Changes

In the first few years after the Civil War in the 1860s, the sheer number of dead during the conflict was still a difficult experience for many American families. The war had led to many people taking the teamtime to remember their dead, during spring as flowers blossomed, to and lay small floral commemorations on their fallen loved ones. People would also gather, often entire communities, to clean graves of fallen loved ones and make sure the graves were looked after from the conflict. The practice of laying flowers on graves had originated is a very ancient tradition and, by May, all across the United States flowers were ever present. This began to make May a type of unofficial commemoration of the dead in times of war, at least for some communities, particularly in remembering the Civil War. Most likely, not one single community started the practice of celebrating their loved ones in the spring, but it was likely widespread. Some have said that was this is when the commemorative day began to be called Decoration Day was a . In fact, it could be an originally Southern tradition, where it meant you would clean and decorate the graves with flowers for fallen soldiers. However, it was not celebrated on a specific day (Figure 1).<ref>For more on the origins of Memorial Day, see: Ansary, M. T. (1999).<i> Memorial Day</i>. Des Plaines, Ill.: Heinemann Library.</ref>

A key turning point in making the end of May, and eventually the last Monday of May, the official holiday was General John Logan's directive, a prominent Union Civil War general, to declare establish in the military as May 30th as a the day to decorate the graves of loved ones with flowersremember fallen soldiers. He did this in 1868, by which time many had already been decorating graves of fallen loved ones during the month of May. General Garfield, another general from the Civil War and later 20th president who was assassinated in office, made the first semi-official speech in 1868 on May 30th at Arlington Cemetery. There, over 5000 people came and who were relatives for both sides of the conflict to celebrate 20,000 soldiers buried there.<ref>For more on how General Logan helped establish the date of May 30th as Decoration Day, see: Schauffler, R. H. (2013). <i>Memorial Day (Decoration Day) Its Celebration, Spirit, and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse, with a Non-Sectional Anthology of the Civil War</i>. Nabu Press, pg. 10.</ref>

While already the early celebrations of what initially became called Decoration Day were celebrated by many Northern states, the celebration of May 30th did not catch on as prominently in the South. In fact, Southern states often had similar celebrations but they held them on different days. Some of the traditions in Southern states that differed, such as communal decoration and cleaning of graves, continue to this day. In the North, individual states adopted May 30th as official state holidays, but at a federal level it was not recognized. Perhaps this was due to lingering bitterness between the North and South, where states in the South preferred to have their own Decoration day.The bitter years of Reconstruction and white bitterness towards freed slaves did not help, and animosity such as derision of so-called Carpetbaggers from the North moving to the South reflected the years after the Civil Warwere difficult, reflected a where socially the country was still divided country. Decoration dayDay, nevertheless, developed as a specific holiday devoted to the lost in the Civil War rather than other conflicts, as that war was by far the bloodiest in the United States' history at that point.<ref>For more on the early traditions of Decoration Day, see: Jabbour, A., & Jabbour, K. S. (2010). <i>Decoration day in the mountains: traditions of cemetery decoration in the southern Appalachians</i>. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.</ref>