed Forces, his words are a strong reminder of the fallen and their sacrifices.
Decoration Day Address, 1868
By James A. Garfield
I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here 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.
With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept; plighted faith may be broken; and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens.
The Ultimate Sacrifice
For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue. For the noblest man that lives, there still remains a conflict.
He must still withstand the assaults of time and fortune, must still be assailed with temptations, before which lofty natures have fallen; but with these the conflict ended, the victory was won, when death stamped on them the great seal of heroic character, and closed a record which years can never blot.
I know of nothing more appropriate on this occasion than to inquire what brought these men here; what high motive led them to condense life into an hour, and to crown that hour by joyfully welcoming death? Let us consider.
The Civil War
Eight years ago this was the most unwarlike nation of the earth. For nearly fifty years, no spot in any of these states had been the scene of battle. Thirty millions of people had an army of less than 10,000 men.
The faith of our people in the stability and permanence of their institutions was like their faith in the eternal course of nature. Peace, liberty, and personal security were blessings as common and universal as sunshine and showers and fruitful seasons; and all sprang from a single source, the old American principle that all owe due submission and obedience to the lawfully expressed will of the majority.
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Against this principle the whole weight of the rebellion was thrown. Its overthrow would have brought such ruin as might follow in the physical universe, if the power of gravitation were destroyed and
“Nature’s concord broke,
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VI
Among the constellations war were sprung,
Two planets, rushing from aspect malign
Of fiercest opposition, in mid-sky
Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound.”
The Flash of the First Gun
The Nation was summoned to arms by every high motive which can inspire men. Two centuries of freedom had made its people unfit for despotism. They must save their Government or miserably perish.
As a flash of lightning in a midnight tempest reveals the abysmal horrors of the sea, so did the flash of the first gun disclose the awful abyss into which rebellion was ready to plunge us. In a moment the fire was lighted in twenty million hearts. In a moment we were the most warlike Nation on the earth.
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Epitome of War
Now consider this silent assembly of the dead. What does it represent? Nay, rather, what does it not represent? It is an epitome of the war.
Here are sheaves reaped in the harvest of death, from every battlefield of Virginia. If each grave had a voice to tell us what its silent tenant last saw and heard on earth, we might stand, with uncovered heads, and hear the whole story of the war.
Remembering the Fallen
We should hear that one perished when the first great drops of the crimson shower began to fall, when the darkness of that first disaster at Manassas fell like an eclipse on the Nation; that another died of disease while wearily waiting for winter to end; that this one fell on the field, in sight of the spires of Richmond, little dreaming that the flag must be carried through three more years of blood before it should be planted in that citadel of treason; and that one fell when the tide of war had swept us back till the roar of rebel guns shook the dome of yonder Capitol, and re-echoed in the chambers of the Executive Mansion.
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What other spot so fitting for their last resting place as this under the shadow of the Capitol saved by their valor? Here, where the grim edge of battle joined; here, where all the hope and fear and agony of their country centered; here let them rest, asleep on the Nation’s heart, entombed in the Nation’s love!
