I had planned to do a roundup post, but Winds of Change has a better one than I could have done. So, instead, I'll do some original reporting.
Mark Steyn wrote a piece on Memorial Day:
Before the First World War, it was called Decoration Day -- a day for going to the cemetery and "strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion." Some decorated the resting places of fallen family members; others adopted for a day the graves of those who died too young to leave any descendants.We still do.
I wish we still did that.
Virginia is unique in the South in that it celebrates Confederate Memorial Day on 30 May (most places do it on 26 April), with the provision that celebrations "give place" to Memorial Day proper. It was therefore the case that I was able to see the two celebrations back to back, as they are held in the small town of Warrenton, which changed hands sixty-seven times during the Civil War.
This morning's celebrations were far larger, and began at 9:30 AM with a parade down main street. It involved the local school bands, JROTC rifle demonstration teams, majorettes, and Marines in their Dress Blues. The Memorial Day parade is smaller than other parades -- it occupied only half of the small main street, as compared to the Halloween parade, which occupies all of it. Nevertheless, quite a few families came out to have a walk in the May sun and see the parade.
It was an old fashioned parade, in that spectators did not simply watch, but followed along (the Halloween parade is also of this sort). The destination was the cemetery, which includes many graves from the Civil War, and indeed from the Colonial period forward. The speechmaking was rather short, with the three volleys of the 21 gun salute following within twenty minutes of the start of the parade. Perhaps two hundred people came out to attend, not counting the bands in the parade or the Marines in the color guard.
Confederate Memorial Day celebrations were held the day previous. These were smaller, with the ceremony having perhaps a hundred people in total.
The ceremonies were also rather longer, with speech following on speech, including a long history lesson about one of the Civil War officers native to the town. There were two prayers -- an invocation and a benediction, the first of which I wish I had a copy to quote to you. It was an unusually fine example of the art. Though it was the Civil War they had come to remember, the prayers were of national unity and the brotherhood of Americans. The poem read afterward likewise could have applied to the soldiers of either army. There were also several hymns, most notably "Amazing Grace."
The UDC came out with baskets of flowers, which were distributed among the crowd to decorate the graves. In particular, they wished to decorate the mass grave of Civil War soldiers who had died in the hospitals following First and Second Manassas, and whose markers had been used for firewood by the Union Army during the last, bitter winter of the war. But they have raised a fine granite marker over the mass grave now, and it was covered with flags and flowers.
Then there was the 21 gun salute. There was no official color guard, but instead a group of civilian re-enactors. Five of the seven "guns" were muskets, but the last two were Civil War artillery pieces. The third time they set them off, a squirrel in the tree behind me -- having had as much as his little heart could stand of the shock and the smoke -- lept straight out of the tree and hit the ground running, twenty feet below.
Poor creature, he didn't understand. The cannons and longarms had not come to shed blood, but to honor it.
I put my hat back on my head, and went home to start the cooking fire. Happy Memorial Day.
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