Updated · Letters from an American | Heather Cox Richardson · May 24
Grand Army of the Republic Held First Memorial Day at Arlington in 1868
Updated
Updated · Letters from an American | Heather Cox Richardson · May 24
Grand Army of the Republic Held First Memorial Day at Arlington in 1868
3 articles · Updated · Letters from an American | Heather Cox Richardson · May 24
May 30, 1868 marked the first official Memorial Day—then called Decoration Day—at Arlington National Cemetery, where the Grand Army of the Republic honored Union war dead.
More than 16,000 Civil War soldiers had been buried there by war’s end after the U.S. seized Robert E. Lee’s former estate in 1864 and turned it into a national cemetery as Washington graveyards overflowed.
James Garfield, a former Union general and future president, told the ceremony the dead had preserved majority rule and saved the Capitol from a rebellion centered on slavery and disunion.
Arlington’s origins tied commemoration directly to the Civil War’s human toll, with soldiers from Grant’s 1864 campaigns filling the cemetery and making Lee’s plantation a permanent burial ground for those who fought the Confederacy.
How can a new monument honor national history while obscuring the Lincoln Memorial and framing a Confederate general's former home?
As old monuments fall, what does the rise of a new arch reveal about how America will remember its history?