Remembering the Fallen:
Memorial Day in Gettysburg
by Diana Loski
Memorial Day in the Soldiers National Cemetery
(Author photo)
Gettysburg has for many years been the ideal place to remember those who came before us. After the guns grew silent in 1865, the idea to honor the fallen on an annual basis grew and was finally instituted in 1868.
General John A. Logan, who commanded the Union’s Army of the Tennessee in the final year of the war, was elected to Congress from his home state of Illinois. He also earned the honor of becoming the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the post-war veteran organization for those who fought for the Union in the late war. Nationally recognized and respected, Logan issued as commander of the GAR General Order #11. The order proclaimed that May 30, 1868 would be declared Decoration Day, now Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor the fallen of the Civil War. The day was to be commemorated as an observance “with no set form or ceremony…but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services or testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.”1
Gettysburg, with its multitudinous military graves, quickly complied. It remains a place of ceremony to this day.
On May 30, 1868, shops and places of business closed during the late afternoon. A salvo of cannon fire from Cemetery Hill resonated at 5 p.m. A procession formed in Lincoln Square, with Civil War veterans leading the way. The parade included Collis’s Zouave Regiment, statesmen, and the Gettysburg Brass Band. A group of children, many of them whose fathers had been slain in the conflict, reverently carried bouquets to lay on the graves in the National Cemetery. The first Chief Marshall of the event was Captain John F. McCreary.2
As the procession reached the cemetery, about two thousand spectators followed. The Reverend James A. Brown, the former chaplain of the 87th Pennsylvania Regiment, delivered the keynote address. The orphans then strewed flowers on the graves of the Gettysburg and Civil War dead.3
Through the years, many memorable Decoration Days have been observed in Gettysburg. Some of the milestones of those days included the year 1877, when the first non-Gettysburg resident delivered the keynote speech. He was J.M. Vanderslice of Philadelphia.
That same year, children of Gettysburg public schools began the tradition of laying flowers on the graves. The orphanage had closed at the time. The holiday had become so popular, that by 1877 the crowd had swelled to 10,000 people. Civil War veterans continued to march in the parade.4
In 1878, the first sitting U.S. President since Lincoln visited Gettysburg and participated in the commemoration in the National Cemetery. Rutherford B. Hayes did not give the keynote address – the same as President Lincoln had not done – although he did say a few words, just as Lincoln had in 1863. His speech, however, was not as memorable. The keynote speaker that day was the former Union General Benjamin Butler from Massachusetts. He was given an exceptionally warm welcome, and his speech was received with great applause.5
In 1879, Governor Hoyt from Pennsylvania was the first Pennsylvania governor to attend as the main speaker. He was, however, the recent ex-governor, although still very popular with the people of the Keystone State.6
Five years later, in 1874, Decoration Day was declared a national holiday. Banks and government offices closed for the day, as well as most businesses. The festivities, including the parade and cemetery program, took place by the early afternoon. The tradition continues today.7
In 1884, the keynote speaker at Gettysburg’s Decoration Day commemoration came all the way from Montana, the first speaker from a western territory to participate in the holiday at Gettysburg. The following year, men from the Sons of the Union Veterans organization assisted the school children in strewing the flowers on the veterans’ graves. Some of those sons, like the orphans in 1868, laid the flowers on the graves of their relatives who fell at Gettysburg.8
In 1888, William Ryan, a New York statesman, recited Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address during the cemetery program – the first time the oration had been uttered in the cemetery since Lincoln had given it in 1863, a quarter of a century earlier. The speech was received, it was recalled, with “dramatic effect”. That same year, English soldiers who were part of the Honorable Artillery Corps of London attended the Memorial Day ceremonies. They were celebrating the bicentennial of their organization, and wished to participate at Gettysburg.9
In 1901, General Charles Collis, a Civil War veteran from Ireland (and later Philadelphia), had recently made Gettysburg his summer home. He was a regular attendee for many years at the commemorations at Gettysburg. He died the following year, in 1902, after a brief battle with cancer. His grave is near those of his command, Collis’s Zouaves, who fought at Gettysburg. He had been ill during the summer of 1863 and had missed the great conflict. His grave marks the place of the highest-ranking commander buried in Gettysburg’s Soldiers National Cemetery.10
So far, six U.S. Presidents have visited Gettysburg for Decoration Day, and five gave the keynote addresses. The five who gave memorial speeches were Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Theodore Roosevelt came twice, on May 30th, in 1908 and 1912, although during the latter year he was no longer Commander-in-Chief. President Eisenhower attended multiple ceremonies at Gettysburg for Memorial Day, as he lived in town since 1950, until his death in 1969. While President, he often escaped to his Gettysburg farm, as he preferred it to the White House.11
In 1880, Congressman Charles Williams from Wisconsin appropriately described the reason for the commemoration of remembering the fallen. “This is sacred ground,” he said, “and few places on earth possess a more enduring fame. Though annual, the commemoration of bravery of the dead here buried can never grow old.”12
The Honorable Henry Hull, a Congressman from Iowa, echoed the same sentiment in 1901: “There is a…question of cost, one which no arithmetic can compute, whose sum is one of the secrets of eternity. Who can number the mother’s tears, the widow’s cries, the orphan’s lamentations? Who can count the heartthrobs, the weary days, the sleepless nights, the anguish of those who watched and waited for loved ones who never returned?...The greatest cost of war…is the cost of human suffering and human life.”13
Thousands remain beneath the Pennsylvania soil at Gettysburg, in the National Cemetery and beyond, in unmarked graves somewhere on the field of battle. Their dreams and hopes were buried here, in order that we may reach ours. We can still remember them at Gettysburg, with gratitude, every Memorial Day; in fact, we can, and should, remember them every day of our lives.
Sources: Memorial Day General Information File, Adams County Historical Society (hereafter ACHS). The Gettysburg Star & Sentinel, May 27, 1868. The Gettysburg Compiler, June 3, 1877. The Gettysburg Star & Sentinel, June 1, 1897. Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders. Baton Rouge & London, Louisiana State University Press, 1964. Historic newspapers accessed through newspapers.com.
End Notes:
1. Warner, pp. 282-283. The Star & Sentinel, May 27, 1868.
2. Memorial Day File, ACHS.
3. Ibid.
4. The Compiler, June 3, 1877.
5. Memorial Day File, ACHS.
6. Ibid.
7. The Star & Sentinel, June 1, 1897.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Memorial Day File, ACHS.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
