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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MAY 28, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
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GUEST COLUMN
Memorial Day’s forgotten history
I
n the years following the bitter Civil War, a former
Union general took a holiday originated by former
Confederates and helped spread it across the entire
country.
The holiday was Memorial Day, and this year’s com-
memoration on May 28 marks the 150th anniversary of
its official nationwide observance. The annual commem-
oration was born in the former Confederate States in 1866
and adopted by the United States in 1868. It is a holiday in
which the nation honors its military dead.
Gen. John A. Logan, who headed the largest Union vet-
erans’ fraternity at that time, the Grand Army of the Repub-
lic, is usually credited as being the originator of the holiday.
Yet when General Logan established the holiday, he
acknowledged its genesis among the
Union’s former enemies, saying, “It was
not too late for the Union men of the
nation to follow the example of the people
of the South.”
I’m a scholar who has written —
with co-author Daniel Bellware — a his-
RICHARD tory of Memorial Day. Cities and towns
GARDINER across America have for more than a cen-
tury claimed to be the holiday’s birth-
place, but we have sifted through the myths and half-truths
and uncovered the authentic story of how this holiday came
into being.
Generous acts bore fruit
During 1866, the first year of this annual observance
in the South, a feature of the holiday emerged that made
awareness, admiration and eventually imitation of it spread
quickly to the North.
During the inaugural Memorial Day observances which
were conceived in Columbus, Georgia, many Southern par-
ticipants — especially women — decorated graves of Con-
federate soldiers as well as, unexpectedly, those of their for-
mer enemies who fought for the Union.
Shortly after those first Memorial Day observances all
across the South, newspaper coverage in the North was
highly favorable to the ex-Confederates.
“The action of the ladies on this occasion, in burying
whatever animosities or ill-feeling may have been engen-
dered in the late war towards those who fought against
them, is worthy of all praise and commendation,” wrote
one paper.
Almost immediately, the poem circulated across Amer-
ica in books, magazines and newspapers. By the end of the
19th century, school children everywhere were required
to memorize Finch’s poem. The ubiquitous publication of
Finch’s rhyme meant that by the end of 1867, the south-
ern Memorial Day holiday was a familiar phenomenon
throughout the entire, and recently reunited, country.
General Logan was aware of the forgiving sentiments of
people like Finch. When Logan’s order establishing Memo-
rial Day was published in newspapers in May 1868, Finch’s
poem was sometimes appended to the order.
‘The blue and the grey’
Library of Congress
Preparing to decorate graves, May 1899.
On May 9, 1866, the Cleveland Daily Leader lauded the
Southern women during their first Memorial Day.
“The act was as beautiful as it was unselfish, and will be
appreciated in the North.”
The New York Commercial Advertiser, recognizing the
magnanimous deeds of the women of Columbus, Geor-
gia, echoed the sentiment. “Let this incident, touching and
beautiful as it is, impart to our Washington authorities a les-
son in conciliation.”
Power of a poem
To be sure, this sentiment was not unanimous. There
were many in both parts of the U.S. who had no interest in
conciliation.
But as a result of one of these news reports, Francis
Miles Finch, a Northern judge, academic and poet, wrote a
poem titled “The Blue and the Gray.” Finch’s poem quickly
became part of the American literary canon. He explained
what inspired him to write it:
“It struck me that the South was holding out a friendly
hand, and that it was our duty, not only as conquerors, but
as men and their fellow citizens of the nation, to grasp it.”
Finch’s poem seemed to extend a full pardon to the
South: “They banish our anger forever when they laurel the
graves of our dead” was one of the lines.
It was not long before Northerners decided that they
would not only adopt the Southern custom of Memorial
Day, but also the Southern custom of “burying the hatchet.”
A group of Union veterans explained their intentions in a
letter to the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph on May 28,
1869:
“Wishing to bury forever the harsh feelings engendered
by the war, Post 19 has decided not to pass by the graves
of the Confederates sleeping in our lines, but divide each
year between the blue and the grey the first floral offerings
of a common country. We have no powerless foes. Post 19
thinks of the Southern dead only as brave men.”
Other reports of reciprocal magnanimity circulated in
the North, including the gesture of a 10-year-old who made
a wreath of flowers and sent it to the overseer of the holi-
day, Colonel Leaming, in Lafayette, Indiana, with the fol-
lowing note attached, published in The New Hampshire
Patriot on July 15, 1868:
“Will you please put this wreath upon some rebel sol-
dier’s grave? My dear papa is buried at Andersonville,
(Georgia) and perhaps some little girl will be kind enough
to put a few flowers upon his grave.”
President Abraham Lincoln’s wish that there be “mal-
ice toward none” and “charity for all” was visible in the
magnanimous actions of participants on both sides, who
extended an olive branch during the Memorial Day obser-
vances in those first three years.
Although not known by many today, the early evolution
of the Memorial Day holiday was a manifestation of Lin-
coln’s hope for reconciliation between North and South.
Richard Gardiner is an associate professor of history
education at Columbus State University. This article was
originally published on The Conversation.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
A too-timely presentation
S
afety plans were already in place in
Santa Fe, Texas, when on Friday,
May 18, a shooter killed 10 and
injured 13, including an armed student
resource officer.
The school district had an active-
shooter plan and two armed police offi-
cers walked the halls of the high school,
according to the Washington Post. School
district leaders had even agreed last
fall to eventually arm teachers and staff
under the state’s school marshal program.
Policies and procedures worked, J.R.
“Rusty” Norman, the
president of the Santa
Fe school district’s
board of trustees, told
reporters. “Having said
that, the way things are,
if someone wants to get
R.J. MARX into a school to create
havoc, they can do it.”
The timing, for Seaside, is chilling.
‘Locks, lights, out of sight’
Three days earlier I listened to Sea-
side High School principal Jeff Rob-
erts present the district’s new safety plan
to members of the district’s board of
directors.
“The fact that we have to have a con-
versation like this is incredibly unfortu-
nate,” Roberts said.
“Seaside High School’s Safety Plan
and What Students, Staff and Parents
Need to Know” offers four responses to
emergency situations: lockout, lockdown,
evacuate and shelter. The plan, devel-
oped in conjunction with law enforce-
ment and emergency planners, presents
a “plain-language response for any given
scenario.”
With years of preparation for the Big
One — a Cascadia Subduction Zone
earthquake and tsunami — Seaside kids
are well-versed in evacuation and shelter
aspects of the plan. Students’ “You can’t
stop this wave” campaign helped raise
tsunami awareness throughout the com-
munity and spurred passage of the 2015
bond for a new campus in the Southeast
Hills out of the inundation zone.
Drills for school lockdown and lock-
out scenarios are not as common.
Dangerous events in the community,
or even a vicious dog on the playground,
would be examples of incidents calling
for a lockout response. Officials secure
the perimeter, while students and staff
“get inside and lock outside doors.” For
Kevin M. Cox /The Galveston County Daily News
Police officers in tactical gear move through the scene at Santa Fe High School in Texas after a May 18 shooting.
the most part, classes proceed as usual.
Students may be required to remain in
the building until the threat is mitigated.
The lockdown protocol is used
when there is a threat inside the school
building.
In a lockdown, “locks, lights, out
of sight” is the mantra. Exterior doors
remain open to allow access by first
responders. Students are advised to move
out of sight, maintain silence, keep inte-
rior doors shut and take attendance to
account for anyone missing.
Communications are kept at a min-
imum. Cellphone ringers are silent,
although students may text updates and
information to parents or first respond-
ers. Inside doors are locked; outside
doors remain open to allow entry for first
responders.
If students can safely exit the build-
ing, they are advised to run.
If they cannot remove themselves
from the situation, they should “fight any
threat as a last resort,” according to the
protocol.
“That sounds pretty awful for us to
even have to talk about,” Roberts said.
“But we want them to know they have to
do that.”
Security built-in
Significant changes in daily campus
life are already well underway. “It’s a lit-
tle inconvenience now, but it’s worth it,”
school board member Michelle Wunder-
lich said at the presentation.
High school doors formerly open are
now locked; visitors are directed to the
main west entrance to check into the
main office. Staff or students are empow-
ered to stop visitors and ask what they
are doing in school.
New radios increase communica-
tion among the leadership team and main
office personnel. All staff wear name
badges. Emergency response information
is posted in every classroom.
Seaside’s new campus debuts in Sep-
tember 2020. Security is built into the
design.
Each school will have a secure entry
vestibule, according to project manager
Jim Henry.
Visitors will be stopped, then buzzed
into the office area to be assessed. Staff
will use card keys for entry and push-but-
ton locks installed in the entries.
Entry vestibules will be fitted with
either bullet-resistant ballistic glass or
ballistic laminate.
For parents, visitors
This conversation goes well beyond
students and staff. Parents and visitors
can make a difference by discarding their
preconceptions about what school was
like when “they were growing up.” It’s
changed.
Here are some other ways to keep our
schools safer:
• When visiting the high school,
use the main west entrance and sign in
promptly.
• Familiarize yourself with the safety
plan’s four emergency protocols.
• Widen the conversation — look at
how much this community has accom-
plished in drawing attention to tsunami
awareness.
• Don’t lose hope. Every student lost
to a shooting is a human being — some-
one’s child.
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s
South County reporter and editor of
the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach
Gazette.