'Great Blessings have a Great Price'

As we celebrate this Memorial Day amid argument over the proper role and place of statues and symbols, it might be useful to remember that the day was first meant to honor the Civil War dead.
There had been earlier celebrations. A Great Jubilee Day, first held on May 26, 1783, in Connecticut, commemorated the end of Revolutionary War fighting. That day included feasting, prayer, speeches, toasts, militia firing off cannons, and the other trappings that go with patriotic fervor.
But the modern Memorial Day in which we pay tribute to all Americans who died while in the military service began in 1868 as Decoration Day. The Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans, set aside that day to decorate the graves of war dead with flowers. The former Confederacy began similar ceremonies on a different day, and early in the 1900s, the two days were eventually combined.
It is also worthy of note that the day has sure roots among African Americans. Black people in Charleston, S.C., organized a ceremony in 1865 that was covered by national newspapers. Nearly 10,000 people, mostly newly freed men and women and including 3,000 newly enrolled school children, gathered on May 1 to commemorate the soldiers who fought to give them their freedom.
The noted Yale history professor David W. Blight, who was director of the Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, said in one of his lectures, “This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.”
Closer to home, Memorial Day remarks made by Rev. J. B. Taylor in 1914, when small groups of aging Civil War veterans still gathered each May, might be applicable to veterans of all wars and to issues of today.
“Fifty years ago this nation was ablaze with war,” he said. “Men who were brothers in blood, language and faith, faced each other in mortal combat. Both sides believed that they were right, and, strong in this belief, they submitted their cause to the ‘dread arbitrament of war.’ The war is over. The issue has been decided for all time. The great armies, victor and vanquished alike, have been swallowed up in the vast throbbing pulsing floods of peace.
“The Memorial Day with its infinite pathos, its tender ministries, stands unique among the holy days of the nation. ... What primal principles are incarnate in these little groups of marching veterans. ... These men arrayed in armies have settled by grim ordeal of battle the most momentous questions of history. They ended slavery forever. They unveiled the sure foundations of a Free Democracy. With [the] roar of cannon they closed an era and ushered in a new age.
“There is no longer any North or South. The blue and gray march side by side. ... The memory of the commanders, generals, minor officers, will be chiseled upon our hearts. ... The private in the ranks knew that where he fell the crocus and the violet may blossom over a nameless grave.
“As we in reverence think of our mighty dead, let us not forget that great blessings have a great price, and let the Veterans pray that their children may be brave and loyal to live and die for the Nation they have given us.”

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.