The Tangled Roots of Memorial Day and Why It’s Celebrated

Memorial Day weekend is among the busiest for travel in the United States and the unofficial start of summer; a day for cookouts, beach trips and auto races. But how did Memorial Day, held on the last Monday of May in honor of America’s war dead, begin?

Here is a refresher:

Honoring the Civil War dead

The holiday grew out of the Civil War, as Americans — Northern, Southern, Black and white — struggled to honor the staggering numbers of dead soldiers, at least 2 percent of the U.S. population at the time. Several places lay claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. One of the earliest accounts comes from Boalsburg, Pa., where, in October 1864, three women are said to have placed flowers and wreaths on the graves of men who had died serving the Union during the Civil War.

In May 1865, just after the war ended, a large procession was held in the ruined city of Charleston, S.C. There, thousands of Black Americans, many of whom had been enslaved until the city was liberated just months earlier, commemorated the lives of Union captives buried in a mass grave at a former racecourse. The service was led by some 3,000 schoolchildren carrying roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Hundreds of women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses, according to historical accounts.

Cities in the North and South began honoring their war dead. In May 1866, Waterloo, N.Y., was decorated with flags at half-staff, “draped with evergreens and mourning black,” according to the village. In Columbus, Miss., that same year, women were said to have placed flowers on the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers.

What’s in a name?

Whatever its inception, historians agree that the first widely held commemoration was in 1868, when Gen. John A. Logan, the commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans, called for a national holiday to remember the Civil War dead. Their bodies, he said, lay in almost every city, village and churchyard.

May 30, Mr. Logan wrote in an order, should be “designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country.”