Memorial Day is a Legacy of the Fight to End Slavery

This week we’re taking a break from our usual list of curated links to observe Memorial Day, a holiday created to honor the Union dead who fought to end slavery. Historians have proposed several different origins for Decoration Day (as the national holiday was officially called until 1971). In the 1990s, however, historian David Blight and others recovered the forgotten story of recently emancipated African Americans in Charleston, S.C., who observed the first “Memorial Day” in 1865—a year earlier than commemorations in other places.

In an interview with the New-York Historical Society, Yale historian David Blight discusses the origins of the first Memorial Day commemoration in Charleston on May 1, 1865.
  • David W. Blight, “The First Decoration Day” (originally published in the Newark Star Ledger on April 27, 2015): LINK. “Over time several American towns, north and south, claimed to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. But all of them commemorate cemetery decoration events from 1866. Pride of place as the first large scale ritual of Decoration Day, therefore, goes to African Americans in Charleston. By their labor, their words, their songs, and their solemn parade of flowers and marching feet on their former owners’ race course, they created for themselves, and for us, the Independence Day of the Second American Revolution.”
  • Olivia B. Waxman, “The Forgotten Black History of How Memorial Day Started,” TIME (May 22, 2020): LINK. “The fact that the freed slaves’ Memorial Day tribute [in Charleston, South Carolina] is not as well remembered is emblematic of the struggle that would follow, as African Americans’ fight to be fully recognized for their contributions to American society continues to this day.”
This is the Union prisoners burying ground in Charleston (c. 1865), where the ceremony was held. Union prisoners of war were held under primitive conditions at a nearby racecourse, where at least 260 died from disease and exposure. source: The Library of Congress
This historical marker in Charleston tells the story of the First Memorial Day. source: The Historical Marker Database.

On another Memorial Day, held at Arlington National Cemetery in 1871, Frederick Douglass had this to say about the Union dead:

When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious, preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord, when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government throughout the world, had reached the point of supreme peril, when the Union of these states was torn and rent asunder at the center, and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundations of American society, the unknown braves who flung themselves into the yawning chasm, where cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell. They died for their country.

We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation’s life and those who struck to save it, those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice. * * *

The essence and significance of our devotions here to-day are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense of bravery, we should find enough on both sides to kindle admiration. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal soldier.

But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause. * * *