From farmer’s markets and parades to county fairs and annual plant sales, Memorial Day weekend in the Northeast Kingdom marks the unofficial start of summer.
But it is also a time when the nation gathers to pay tribute to veterans who have died in war. The origins of this national holiday reportedly go back to May 5, 1868, three years following the end of the Civil War, when the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans under the leadership of Major General John A. Logan, established Decoration Day, to be observed each year on May 30. Chosen with the idea that by the end of the month, flowers would be in bloom across the country, the goal was to set time aside to decorate the graves of the war dead and reflect on their sacrifices. At Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., Union General Ulysses S. Grant presided over a solemn ceremony outside of the former home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, after which the 5,000 attendees sang hymns and placed flowers and American flags on the graves of soldiers who fought on both sides of the conflict.
Though this event is widely considered to be the first official Memorial Day, the observance was not declared a federal holiday until 1971, in an act that moved its celebration to the last Monday in May and extended the purpose to honoring all soldiers who had died in American wars. Yet even before Decoration Day, local communities engaged in springtime rituals to honor the Civil War dead. Many of the ceremonies were held in the South, where most of the fallen soldiers were buried. More than 25 communities claim to have inspired the holiday. Despite continuing debate, on March 7, 1966, New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller issued a proclamation declaring Waterloo, N.Y. to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. His decree was based on the recognition of a community-wide event that had been held there on May 5 a century earlier, when businesses closed, and townspeople marched to the village cemeteries and decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags. And the matter was all but settled when, in May of 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed a Congressional resolution conferring the same designation to Waterloo.
Nevertheless, this origin story around one of America’s most cherished holidays discounts the significance of a ceremony organized a year earlier on May 1, 1865, by African Americans in Charleston, S.C. That May Day, 10,000 of the city’s residents, most of whom were Black but also included White missionaries and teachers, paraded onto the remnants of a Confederate racecourse and jockey club that had been converted to an outdoor prisoner of war camp during the final year of the war. At least 257 Union soldiers died there from exposure, disease, and mistreatment and were buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. In the weeks before the gathering, more than two dozen African American workers reburied the Union dead, placing them in individual plots. They then constructed a 10-foot white fence around the cemetery, with an archway bearing the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
The procession they orchestrated began at 9 in the morning, led by 3,000 African American schoolchildren, who were carrying roses and singing “John Brown’s Body,” about the abolitionist martyr who sacrificed his life to end slavery. Following the children were hundreds of Black women holding baskets of flowers, wreaths, and crosses. Finally, African American men marched in front of Union infantry and other citizens toward the site. After a morning of prayer, readings from scripture, and the singing of spirituals, the afternoon was filled with a picnic, renditions of patriotic songs, an estimated 30 speeches by Union officers, and drill demonstrations, which included soldiers from the 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, who performed a double-columned march around the gravesite.
In his powerful book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, historian David W. Blight writes, “The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration.” Even so, the author points to how their story often remains unheard and is frequently absent from history books. In the process, he highlights the dangers of erasing inconvenient truths from national memory. In this case, the African Americans who led the inaugural commemoration of Union soldiers dared to tell the truth that the war was fought over slavery and universal human rights, not over states’ rights and Southern pride. Within a nation desperately trying to reconcile during Reconstruction, the truth may have been perceived as too divisive.
Still, only by coming together to foster a shared understanding of our collective past will we be able to avoid the same mistakes in the future. This responsibility extends not only to history books and classrooms but to museums and other public spaces aimed at educating for democracy. For this reason, an upcoming exhibit at the Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village will center the stories of those whose contributions to the American Civil War have been marginalized, including African Americans, Native Americans, women, and Canadian soldiers who joined the war effort. Higher Principles of Patriotism: Vermont and Unheard Voices from the Civil War will open at the Old Stone House on Juneteenth. We look forward to having you visit.
Spencer Kuchle is Associate Director of Collections and Interpretation at the Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village.
