Members of the 3rd U. Infantry Regiment place American flags at the graves of U. The ancient Greeks and Romans held annual days of remembrance for loved ones including soldiers each year, festooning their graves with flowers and holding public festivals and feasts in their honor.
One of the first known public tributes to war dead was in B. As the Civil War neared its end, thousands of Union soldiers, held as prisoners of war, were herded into a series of hastily assembled camps in Charleston, South Carolina.
Three weeks after the Confederate surrender, an unusual procession entered the former camp: On May 1, , more than 1, people recently freed from enslavement, accompanied by regiments of the U. Colored Troops including the Massachusetts 54th Infantry and a handful of white Charlestonians, gathered in the camp to consecrate a new, proper burial site for the Union dead. In May , General John A. After the war Logan, who had served as a U. Army site for the U. It is not a part of the Department of Defense or any of its components and it has no governmental status.
About Us About The Museum. Contact Contact Us. Visit Visit The Museum. Giving About The Foundation. Ways To Give Friend of the Museum. This national event galvanized efforts to honor and remember fallen soldiers that began with local observances at burial grounds in several towns throughout the United States following the end of the Civil War, such as the May 1, gathering in Charleston, South Carolina organized by freed slaves to pay tribute and give proper burial to Union troops.
In , New York was the first state to designate Memorial Day as a legal holiday. By the late s, many more cities and communities observed Memorial Day, and several states had declared it a legal holiday.
Several southern states, however, officially commemorate an additional, separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead, sometimes referred to as a Confederate Memorial Day: January 19 in Texas; third Monday in Jan.
Some records show that one of the earliest commemorations occurred in May when free African-Americans in Charleston, SC, reburied former Union prisoners of war and held a ceremony dedicating the cemetery to them.
While that day, and all the other dedications across the country, were meant to honor the men who gave their lives on the battlefield, in , the Federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day. In the spring of , the Civil War finally ended after claiming more lives than any other conflict in U. To commemorate the lives lost in battle, Americans began holding tributes each spring during the late s.
They would decorate the graves of those who had died with flowers, leading to the day being referred to as Decoration Day. General John A.
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