Essays From West of 98: Decoration Day 2021
The podcast version of this essay can be found here, or wherever you subscribe to Wedt of 98 podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/west-of-98/id1564615091#episodeGuid=6214bab7-e67e-4af8-ae9e-982b5d773ebd
Decoration Day is something of a uniquely Southern tradition. Sometime in the 19th century, Appalachian communities began to annually spruce up cemeteries and honor deceased ancestors. This continues today in pockets of the Deep South. Cemeteries schedule their Decoration Day observances at staggered points in the spring and summer so that folks can attend observances at multiple cemeteries where ancestors are buried.
In “The Bitter Southerner” magazine, Southern writer and reporter Jennifer Crossley Howard wrote of modern Decoration Day observances in northern Alabama. One part cemetery beautification, one part veneration of the dead, and one part family reunion, these events revolve around death, but are not exactly mournful. She wrote that the South “…claims death with as much loyalty as we claim our children…we own death so it does not own us. You don’t title a novel “As I Lay Dying,” as William Faulkner did, because it sounds sweet or catchy. Death is simply something we all will do.”
This Southern spirit of owning death and venerating the dead would become important as America engulfed itself in a bloody Civil War. It is believed that the first American soldier’s grave was decorated on June 3, 1861, in Warrenton, Virginia. It was that of John Quincy Marr, who had been killed at the Battle of Fairfax Court House on June 1, the first combat death in the Civil War. From Savannah to Gettysburg, and all points in between, numerous American communities began to observe Decoration Days to remember the soldiers who were being lost in the violent conflict that would claim over 600,000 lives.
In 1866, the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus, Georgia began an effort to decorate soldiers’ graves throughout the South with an April 26 observance. In 1868, the Grand Army of the Republic (a fraternal organization of Union veterans) called for an annual Decoration Day on May 30 to remember the fallen soldiers of the Civil War. These Civil War observances would continue to spread until the world wars, when they became a remembrance for all of America’s fallen war dead. This led to a gradual shift in the name from “Decoration Day” to “Memorial Day.” Finally, in 1971, Congress established a standard observance on the last Monday in May. The observances are different in 2021 than they were in 1866 or 1868, but the spirit remains the same. Arising out of that Deep South reverence for its deceased ancestors, a fast-paced nation stops to memorialize the men and women who laid down their lives in service of their country, both at home and abroad.
The great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned “Decoration Day,” a poem that was published for the holiday in 1882 (shortly after his death). I leave you with that verse today:
Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
Nor sentry's shot alarms!
Ye have slept on the ground before,
And started to your feet
At the cannon's sudden roar,
Or the drum's redoubling beat.
But in this camp of Death
No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
No wound that bleeds and aches.
All is repose and peace,
Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
It is the Truce of God!
Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.
Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.
