It's Memorial Day 2011 Fellow Coin Collectors

Peter T Davis · May 30, 2011

I wanted to share this editorial that my mom wrote and had published in one of the local newspapers near where she lives.

Memorial Day was enacted to honor soldiers of the Civil War. It was set on May 30, near the day of reunification. The day was expanded after World War I to include American casualties of any war or military action.

The federal Memorial Day holiday this year is Monday, May 30. This is a happy alignment of the calendar. Most years, the federal holiday is not on May 30, but rather is scheduled on the nearest Monday to May 30. Even so, many communities in Vermont — Stowe and nearby towns included —steadfastly hold their services and ceremonies on May 30, traditionalists standing firm in the belief that a day honoring our war dead is diminished if it is shifted around for the convenience of a three-day weekend. We like the traditional observance.

In 1861, the United States was knifed in two in a bitter struggle over slavery and the South’s decision — demand, really — to leave the Union. Vermonters joined soldiers from across the land walking and riding south to fight to keep the union together. Near Washington, D.C., they met soldiers marching north from the Southern states to fight for a separate Confederate government that would protect the right to have slaves.

America’s Civil War lasted four years. It destroyed the land and killed more Americans — some 620,000 — than any other war, from the Revolution through Vietnam.

The stories of the war live on, but one song, a hymn really, forever evokes the spirit of the Union soldiers and the sadness and passion of the struggle. The words are religious; the song a praise to God. Social reformer, anti-slavery activist and poet Julia Ward Howe awoke one winter night in Washington, D.C., with the words in her head. The city was filled with soldiers, the hospitals full, the citizens in terror. The battles were just across the Potomac River.

Howe had come to Washington to visit the troops. According to published accounts, the words came to her as she lay in her hotel room at night. She was awakened by dreams of marching soldiers.

“I found to my surprise that the words were forming themselves in my head,” she later recalled. “I lay still until the last line had completed itself in my thoughts. Then I quickly got out of bed. I thought I would forget the words if I did not write them immediately. I looked for a piece of paper and a pen. Then I began to write the lines of a poem:
‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on.’”
The Atlantic Monthly magazine bought Howe’s poem. Paid her four dollars. She had written the poem to be sung to a soldier’s marching song about abolitionist John Brown. Howe’s version had just the right words for the music. Union soldiers began to sing it.

It became their official marching song. But “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” like all great art, both captures that moment in history and transcends it for eternity.
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Copper Head · May 30, 2011

Memorial Day was first known as Decoration Day. People decorated the graves of fallen soldiers who had been killed during the War Between the States. Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

chip · May 30, 2011

Very well expressed!

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It's Memorial Day 2011 Fellow Coin Collectors

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Peter T Davis Hammer at the Ready Moderator

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