Sunday, May 24, 1998

Reviving the spirit of Memorial Day

By JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN / Bridge News

NEW YORK -- This is a wonderful moment in American history. The country is happy, wealthy and at peace. No war is menacing us, not even any serious skirmish.

This is the right time to revive the true spirit of Memorial Day, to reflect on the terrible losses that war brings and to honor the 1.1 million Americans who have died over the last century and a half fighting for their country.

The predecessor celebrations to Memorial Day began spontaneously after the Civil War. Families and friends decorated the graves of their slain loved ones with flowers and flags.

John A. Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union soldiers, made these celebrations official. In 1868 he issued an order establishing May 30 as the day for veterans to honor the graves of their slain Union comrades. (The Confederate dead were excluded.) He called this Decoration Day.

A second part of memorializing those killed in the Civil War was the federal reburial program, which identified and buried individual soldiers in marked graves.

Professor Drew Gilpin Faust of the University of Pennsylvania notes that this was an unprecedented action for the United States and, indeed, for the world.

Northerners, she says, "argued passionately that the assumptions of American democracy for which the war was being fought required the Union government to care for and memorialize each slain body."

The Confederate dead were also excluded from this program. So much for Gen. Ulysses Grant's promise of 1865: "The war is over. The rebels are our countrymen again." The fallen Confederates were instead buried under privately funded programs.

In the end, many slain Union soldiers were buried in their hometowns. Veterans, followed by civilians, would march through their towns to the cemeteries after the war -- an early version of our parades.

Meanwhile, Southerners kept themselves apart from what they regarded as a Northern commemoration of what the North called a war but the South called a rebellion.

Southern states established various dates other than May 30 for honoring their Confederate dead. Some observed April 2, the anniversary of the Battle of Selma. Others chose April 9, the anniversary of Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender, or April 26, the day of Gen. Joseph E. Johnson's surrender.

World War I brought other animosities about memorial celebrations to the forefront. In addition to the split between North and South, veteran groups were divided between those that wanted Memorial Day to honor all those slain by war and those that wanted a separate Armistice Day for veterans of World War I.

One can certainly sympathize with those who wanted a separate Armistice Day. Though every war has its unique horrors, the carnage of World War I, with its introduction of gas warfare, was particularly horrific.

The debate continued until after World War II, when Memorial Day became the day for honoring the slain, and Armistice Day, renamed Veterans Day, for honoring the living. Not until 1971 did Congress declare the last Monday of May the national Memorial Day.

We think of ourselves as a fortunate nation for never having endured a prolonged international war within our boundaries since gaining our independence. Nonetheless, the rolls of our war dead are lengthy and tragic.

The Civil War (1861-65) killed 364,511 Union soldiers and 133,821 Confederate soldiers, World War I (1917-18) killed 116,516 Americans, World War II (1941-45) killed 405,399, the Korean War (1950-53) killed 54,246 and Vietnam (1962-75) killed 58,135. Other Americans were killed in other, smaller conflicts.

On Memorial Day we should reflect on the enormity of these numbers. Each one of those 1.1 million slain represents an individual soul, a human being who met death prematurely.

Memorial Day should represent what novelist Cheryl Sucher calls "the rescue of memory," a time when the living remember the suffering and sacrifices of those who died that others might lead better lives.

We wouldn't be here, living our cheerful, prosperous American lives if Americans before us hadn't fought and died for our principles. So as we march, and listen to glorious American bands, and welcome the summer, we should also remember.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Services