Memorial Day will be observed in Chestertown at noon on Monday, May 29, in Monument Park across from Fountain Park and Emmanuel Church. Members of Sumner Hall G.A.R. Post #25 will honor the fallen veterans of all wars in a brief wreath-laying ceremony. All are invited to attend.
Memorial Day has a long tradition. It began in the aftermath of the American Civil War just over 150 years ago. Then it was called Decoration Day and people would decorate the graves and memorials of their loved ones who had died in the Civil War. The tradition grew quickly and by 1868 – just three years after the war ended, May 30 was declared an official day of commemoration. May 30 was chosen because it was not the anniversary of any specific battle of the war and because flowers would be in bloom everywhere by that late date in spring. On May 5, 1868, General John Logan, the national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), wrote in General Order No. 11 ““The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.”
On that first official Memorial Day, General James A. Garfield, who would later become the 20th president of the United States, spoke at the ceremonies in Arlington National Cemetary where approximately 5,000 people decorated the graves of over 20,000 soldiers – both Confederate and Union. General Ulysses S. Grant, soon to be President, and his wife Julia presided over the ceremony from the porch of Arlington House. Arlington House was the former home of Mary Custis and her husband, Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The irony and poignancy of that were not lost on anyone there that day.
After all the speeches were finished, the large crowd, singing and praying, began to circulate through the cemetery, placing flowers on each soldier’s grave. Among them were many veterans of the war, members of the G.A.R., along with children from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphan Home.
Putting flowers and other decorations on graves, especially military graves, was a long-standing practice. But the tradition of Decoration Day for the American Civil War – or the War of Rebellion as it was more frequently called then – may have started in Charleston, SC, in 1865. The war had just ended. The slaves were free. A small group of former slaves, out of gratitude to the army that had freed them, decided to give a more dignified and proper burial to the over two hundred Union soldiers buried in a mass grave in Charleston. These were the soldiers who had died as prisoners of war in the local Confederate prison camp.
The freedmen worked for two weeks to dig up and then re-inter the bodies in individual plots in tidy rows. They chose a peaceful spot, cleaned and landscaped it, built a ten-foot tall wooden fence around it and an arched entryway. On the arch, it read “Martyrs to the Race Course.” This was a bit of a serious pun as the prison had been built on a racetrack. A dedication ceremony took place on May 1, 1865, with over 10,000 people, mostly former slaves, in attendance. About 3000 Black school children were there along with many Union troops, ministers, and missionaries. The event was reported in many national newspapers at the time, including the New York Tribune.
During the immediate post-war period, similar Decoration Day ceremonies were held in many places, leading in later years to competing claims for being the “first” Memorial Day although few used that term. How much these other Decoration Days were inspired by or influenced by the slightly earlier Charleston one and its newspaper coverage is unknown. However, Decorations Days quickly became important and widespread, including in many African-American communities.
On May 5, 1866, the village of Waterloo, NY, held such a ceremony. The town was draped in black mourning and flags flew at half-mast. A band played solemn marches as a large parade of veterans, dignitaries, and local residents walked to the three local cemeteries to decorate the graves of soldiers. A year later, on May 5, 1867, it was all repeated, making Waterloo’s Decoration Day an “annual” event. The next year, the town moved the date to May 30 in accordance with General Logan’s order.
Boalsburg, PA, claims to have started annual decoration of Civil War veterans graves as early as October of 1864, more than six months before the Charleston racetrack commemoration. However, Boalsburg’s claim to the title is based on only three women visiting the local graveyard to place flowers on the graves of soldiers who were family members.
Carbondale, IL, has plaques in two cemeteries stating those sites to be the first. Both Columbus, GA, and Columbus, MS, claim that their celebration was the first.
In Columbus, Georgia, a ladies’ social and charitable society changed its name and focus from the Soldiers’ Aid Society to the Ladies’ Memorial Association (LMA). A letter to the editor of the local newspaper in March 1866 invited other ladies to join them in decorating the graves of Confederate soldiers. Soon there were Ladies’ Memorial Associations all over the southern states. Members were mostly wealthy white women. The North was not far, if any, behind in starting their own Decoration Days, but many in the South were resentful of northern states “stealing” their cemetery decorating idea. Others in the South disagreed, feeling that the decorating of lost loved ones’ graves gave North and South a common grief and was healing to the nation. Originally, the LMA called theirs “Memorial Day” but then soon changed it to “Confederate Memorial Day.”
Most Decoration Day participants, especially as time went by, did decorate all soldiers’ graves, Union or Confederate. Columbus, MI, was the final resting place for many soldiers from the bloody battle of Shiloh. Trainloads of corpses, both Yankee and Johnny Reb, were brought to this small town for burial. Newspapers carried the touching story of four ladies who, in April 1866, went to put flowers on their Confederate dead but then, feeling sorry for the far-away wives and daughters of the Union dead, decided to leave flowers on their graves, too. This inspired the famous poem “The Blue and The Gray” by Frances Miles Finch, published in the Atlantic Monthly a year later.
Overall, there are at least two dozen towns that claim the first Memorial Day took place there – all were in the first few years following the Civil War. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill passed unanimously by the House and Senate recognizing Waterloo, NY, as the birthplace of Memorial Day. More recent historical studies have found Waterloo’s and most other town’s claims to be dubious if not flatly false. The May 1865 Charleston Race Course commemoration does appear to be the earliest documented in contemporaneous sources. However, it was a one-time event and the practice of decorating soldiers’ graves was such a common practice even before the war that it is difficult to say which particular Decoration Day – if any – was the original from which all the others sprang. In addition, most whites of that era would not have wanted to admit that an African-American commemoration was earlier than or had inspired their town’s event. Considering its widespread newspaper coverage and May 1865 date, the Charleston event undoubtedly helped spread the idea of having a formal decoration day.
In 1873, New York became the first state to make May 30 its official state Decoration Day. All of the Northern states had followed suit by 1890 but most of the southern states chose a different day. This separation continued until after World War I when Memorial Day was changed to a day to remember any American who died in service in any war, not just the Civil War.
In 1968 Congress passed the National Holiday Act which placed Memorial Day on the last Monday in May, thus providing Americans with a three-day holiday weekend.
No one knows when Decoration Day was first celebrated in Chestertown and Kent County, but it was almost certainly within a few years of the war’s end. More than 400 African-American soldiers from Kent County served in the U.S.C.T. (United States Colored Troops) during the Civil War. In 1882 twenty-five of those soldiers formed the Charles A. Sumner Post #25 of the Grand Army of the Republic. Today, the G.A.R. Post # 25 in Chestertown is one of only two African-American G.A.R. buildings left standing in the United States. And it is the only one that has been restored and is once again a vital part of the community with regular exhibits and events. Located at 206 S. Queen St., the building is both a museum and a performance space. Built in 1908, it was saved from demolition by several community groups, restored, and reopened in 2014. At noon on Monday, May 29, Memorial Day, Sumner Hall will hold a Fallen Veterans ceremony in Memorial Park in downtown Chestertown. All are invited.’
Sumner Hall 206 S. Queen St. Chestertown, MD. 21620
Open House: May 26, 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm
May 26: 4:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Video of the May 18th Live Performance
May 26: 5:00 pm & 7:00 pm and
May 27: 10:00 am, 1:00 pm and 5:00 pm
May 29th: 12:00 pm
Following the example of the Founders of G.A.R. Post # 25, Sumner Hall Stakeholders and Board Members will honor the service of all fallen veterans by placing wreaths in Memorial Park in Chestertown. There will be a short ceremony at noon.
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.