How Memorial Day began and how it was transformed - American Thinker "Sadly, many people — especially younger folks — don't even know why we celebrate Memorial Day, let alone how and where the commemoration began. It is an interesting and moving story, indeed.
"The roots of the remembrance reach back to Civil War days. As the war that took the lives of 620,000 Americans neared its end, thousands of Union soldiers, being held as prisoners of war, were placed into camps around Charleston, South Carolina. Conditions at one of these camps, a former racetrack near Charleston's Citadel, were so bad that more than 250 prisoners died from disease and exposure. They were buried in a mass grave.
"Three weeks after the Confederate surrender, on May 9, 1865, over 1,000 recently freed slaves, accompanied by regiments of the "U.S. Colored Troops," as well as a handful of white Charlestonians, entered the camp. They created a proper burial site for the Union dead. Then they gave readings, sang hymns, distributed flowers around the new cemetery, and dedicated it to the "Martyrs of the Race Course."
"In May of 1868, General John A. Logan, the commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veterans' group, issued a decree that May 30 should become a nationwide day of commemoration for the soldiers who had died in the recently ended Civil War, also known as the War between the States. General Logan dubbed this official remembrance "Decoration Day" and encouraged Americans to lay flowers and decorate the graves of the war dead across the land. Many believe that he chose May 30 because it was a rare day that didn't fall on an anniversary of a major Civil War battle." . . .
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