Decoration Day

That’s the ‘old’ expression, I know.  We have been celebrating Decoration Day for about 150 years (1862 by some estimates)  It wasn’t until 1966 that president Johnson signed a presidential proclamation recognizing Waterloo New York as the birthplace of “Memorial Day”  and the 89th Congress officially recognized the practice of Memorial Day.  The name wasn’t officially changed until 1967, and the holiday wasn’t officially recognized as a regular day off from work until 1968 when it was included in the Uniform Monday Holidays Act.

It wasn’t until nearly the 20th Century that the holiday was enlarge to include memorializing the dead from other conflicts than the Civil War.  But the recognition of the huge cost this nation paid in the Civil War was intrinsic to the holiday.   David Blight described the first major celebration of Decoration Day in 1865 at Savannah GA this way:

“This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.”

The Civil War was extraordinarily costly to the U.S.  with a population of only 31.4 million (1860 Census) the fact that 3.2 million soldiers fought in the war meant that 10% of our population were combatants!

Civil War Soldiers

And in terms of deaths in the Civil War, compared to other conflicts the costs to this nation were astronomical:

Compared with other conflicts we were far more determined to keep the South within the Union and to end Slavery than we have been about other causes.  The conflict was all about ideology and passions ran high.

Fatalities — DEATHS — by battle

There were things worth fighting our own brothers about.  And I wonder, some days, as I listen to the national news whether we are headed towards another Civil War of sorts.  One sees the Occupy protests of last year, and the Arab Spring cataclysms outside our country and it’s not hard to ask what is it that people want today:  what’s worth fighting for — not fighting strangers from a computer terminal controlling a drone thousands of miles away but hand to hand, in your own backyard?

It has often bothered me, when you look at the UNION statistics about casualties of the war that there is what appears to me to be a glaring discrepancy.  I did not find statistics about ‘colored casualties’ in the studies about the Confederate casualties but when I look at the adjacent chart detailing UNION casualties that of the 30,000+ african american deaths that nearly 90% of those casualties were the results of disease, not combat.

It would seem that healthcare for the POOR was an issue way back then!

As a youth I was one of those out there  putting american flags on the graves of our military dead.  It’s a good thing.  I think.  Since the Uniform Monday Holidays Act I miss the way in which holidays seem to have lost their significance and have devolved into excuses for a three day weekend and little more.  I AM a pacifist.  I think, believe, that war is not the way to handle things, and I also realize that it’s only because I live in this country that I can hold such a view without fear of recrimination, arrest, or even death.  But it is this country that gives me that freedom and that is the reason that memorializing those who have given the last full measure of devotion mean so much.  The freedoms we enjoy are because of their dedication.

I have no better crystal ball than anyone else.  I have no idea where this country is headed.  Sometimes in light of our recent experiences on the Forest I’m not sure we are headed anywhere by purpose. One would like to think that there’s someone in control but our systems and populations are so large that the idea of a single power in control of anything is absurd.  We can’t agree about climate change — probably one of the most controversial issues of our time, but we keep sending men and women into battle all over the world to meet perceived challenges.   Is there another cause that will cement our population?  We’ll see….

I hope you are remembering today… We have paid a huge price for what we have in this country.  I don’t know if we (collectively) have enough understanding of what that cost was, in order to value it the way that cost might suggest we ought…

Thanks for stopping by, I’ll walk with you tomorrow.