amen, brother. My kids’ school sent this out in an email on Friday, thought I’d share here:
Memorial Day began in the years following the Civil War. The Civil War was fought between the Northern and Southern states and lasted from 1861 to 1865. When the war was over, family members began to take regular trips to lay flowers on the graves of the husbands, sons, and loved ones they had lost in the horrible fighting between the Union and the Confederacy, that harrowing Civil War that consumed so many lives from 1861 to 1865.
Several towns in the United States claim to be the “birthplace” of the Memorial Day tradition and by 1868, a former Union officer named John A. Logan promoted May 30 as a day set aside “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country.”
Following World War I, the scope of Memorial Day changed to include soldiers who had died in combat, and, in 1971, the United States Congress designated the last Monday in May to be a federal holiday under the name we know now: Memorial Day.
While we may celebrate the day in a variety of ways, from barbecues to pools to time with family and friends, we should take a moment and consider the incredible opportunities and advantages we have in this country that are preserved and supported by members of our armed services.
As an example, consider the words of John Adams, the second president of the United States. In 1780, Adams wrote in a letter to his wife, Abigail: “I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.”
Adams was speaking of generations—one studies and practices war and endures great sacrifices, and the other who enjoys the kind of peace and tranquility that makes the great study of the arts possible. The one generation who enjoys music and the arts cannot do so without the sacrifices of an earlier generation who endured the kind of warfare that Adams lived through during the Revolution.
Adams’ words still apply today, although not so much to generations as to groups of Americans. I am of the group that has the privilege of studying painting, poetry, and music, and I give thanks to those of the group serving in our country’s armed services so that I may have this unique privilege. This reflection is a somber, sobering thought, and it is a reminder to use our freedom well in light of the sacrifices so many have given on behalf of so few.
On Memorial Day, an occasion on which we remember the Americans fallen in combat, it is fitting and proper that we turn our attention to the cause and the founding of America. Thinkers and statesmen from Plato to John Locke had speculated for millennia on the nature of just government, but, in the founding of America's entirely new government, the accumulated canon of political thought could be most fully utilized. On these shores, history's firmest securities of a peoples' liberties were realized, and the capacity of a nation for self-government tested, even to the point of death.
As Abraham Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address, such soldiers had given their last full measure of devotion. Our country and its values are worth fighting for.
So on this Memorial Day, imitating Lincoln’s words and phrases, we want to thank everyone who has served in our nation’s military and honor those who sacrificed, asking humbly that we all may rededicate ourselves to America's cause: securing, protecting, cherishing the blessings of liberty.
