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| Union and Confederate Soldier- Cousins, Friends or Brothers? |
Memorial Day is a day of vacation, fun, parks, friends, and meat
on the grill. It is all of these things as well as much more. Memorial Day also
includes the remembrance of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice so
that the rest of us may enjoy these sunny days. As you are spending your day in
carefree joy, try and keep in the back of your head the essential purpose of Memorial
Day. Perhaps you want to drop a few flowers at a war veterans site and spend a
moment remembering them.
The history of the Memorial Day is an interesting one. It
was proclaimed on May 5th, 1868 by General John Logan. He issued the ceremony (http://www.usmemorialday.org/order11.html)
by laying flowers at the graves of both Confederate and Union graves. To him it
was important to honor the dead of the country and the ultimate sacrifice they
made to their nation. It was the continuous search for national truth that
compelled these solders to lay down their hearts, leave their families, and
sacrifice their bodies so that others could live free.
Following suit congress passed the National Holiday Act of
1871 solidifying the concept of a national day of mourning. The Grand Army of
the Republic, a union veterans group, supported the event because the flowers
would be in full bloom. It would seem that such flowers represent the
generation of new life and new beginnings. The day is expected to focus closely only on those who died trying to give that new cycle.
Some of the first national ceremonies were held in Gen.
Robert E. Lee’s Arlington’s mansion with Ulysses S. Grant presiding over
the affair. The history dates back to 1866 when Confederate women decorated the
graves of their soldiers who died at Shiloh. Seeing the bare Union graves they
began to decorate them as well (http://www.va.gov/opa/speceven/memday/history.asp).
The Civil War was one of the most difficult and causality
driven wars of history with nearly a half-million deaths. When considering all
of the American deaths through all of the wars reaching approximately 1.2
million the Civil War was almost half. American upon
American each fighting over their particular vantage points of life, perception of freedom, commerce and
country. Without serious sacrifice the country we know today would cease to
exist as the sole nation from coast to coast. Opportunities of the present were built on the past.
As you set upon your day consider the many struggles the
nation faced in the past and the many more it will face in the years to
come. In some ways today’s threats are battles over international influence,
future opportunities, and the very way people make meaning of their lives.
America still has a legacy to teach but must overcome its current financial and
cultural difficulties to be ready for any challenges the future may bring.
William Herndon, a law partner with Lincoln, stated a number
of years after Lincoln's speech, “"Through logic inductively seen, Lincoln
as a statesman, and political philosopher, announced an eternal truth -- not
only as broad as America, but covers the world.".
Lincoln’s Address:
A house divided against itself cannot
stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and
half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the
house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all
one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the
further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the
belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will
push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as
new — North as well as South.
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