SPIRIT AND SIGNIFICANCE: A Memorial Day Address by a future President in 1868

SPIRIT AND SIGNIFICANCE

DECORATION DAY ADDRESS

BY JAMES A. GARFIELD

Extract from an Oration delivered at Arlington, Va.,

May 30, 1868

I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept; plighted faith may be broken; and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue. For the noblest man that lives, there still remains a conflict. He must still withstand the assaults of time and fortune, must still be assailed with temptations, before which lofty natures have fallen; but with these the conflict ended, the victory was won, when death stamped on them the great seal of heroic character, and closed a record which years can never blot.

I know of nothing more appropriate on this occasion than to inquire what brought these men here; what high motive led them to condense life into an hour, and to crown that hour by joyfully welcoming death? Let us consider.

Eight years ago this was the most unwarlike nation of the earth. For nearly fifty years no spot in any of these states had been the scene of battle. Thirty millions of people had an army of less than ten thousand men. The faith of our people in the stability and permanence of their institutions was like their faith in the eternal course of nature. Peace, liberty, and personal security were blessings as common and universal as sunshine and showers and fruitful seasons ; and all sprang from a single source, the old American principle that all owe due submission and obedience to the lawfully expressed will of the majority. This is not one of the doctrines of our political system it is the system itself. It is our political firmament, in which all other truths are set, as stars in Heaven. It is the encasing air, the breath of the Nation's life. Against this principle the whole weight of the rebellion was thrown. Its overthrow would have brought such ruin as might follow in the physical universe, if the power of gravitation were destroyed, and

"Nature's concord broke,

Among the constellations war were sprung,
Two planets, rushing from aspect malign
Of fiercest opposition, in mid-sky
Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound."

The Nation was summoned to arms by every high motive which can inspire men. Two centuries of freedom had made its people unfit for despotism. They must save their Government or miserably perish.

As a flash of lightning in a midnight tempest reveals the abysmal horrors of the sea, so did the flash of the first gun disclose the awful abyss into which rebellion was ready to plunge us. In a moment the fire was lighted in twenty million hearts. In a moment we were the most warlike Nation on the earth. In a moment we were not merely a people with an army we were a people in arms. The Nation was in column not all at the front, but all in the array.

I love to believe that no heroic sacrifice is ever lost; that the characters of men are molded and inspired by what their fathers have done; that treasured up in American souls are all the unconscious influences of the great deeds of the Anglo-Saxon race, from Agincourt to Bunker Hill. It was such an influence that led a young Greek, two thousand years ago, when musing on the battle of Marathon, to exclaim, ' the trophies of Miltiades will not let me sleep!' Could these men be silent in 1861; these, whose ancestors had felt the inspiration of battle on every field where civilization had fought in the last thousand years? Read their answer in this green turf. Each for himself gathered up the cherished purposes of life its aims and ambitions, its dearest affections and flung all, with life itself, into the scale of battle.

And now consider this silent assembly of the dead. What does it represent? Nay, rather, what does it not represent? It is an epitome of the war. Here are sheaves reaped in the harvest of death, from every battlefield of Virginia. If each grave had a voice to tell us what its silent tenant last saw and heard on earth, we might stand, with uncovered heads, and hear the whole story of the war. We should hear that one perished when the first great drops of the crimson shower began to fall, when the darkness of that first disaster at Manassas fell like an eclipse on the Nation; that another died of disease while wearily waiting for winter to end; that this one fell on the field, in sight of the spires of Richmond, little dreaming that the flag must be carried through three more years of blood before it should be planted in that citadel of treason; and that one fell when the tide of war had swept us back till the roar of rebel guns shook the dome of yonder Capitol, and re-echoed in the chambers of the Executive Mansion. We should hear mingled voices from the Rappahannock, the Rapidan, the Chickahominy, and the James ; solemn voices from the Wilderness, and triumphant shouts from the Shenandoah, from Petersburg, and the Five Forks, mingled with the wild acclaim of victory and the sweet chorus of returning peace. The voices of these dead will forever fill the land like holy benedictions.

What other spot so fitting for their last resting place as this, under the shadow of the Capitol saved by their valor? Here, where the grim edge of battle joined; here, where all the hope and fear and agony of their country centered; here let them rest, asleep on the Nation's heart, entombed in the Nation's love!

The Unknown Dead: A Decoration Day address

The Unknown Dead
A Decoration Day address (1912) in Littleton, N.H.
by John Edgar Johnson. Capt. & A. Q. M., U. S. V.

The leading purpose for which the Grand Army was organized, as set forth in its first prospectus, was the annual decoration of the graves of Union Soldiers. No such organization had ever existed before, or could have existed before, for the simple reason that nowhere in history is there any record of soldiers having been carefully buried in separate graves, with head-stones to mark them, until the United States Government made such, provision for its fallen heroes in the War for the Union. All the soldiers of Alexander the Great; all the soldiers of Caesar; all of those of Charlemagne, and of Napoleon were buried in unknown graves. Three thousand of General Washington's soldiers died and were buried that winter at Valley Forge, but only two graves are now pointed out there, and one of these is of a commissioned officer and the other is of a dog. The round globe itself is a vast mausoleum to the Unknown Dead — and old ocean is another.

John Edgar Johnson

But at the close of our Civil War the National Government not only gathered upon the battlefields of the South the remains of all Northern soldiers that could be identified, and had them re-interred in various cemeteries reverently set apart for that purpose, but it also erected in the great cemetery at Arlington Heights, near Washington, a profoundly impressive monument to "The Unknown Dead," beneath which lie buried the miscellaneous remains, impossible of identification, of a great number of those who fell fighting for liberty and their native land.

I suppose it was that Memorial which suggested so many of a like character all over the country. Visitors at Arlington invariably stand with bowed head beside it, and the tears of a sympathetic nation have fallen here as scarcely anywhere else on the continent. It appeals to the pity and the pathos and the patriotism of the Nation.

And now I venture to call attention to a distinction, not too fine perhaps, which may be drawn between “nameless graves" and "unknown dead."

Uncertainty attaches itself more particularly to the living than it does to the dead. Death is revelation. At death the scales drop from our eyes. We leave our death-mask behind us when we pass out of the body. Yonder we stand exposed and confessed to ourselves, to our fellow-men and to our Creator.

We are sometimes asked if we believe we shall recognize our friends in another world. Why we are never sure of them until we get there.

A monument to an "Unknown God," or to "Unknown Friends," I can understand, but a monument to the "Unknown Dead" is a misnomer. What does it signify whether the dead are unknown to us or not. The sun in the heavens is unknown to a mole in your garden. Here we see through a glass darkly; yonder they see face to face. Here we know in part; there they know even as they are known. The things we now see are fleeting shadows; the things seen beyond the veil are the substantial facts and eternal verities of the universe.

We talk much, for instance, about the Grand Army. Where is it? Is this the Grand Army; this corporal's guard of old men who once a year feebly grope their way to the graves of their comrades all over the country to decorate them with flowers? Ah, no! They are the Rear Guard of a great host who have marched on ahead. The Grand Army has passed over. It has forded the river and pitched its tents on the grand camping grounds beyond the grave.

There is a pious legend of an old monk who, wasted by fasting, sought the chapel of his monastery one day late in Lent, and there, with others, engaged in meditations. The walls of the chapel were covered with frescoes illustrating its history from its foundation centuries before. Among the figures there were not a few of those who had fought the good fight of faith and purchased the halo of the saint.

Overcome by his austerities, the aged man half fainted; passed, in fact, into the state of coma. He seemed to himself to be disembodied. He saw his own figure and those of his companions around him, like so many marble statues fixed and lifeless, while the frescoed images on the walls appeared to be moving about and conversing with one another.

He was soon discovered in his swoon, and carried to his cell, where he was resuscitated.

Now on Decoration Day old soldiers "dream dreams and see visions." Everything inverts itself. The earth mirrors itself in the skies. The Grand Army is on high, looking down upon us. They are the living heroes, and we are the lifeless figures on the ground.

When, from time to time, the roll is called up yonder, they who are there are reckoned "present." We who are here are "absent" or "missing," or, perchance, we may be written down as of whereabouts unknown or as unaccounted for.

But we, too, are moving onward and upward. We shall soon join the main column.

And what a day it will be over there when the "last survivor," as we lifeless mortals sometimes foolishly phrase it, shall cross over, ascend the bank on the other side, and close the long roll call with his "Here!"

Will it be in the feeble squeaking voice of an old man — a Veteran — or will it be in trumpet tones, echoing and re-echoing along all the arches of the universe?

I love to think of this "last man," clad once more in immortal youth, mounting up on high, leading captivity captive, falling into line and filling the last gap in the serried ranks of the reunited Union Army. That will be a Reunion and Review the glory of which is beyond the power of the imagination to conceive.

What a scene it will be! All heaven will be there to behold it. In the foreground will stand Father Abraham waiting to clasp this last man by the hand.

General Grant will be there, and the "silent man" will find his tongue, at last and shout "Hosannah!" General Sherman will be there — Old Tecumseh — who could talk almost as well as he could fight. He will "make a few remarks," no doubt. General Sheridan will be there— "Fighting Phil"—half horse and half man; as near a centaur as anything ever was.

General Custer will be there. How well we remember him at the Great Review at Washington at the close of the war. As he approached the grandstand his horse ran away with him — back along the lines. He conquered it, and when he came up again (his long, yellow hair streaming over his shoulders) and saluted the President and the rest of the reviewing officers, what a yell rent the air from that vast multitude. I can hear it now, although it is many a day since I last heard even the roll of heaven's artillery in a thunderstorm. That was, indeed the Grand Army.

But as the ranks thin here they swell yonder, and the Final Review and Reunion is not far distant. “How the banners will wave on that great day! How the flags will flutter! How the drums will roll! How the fifes will shriek! How the bands will play "When Johnnie Comes Marching Home"!

Then "the peace which passeth all understanding" will settle down upon the universe.

"The war drums will throb no longer and the battle flags will be furled." There will be no more death and no more darkness, but all will be life and light unending.

We shall see eye to eye finally and forever; and there will be no "Unknown Dead," for we shall all have arrived, at last, in "The Land of the Living."

A MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS Given in 1890.

A speech given: MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS AT FT. MADISON, IOWA, BY THOMAS HEDGE, MAY 30, 1890.

The story of the rise of civil and religious liberty on this continent is full of incongruities and of contradictions. The Pilgrim Fathers planted their commonwealth among the gray rocks of Massachusetts, that they might have freedom to worship God; but we remember they compelled the flight to Narragansett of the learned and sincere Roger Williams, the friend of Milton, chiefly because he held forth that the civil magistrate's power extends only to the bodies, goods and outward state of man, and thus the other commonwealth of Rhode Island and Providence plantations had its beginning.

It has been an American custom, reaching back to the days of our grandfathers, to read in public, with religious solemnity, the Declaration of Independence on the morning of the Fourth of July, and the winged words of Jefferson — "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" — we imagined, because they stirred our blood, that they set forth our profoundest faith. But it is only thirty years since no American citizen was permitted to speak in the spirit of those words below the lower rapids of yonder river, and only thirty years ago that if that American citizen should stretch forth his hand to help any man, woman or child, of a certain class, to cross that river in search of that unalienable right of liberty, he would be guilty of a crime against the government whose symbol was this flag.
(We are not ashamed to remember that there were not a few criminals of this sort in this neighborhood in those days.)
We were not in spirit a nation or a union, but a most heterogeneous aggregation of peoples, under the yoke of as many various customs, traditions, prejudices and bigotries as there were different communities. State lines were a reality, sectional feeling and mutual dread as impassable as the mountain range.

The truth spoken by him who was more than prophet, 'This country cannot remain half slave and half free,' at last became evident, and the darkness came and the labor and agony of the new birth of freedom.
It seemed as if the spirit of the Lord moved over the face of the land and breathed again into the nostrils of this people the breath of life. The eyes of their understanding were opened; it was given to them to see the invisible, to stand upon the Mount of Transfiguration and to be inspired with the presence of them of old time who had toiled, suffered and triumphed for the good of those to be. All human capacities seemed to be enlarged. All human faculties to be reinforced. All human affections quickened and purified in this fire of trial. The cause was seen to be and accepted as the cause common and vital to us all. It was the people's war. The times grew spacious. Nothing was too great or too high for the energy the constancy, the self-denial, the faith of this people in their devotion to this cause — ever old and ever new — of human liberty. As in the days of the revolution it called manhood from the tranquil pursuits and toils of peace, the delight of life, to absence from home, to cold, hunger, the prison-pen, disease, wounds, death; it called woman to poverty, to loneliness, to agony of suspense, to widowhood and bereavement of her first born.
There were days which were to her as a thousand years, when the very air quivered with the tidings of defeat or the hardly less dreadful word of victory; when she was told that while men of their abundance had cast their offerings into the treasury she had given more than them all — even all her living.
When this death angel came, although for tears she saw it not, the glory of the Lord shone 'round her dwelling-akin to that of the star of Bethlehem, for it had been vouchsafed to her to bear a son found worthy to die for the help of his fellow-men.
And the boys whom these women with christian grace had sent away, these boys whom we bear in memory at this hour, deeming it the highest privilege and pride of our earthly life that we hobnobbed with them and marched with them and were with them where they fell, they made up an army such as never had been known before. Their understanding comprehended fully the purpose of their warfare — it was not for ambition, for material conquest, for personal aggrandizement, nor to relieve themselves of personal oppression, for they had never realized the presence or approach of any tyranny. The flag to them was but the sign of the enforcement and security of those unalienable rights, which they had been trained to believe were the birthright of all men. It was such a sign, not for themselves or their's alone, not for a class, a sect, a party, a generation or a race, but for everyone made in the image of God, wherever and so long as that flag might wave.

I said that we were a heterogeneous people, marked by our provincial prejudices and bigotries. Travel broadens the view and dispels the mists of prejudice, and no sort of travel so effectually as that pursued by our young volunteer, After the boy from Iowa had trudged alongside of the boy from Vermont or Pennsylvania, or of the boy whose father was born in Ireland or Germany, and had drank from the same canteen, and shared his hard tack, had climbed the same opposing earthwork at his side, had witnessed his boyish valor "in the imminent deadly breach'' ''on the fiery edge of battle,'' and had lain down beside him in the swamp and suffered the same cold, the same homesickness, he began to realize what Paul meant by till men being of one blood; boundary lines and section corners vanished, and his love of country, as of his countrymen, came to comprehend the wide continent, bounded only by the inviolate seas.

He so bore himself that he conquered even the prejudices of his opposers, and to-day wherever his grave may be, whether by those of his kindred or in the red soil of Virginia, in the mountains of Georgia or Tennessee, or under the flowers of Carolina, it is at home, in his own country, a pledge and monument of perpetual union, and of ever growing peace and good will among its people.
As something of the duty of tradition mingles in these ceremonies, let me place in the minds of those born since the day of Appomattox a hint of the personality of the "boy in blue.'' As yon read that "the old 'Continentals' in their ragged regimentals faltered not," your fancy pictures a grizzled soldier toughened by the frosts of many winters, when in truth he and the Minute Man and the Green Mountain boy, as well as the boy in blue, were of the same age, which is yours. The soldier whose memory we are met to honor was not such as these to-day — his face lined and refined by care, with stooping shoulders and whitening hair, and halting step, and eyes grown dim; but such as these were five and twenty years ago; his face bright with hope, his gaze clear and proud with purpose, his step firm and sure, with the spring of youth. And my veteran brothers, those who were taken away from us at the front are now before the vision of our memory as when they marched out to die. Imperishable youth is theirs.
Their fame shall live so long as man loves liberty, the example of their sacrifice be an inspiration to future patriotism, their spirits the airy leaders of heroes yet to be.
It was ordained that they should die in glory — no less was it in the infinite purpose that we should survive. The earnest lesson of the day is that we learn and fulfil that purpose, that while they sleep we guard the field they died to win.
In the quarter of a century that has passed since the last surrender we have had time to come down from the Mount of Transfiguration, to lose something of the exaltation of spirit of the time of war in the dusty scramble for the things that perish, and a generation has arisen that cannot fully appreciate at what great price their freedom was obtained and preserved. We need to be reminded in season and out of season that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The old theory seems to be regaining its lost ground, that the jurisdiction of human government is boundless, and its authority without limit; that all things, including riches and wisdom and virtue and honor, can be attained by the enactment of a legislature. We forget, that while government is an essential agency of society — supreme within its sphere — that its sphere is limited and that it is only an agency, like the Sabbath, made for man: that its province is only in public matters, to protect each from others' trespasses and to insure to every man his own. We do not keep in mind that government cannot create or confer the essential rights of man; that as Jefferson wrote, it is only an institution to secure these rights, and as it does not create or confer these rights, so it cannot justly impair them or take them away.
So long as men are self-seeking there will be efforts made to usurp power in legislation for selfish ends. So long as men are self-righteous they will strive to impose their own standard of right and wrong upon their neighbors, and as the people prefer, or wish to seem to prefer, whatsoever things are honest, or true, or of good report, with success proportioned to the apparent worthiness of the end to be attained. Our liberties are in little danger from the Philistines; it is the leaven of the Pharisee that is the present menace of the republic.

While it was the duty of the veteran, as a soldier, "not to reason why, only to do and die," it is his duty as a veteran, citizen always to reason why. To him much has been given — of him much shall be required. A sovereign citizen, to him is intrusted only in fuller measure, and to a higher degree, the charge of the Roman consul — to see that the republic receives no harm.

As the sphere of government is limited, so, comparatively, is his duty as a citizen; including this duty, intertwined with it, but infinitely broader and higher, is his duty as a man. The conscientious fulfillment of the daily round, the common task, is the path laid out for him to toil in after virtue. We cannot escape the scrutiny and the judgments of the boy of to-day his notion of the defender of the republic, his estimate of those comrades over whose repose we this day scatter the rose, the lily and the violet, is made up of what he sees in us. Their good name is in our keeping. No higher tribute can we pay to the fame of the American soldier than "the white flower of a blameless life.'’ Comrades, brothers! let our remaining days be so disciplined that when our rest is sounded our neighbors may mourn each one of us as we mourn these; that contemplating a character full rounded, freed from stain of ill doing, or rust of indolence, they may say lovingly and proudly. "As his young comrades died, so this veteran lived — for the advantage of his fellow-men."

THE FIRST MEMORIAL DAY

HEADQUARTERS GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868

i. 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 church-yard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.
We are organized, comrades, as our regulations tell us, for the purpose among other things, "of preserving and strengthening those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers, sailors, and marines who united to suppress the late rebellion." What can aid more to assure this result than cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foes? Their soldier lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains, and their deaths the tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders. Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.

Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring-time; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from hishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon a nation's gratitude, the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan.

ii. It is the purpose of the Commander-in-Chief to inaugurate this observance with the hope that it will be kept up from year to year, while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades. He earnestly desires the public press to lend its friendly aid in bringing to the notice of comrades in all parts of the country in time for simultaneous compliance therewith.

iii. Department commanders will use efforts to make this order effective.
By order of

JOHN A. LOGAN,
Commander-in-Chief

N.P. CHIPMAN,
Adjutant General

Official:
WM. T. COLLINS, A.A.G.