US Memorial Day

While many associate Veterans Day and Memorial Day with service, the two are not the same. Veterans Day is a celebration of those who serve and have served. Memorial Day is a solemn day to reflect on veterans and military personnel who are deceased.[1]

The US Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day and began during the US Civil War when citizens placed flowers on the graves of those who had been killed in battle. The Civil War produced more than 620,000 military deaths, roughly 2 percent of the total US population in 1865.

The Civil War, which ended in the spring of 1865, claimed more lives than any conflict in US history and required the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries.

By the late 1860s, Americans in various towns and cities had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, ‘decorating’ their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.

It is unclear where exactly this tradition originated; numerous different communities may have independently initiated the memorial gatherings. And some records show that one of the earliest Memorial Day commemorations was organized by a group of formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. Nevertheless, in 1966 the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day.[2]

After World War I, Decoration Day came to be observed in honor of those who had died in all US wars, and its name changed to Memorial Day. It became an official US federal holiday in 1971.

This article is presented at no charge for educational and informational purposes only.

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