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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Monday, May 25, 2020

Happy Decoration Day (Memorial Day)


Former slave and Grand Army of the Republic 
Member Charles H. Anderson, age 92, 
Photo about 1936-38.

The Other Greatest Generation


Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering the people who died while serving in the country's armed forces. 

The holiday, which is observed every year on the last Monday of May, originated as Decoration Day after the American Civil War in 1868, when the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans founded in Decatur, Illinois, established it as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the Union war dead with flowers. 


By the 20th century, competing Union and Confederate holiday traditions, celebrated on different days, had merged, and Memorial Day eventually extended to honor all Americans who died while in the military service. It typically marks the start of the summer vacation season, while Labor Day marks its end.
The first widely publicized observance of a Memorial Day-type observance after the Civil War was in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. During the war, Union soldiers who were prisoners of war had been held at the Hampton Park Race Course in Charleston; at least 257 Union prisoners died there and were hastily buried in unmarked graves. 
Together with teachers and missionaries, black residents of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony in 1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers. The freedmen cleaned up and landscaped the burial ground, building an enclosure and an arch labeled "Martyrs of the Race Course". Nearly 10,000 people, mostly freedmen, gathered on May 1 to commemorate the war dead. Involved were about 3,000 school children, newly enrolled in freedmen's schools, as well as mutual aid societies, Union troops, black ministers and white northern missionaries. Most brought flowers to lay on the burial field.
David W. Blight described the day:
This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.




Custer and his men




We'll Fight for Uncle Sam














1st Nebraska Volunteer Infantry
The First Nebraska Volunteer Infantry was mustered into service on May 9 and 10, 1898 at Lincoln, Nebraska. At the time of muster-in, the unit consisted of fifty-one officers and 983 enlisted men.
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On May 16, the regiment left Lincoln for San Francisco, where it arrived three days later. The 1st Nebraska was assigned to the Third Independent Brigade of the Philippine Expeditionary Force.

20th Kansas Volunteers lining up for dinner at San Fernando, Philippines. 
PHOTO was taken in May 1899.

Filipino American War.com

Lafayettewe are here!”







Vietnam

United States Marines in Helmand Province, Afghanistan

General John Logan
General Logan proclaimed the first "Decoration Day" to honor the fallen soldiers of the American Civil War.  He served the state of Illinois as a State Senator, a Congressman, a U.S. Senator and was an unsuccessful candidate for Vice President of the United States with James G. Blaine in the election of 1884.


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