Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was called at the turn of the century, is an American holiday tied specifically to the Civil War. Some of the earliest observances occurred slightly before or just after the war ended. Graves were decorated in Boalsberg, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1864; James Redpath of Charleston, South Carolina, reported that the families of former slaves decorated the graves of 257 Union soldiers on May 1, 1865; and Sue Landon Vaughan of Jackson, Mississippi, called for the decoration of the graves of Confederate soldiers on April 26, 1865.
One of the most touching early celebrations happened on April 25, 1866, at Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Mississippi, where four women met to decorate the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers. Forty Union soldiers were also buried in that same ground, and the women, in a spirit of generosity, decorated those graves as well. The Columbus event made national headlines, and a lawyer in Ithaca, New York, Francis Miles Finch, on reading of the incident, wrote a poem about it called "The Blue and the Gray." It was published on September 1867 in The Atlantic Monthly, the same publication which had first printed Julia Ward Howe’s "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The text is shown below:
By the flow of the inland river,
Where the fleet of iron has fled,
Where the blades of the grave grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead.
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the Judgement Day,
Under the one the Blue,
Under the other the Gray.Those in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat;
All with the battle blood gory,
In the dusk of Eternity meet.
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the Judgement Day,
Under the laurel the Blue,
Under the willow the Gray.From the silence of sorrowful hours,
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers,
Alike for the friends and the foe.
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the Judgement Day,
Under the roses the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray.So, with an equal splendor,
The morning sunrays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all.
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the Judgement Day,
Broidered with gold, the Blue,
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.So, when the summer calleth,
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth,
The cooling drip of the rain.
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the Judgement Day,
Wet with the rain, the Blue.
Wet with the rain, the Gray.Sadly but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done,
In the storm of the years that are fading,
No braver battle was won.
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the Judgement Day,
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever,
When they laurel the graves of our dead.
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the Judgement Day,
Love and tears for the Blue.
Tears and love for the Gray.
Like Julia Ward Howe’s "Battle Hymn," Finch’s poem was quickly turned into a song. My Civil War music group, Hardtack & Homespun, has recorded one version of this. Unfortunately, the MP3 version of this is no longer available since the MP3.com website went out of business. I am in hopes that these songs can be added at some point directly to this website.
The Memorial Day out-take from my book concerned an early celebration in Richmond, Virginia. Annie Pierpont, daughter of Virginia Governor Francis Harrison Pierpont, wrote about the incident in her memoir of the war and the early days of Reconstruction. This is my reconstruction of her effort:
Each spring, the Confederate graves in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond bloomed with floral tributes. But a series of neglected graves with barrel staves for headboards just outside the Hollywood grounds remained barren. Here were buried Union officers who, as prisoners, had starved to death or succumbed to disease in Libby Prison and Castle Thunder.
One May evening, Mrs. Pierpont, in consultation with Miss Woolsey, a woman from New York who taught in a Freedmen’s School, decided to organize the children to gather flowers and make red, white, and blue floral arrangements to place on each Union grave. That week, children gathered blue and white flowers in the fields around the city. Governor Pierpont allowed them to take red flowers from the greenhouse at the mansion.
This task completed, the decorations themselves had to be made. Each decoration began with two pieces of arbor vitae tied end to end. Red, white, and blue flowers were tied between the two pieces.
Anna felt very important, as did all the children, carrying her blossoms to the soldiers’ graves. Before tacking her flowers on the barrel staves, Anna looked around first to make sure no one could see her. Provided there were no onlookers, she would kiss the flowers and say, "I love you, soldier."
No speeches were made. No clergyman said a prayer. No band played solemn music. The women and children worked quickly and quietly on the graves, and left as quietly as they had come, making their own special contribution to what would eventually become Decoration Day, and in a later age would be called Memorial Day.
Memorial Day did not become an official holiday until General John A. "Black Jack" Logan, commander-in-chief of the Union veterans organization known as the Grand Army of the Republic, issued his General Order No. 11 naming the 30th of May as the designated date "for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country…."
The grave of William Holden, b. 1843, d. 1936. A soldier in Co. I, 13th Regiment Vermont Volunteers. The 13th Vermont was present at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, and participated in the attack of the right flank of on-coming Confederates during Pickett's Charge. Holden was a Mason.
Christian Commission | Fort Warren
Copyright © 2000 by Robert Willis Allen