Although the Memorial Day weekend signifies the start of the summer season and is observed by families and friends who gather for barbecues and similar festivities, we should keep in mind that Memorial Day is our most solemn national holiday.
Memorial Day reminds us that freedom isn’t free. The holiday makes us aware of the Supreme Sacrifice that has been made by so many of our fellow citizens, providing us with an opportunity to honor their sacrifice.
Memorial Day has its roots in what originally was known as Decoration Day in the aftermath of the Civil War, when the women of communities in the North decorated the graves of the soldiers who perished in that horrific and tragic conflict.
Decoration Day became an official holiday with the proclamation by Gen. Logan on May 5, 1868, in which he declared:
“The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form or ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit. Let us, then, at the time appointed, gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with choicest flowers of springtime; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us as sacred charges upon the Nation’s gratitude, the soldier’s and sailor’s widow and orphan.”
In keeping with the spirit of Decoration Day (and the 160th anniversary of the end of the Civil War), we are reprinting below President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, considered by many to be one of the greatest speeches of all time and which states far more eloquently than we ever could the debt that each of us owes to the brave men and women who have fought and died to defend our nation’s freedom and liberty.
We trust that our readers will agree that Lincoln’s words are as inspiring today as they were when he uttered them in November of 1863 at Gettysburg — and have special resonance today, when the democratic values and institutions for which so many of our fellow Americans gave their lives are being challenged more so than at any time since the end of the Civil War:
“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
