![]() ![]() With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. ![]() This was the first speech delivered on a national Memorial Day: Garfield addressed a crowd of 5,000 mourners at Arlington. On May 30th of that year, Ohio Congressman (and future President) James A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic declared that at the end of each May there should be observed a national Decoration Day. These private days of mourning in villages and hamlets and towns were called decoration days, and by May of 1868, Maj. As soon as flowers blooms, wreaths were laid on the freshly turned soil of the graveyard. The urge to honor the fallen probably started during the war, spreading from town to town, often in spring time. Michigan, for her part, gave more than 10,000 men to war. ![]() 620,000 Americans, measured at 2% of the total population, died in the war to end slavery. But our national holiday called Memorial Day started shortly after the American Civil War. Manchester, Michigan.Įditor's Note: The graves of the sacred dead have been decorated for tens of thousands of years, and markers honoring those who have fallen in battle are as old as battle itself. One of a long row of flags planted along Main Street in front of Wurster Park. ![]()
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