What was the first memorial day

For many Americans, Memorial Day signifies the start of the summer season, as well as a much-needed long weekend filled with activities like sporting events and barbecues. But that wasn’t the original purpose of the day—and its evolution over the years has been rife with controversy.

Celebrated on the last Monday in May, Memorial Day commemorates those who have lost their lives serving their country—unlike Veterans Day, on November 11, which celebrates all people who have served in the military. Since the end of the Civil War, when it was known as Decoration Day, the holiday has been marked by solemn parades and ceremonies and the placing of flowers on the graves of fallen service members.

However, some critics have complained that the holiday has drifted too far toward frivolous fun and should be restored to a more respectful observance. Here’s how the holiday got started and why it has sparked debate throughout its history.

Disputed origins

Even the origins of Memorial Day remain debated—and controversial. Some scholars have noted that the practice of decorating graves with flowers on specific days in spring is an ancient custom, and may thus represent the true roots of the holiday. However, most say that the holiday began in the bloody wake of the nation’s most divided time: the Civil War.

From the silence of sorrowful hoursThe desolate mourners go,Lovingly laden with flowers

Alike for the friend and the foe;

The U.S. Civil War was devastating for families on both sides of the conflict—nearly 500,000 men died, or about two percent of the U.S. population at the time. During the battle of Gettysburg, the Union and Confederacy lost more than 7,000 people.

The conflict ended in April 1865 and in subsequent years women, especially in the South, began tending to the graves of fallen soldiers, often regardless of which side they fought for. Their willingness to overlook past divisions was lauded in newspapers in the North. Their kindness was viewed as an olive branch to many, including northerner Francis Miles Finch, who in 1867 wrote the popular poem “The Blue and The Grey” praising those efforts.

The specific event that sparked the first Memorial Day remains a matter of debate.  Some say the first Memorial Day took place on May 1, 1865, when a large group of recently freed African Americans held a parade in Charleston, South Carolina, to honor fallen Union soldiers. Dozens of other cities around the country claim the title, too, for their early Civil War remembrance ceremonies. Still other observers have pointed to President Abraham Lincoln’s commemoration of the dead at Gettysburg in 1863 as a possible origin of the holiday.

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President Lyndon B. Johnson would later weigh in on the lingering question in 1966, when he officially recognized Waterloo, New York’s ceremony on May 5, 1866, as the “birthplace” of Memorial Day. Waterloo’s supporters argued that event was deserving of the notice because it was formal and city wide, and included closing of local businesses.

From Decoration Day to Memorial Day

After years of local celebrations, the holiday was first celebrated nationwide in May 1868, when former Civil War General John A. Logan led a commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery. He issued a proclamation calling for "Decoration Day" to be observed each May 30 across the country.

Logan, who would eventually run for vice president, called it Decoration Day because he said the fallen should be honored by "strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating, the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion." The month of May was likely chosen due to an abundance of spring flowers.

After World War I, in which America lost more than 100,000 soldiers, Decoration Day was expanded to honor all those who had died while fighting—not just those from the Civil War. The name of the holiday also gradually shifted, with Memorial Day becoming more popular in the 20th century.

Congress made Memorial Day an official national holiday in 1971. Instead of May 30, however, the day was pegged to the last Monday in May to create a long weekend. In the years since, Memorial Day evolved into a three-day weekend filled with barbecues, sports, and store discounts, which often overshadow the day's more somber origins.

How Memorial Day is celebrated

The American Legion has called for a return to a more serious observance of Memorial Day. In 2010, the organization wrote a resolution that called for ending the long weekend and restoring Memorial Day to May 30, noting, "The majority of Americans view Memorial Day as a time for relaxation and leisure recreation rather than as a solemn occasion and a time to reflect and pay tribute to the American servicemen and women who sacrificed their lives in defense of our Nation."

The late Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye, a World War II veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who served in the Senate from 1963 to 2012, introduced legislation to move Memorial Day back to May 30 several times, without success. Some communities continue to host Memorial Day events on May 30 as well.

We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. ... Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

Many solemn observances of the day remain, however. Since 2000, people across the country have been asked to join in a moment of remembrance at 3:00 p.m. local time. Bells are tolled and NASCAR races are put on hold. Flags are flown at half-mast until noon, to signify a day of mourning.

Over Memorial Day weekend, more than 135,000 people visit Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Traditionally, the president or vice president lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. More than 280,000 flags are placed at headstones for all those who have laid down their lives for their country.

Editor's note: This story was originally published on May 24, 2019. It has been updated.

[T]he true measure of Lincoln is in his place today in the heart of American citizenship, though more than half a century has passed since his colossal service and his martyrdom. In every moment of peril, in every hour of discouragement, whenever the clouds gather, there is the image of Lincoln to rivet our hopes and to renew our faith. Whenever there is a glow of triumph over national achievement, there comes the reminder that but for Lincoln’s heroic and unalterable faith in the Union, these triumphs could not have been.

Address at the Dedication of the Lincoln MemorialExternal, Warren G. Harding, May 30, 1922. The American Presidency Project.

On May 30, 1922, the  Lincoln Memorial was officially dedicated in Washington, D.C. Created in memory of President Abraham Lincoln, who served throughout the harrowing years of the U.S. Civil War only to be assassinated shortly before the war ended, the structure has come to take on a larger-than-life role as a symbolic platform for showcasing the nation’s hopes and aspirations in the context of national unity. Its prominent placement as the visual anchor of West Potomac Park, directly aligned with the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol Building across almost two miles of distance, has helped to solidify the vast open space of the National Mall as the preeminent site for civic gatherings, national commemoration, and peaceful protest in the century that followed its opening. Today, the Lincoln Memorial remains a vibrant symbol, and is one of Washington, D.C.’s most visited locations.

While the Lincoln Memorial celebrates Lincoln’s life as well as the preservation of the Union, events staged on its steps over time have also enlarged its meanings. Marian Anderson’s 1939 Easter Sunday concert, for example, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of 1963, compound its compelling legacy as a place for asserting civil rights and racial equality. In October, 1943, a group of more than four hundred rabbis walked from Union Station to the Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, and White House to raise awareness of the mass killing of European Jews by the Nazi regime. In October, 1967, more than 100,000 Vietnam War protestors gathered near the Lincoln Memorial on the day it was stated they would “levitate the Pentagon.” On Juneteenth (June 19) in 1970, the Black Panther Party held a rally at the Memorial to promote their proposed “Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention” planned for later in the year. Such examples highlight the Lincoln Memorial’s iconic role as a setting that elevates the historical resonance of events.

The Lincoln Memorial was many decades in the making. Congress’s first authorization of a memorial association dates to 1867, but that initial group failed to raise its needed funds. When the successful Lincoln Memorial Commission was finally approved by Congress in 1910, their first task was to determine a location for the structure. The  Memorial’s eventual placement became an important component of the recently-instituted McMillan Plan (1902), to create a monumental core plus a park system for Washington, D.C.  As the second monument—and first memorial—to grace the extended National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial helped to define the strong geometries and neoclassical style of the landscape, as well as its commemorative character. Both would be fully solidified with the completion of the Jefferson Memorial two decades later.

The Lincoln Memorial’s groundbreaking was held on February 12, 1914, with foundation work alone taking more than a year because the structure was built on reclaimed tidal flats. The massive cornerstone was laid on February 12, 1915. Construction continued steadily until the interruptions of World War I, along with a decision to double the size of Lincoln’s statue to ensure its visibility, extended the length of time to completion. Once the interior chamber—made of granite, marble, and limestone—was completed, Lincoln’s larger-than-life statue was assembled and completed on site in 1919-1920. Finishing work on the Memorial, along with extensive landscaping and creation of the long Reflecting Pool to the Memorial’s east, continued through the following year, and even after the official dedication and opening.

Architect Henry Bacon worked closely with sculptor Daniel Chester French on the Lincoln Memorial’s design, which is modeled after the ancient Greek Parthenon still standing in Athens. Construction was undertaken by the George A. Fuller Company. At ninety-nine feet tall and two hundred feet wide, and with sixty foot interior ceilings, the structure is indeed monumental. A long flight of 58 steps leads from the plaza to its entrance on the eastern facade. Thirty-six exterior Doric columns symbolize the thirty-six states in the Union at the time of Lincoln’s death, with the name of each state included in the frieze above the columns. On the upper attic frieze, all states at the time of the Memorial’s dedication are included. Inside, the Memorial is divided into three chambers separated by columns, with French’s dramatic nineteen-foot-tall sculpture of a seated President Lincoln occupying the center. North and south side chambers contain carved inscriptions of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and his Gettysburg Address along with painted murals portraying governing principles. Skilled carving of French’s massive portrait sculpture design was done by New York’s Piccirilli Brothers, and took four years to complete. Ernest C. Bairstow and Evelyn Beatrice Longman provided architectural carving including inscriptions, while Jules Guerin designed and painted the murals.

As many as 50,000 people, including Civil War veterans from both the Union and the former Confederacy, attended the Memorial’s dedication ceremony. Also among the distinguished guests was President Lincoln’s adult surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln, then age 78. Speakers included former president and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft (who had also served as president of the Lincoln Memorial Commission), President Warren G. Harding—whose speech was broadcast on the radio using experimental technology—and Robert Moton, President of Tuskegee Institute.  Poet Edwin Markham read his “Lincoln, the Man of the People.”

With the National Mall’s commemorative context now firmly in place, in the years since the opening of the Lincoln Memorial a set of additional monuments and memorials has been raised on the National Mall and in West Potomac Park, most notably: Jefferson Memorial (1943), Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982),  Korean War Memorial (1995), Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (1997), World War II Memorial (2004), and Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial (2011). Equally large in scale but all very different in character, each brings its own history and architectural contribution to this meaning-filled landscape—from the abstract “V” and wall of names  at the Vietnam  Memorial, to the vignettes in time and space at the Roosevelt, to the monumental portrait of Dr. King emerging from uncarved stone. The stories this monumental landscape tells us are embedded in a nation’s shared past but also, like the Lincoln Memorial itself, will continue to grow and change with successive generations.