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Officially if not traditionally, yesterday was Memorial Day, presumably set aside to honor Americans who died in battle.
Those who perished in the Revolutionary War, the War of
1812, the Mexican War and the early Indian Wars were not so
honored during the first four score and seven
years
of this Republic.
Memorial Day is a product of the Civil War, and its
origins may go back to 1863 or 1864, when some Southern
belles and matrons took flowers and ribbons to the graves
of Confederate soldiers -- they decorated
the
graves, and thus the term Decoration Day.
But on this side of the Mason-Dixon line, it might have begun in 1866. The story has it that one Henry C. Welles, a druggist in Waterloo, N.Y., suggested decorating the graves of Civil War soldiers. Townspeople agreed, and on that May 5, they lowered town flags to half-mast, took some time off work, and marched to the cemetery to lay wreaths on veterans' graves.
That story is why President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed Waterloo, N.Y., the official birthplace of Memorial Day. It may well be true, but whenever LBJ is involved, some skepticism is warranted.
After the Civil War, Union veterans did what all good American veterans do -- they formed an organization to lobby for more benefits. This one was known as the Grand Army of the Republic, organized in Departments (usually one per state) and Posts (a small town might have one, while cities could boast dozens).
The GAR also had a women's auxiliary, and its reach was impressive, both in space and time. The closest Civil War battle (when Colorado repelled the Texas invaders at Glorieta Pass east of Santa Fe on March 28, 1862) was at least 200 miles away from Salida, which was not even founded until 1880, long after the Civil War had ended.
And yet in our Riverside Park there's a handsome granite
memorial to Our Honored Heroes: 1861-1865,
erected
by Salida Circle the Ladies of the Grand Army of the
Republic Department of Colorado and Wyoming -- in 1916,
more than 50 years after Appomattox.
The GAR elected a commander-in-chief; in 1868 the position was held by Gen. John A. Logan, who doesn't get much attention today even though his name is prominent on Denver maps: Logan Street a few blocks east of Broadway, and in the southwest part of the city, Fort Logan Hospital and Fort Logan National Cemetery.
During the Civil War, Logan was a military commander of the sort we don't see any more. Modern generals are full-time professionals, but Logan was a political general, appointed to lead troops not on the basis of his military prowess, but to show the public that the Union Army's leadership represented various factions of the country.
Most of these generals, like Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, were inept or worse (of Butler, another general wrote that it was little better than cold-hearted murder to send men into battle under his command). Logan, who hailed from southern Illinois, got his commission because he had been a pro-southern Democratic congressman before the war, but supported the Union when secession came.
He also turned out to be a capable general officer, serving as a division and corps commander under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman during the campaign for Atlanta and the ensuing march to the sea.
As commander of the GAR in 1868, on May 5 Logan issued General Order No. 11, which called for all departments and posts to set aside May 30 to remember their fallen comrades, and it is that date which became the traditional Memorial Day.
Traditional in most of the country, anyway. Some areas had problems with honoring Yankee dead, and so Texas had a Decoration Day on Jan. 19, while it was May 10 in South Carolina, June 3 in Louisiana and Tennessee and April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi.
As for Logan, he did visit Colorado several times and held investments in several silver mines, but he died in 1886, three years before Fort Logan was designated by Gen. Phil Sheridan.
That's why there is a Sheridan Boulevard that leads to the one-time fort, which was closed in 1946 and is now the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Fort Logan. As to why there was a fort there in the first place -- Denver was hardly threatened by Indians or invasion when the fort went up in 1889 -- note that our Sen. Henry M. Teller was good at delivering pork from the barrel, so that Denver could enjoy a military payroll.
The 1889 military post had a small 3.2-acre cemetery; Fort Logan National Cemetery was designated in 1949 from 214 acres on the west side of the old military base.
So Coloradans, especially metro residents, could celebrate Memorial Day in a fitting way -- on the traditional date of May 30, at a military cemetery named for the citizen-soldier who started the tradition.
We could make that our Memorial Day, and reflect modern
economic reality by persuading the governor to proclaim the
last Monday in May as Tourist Season Opening
Day.
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