Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf
Did you know
that Memorial Day wasn’t called Memorial Day in the beginning? It
was called Decoration Day. They called it that because after the
Civil War, people decorated the graves of the soldiers who were killed in
battle on that day. It was a southern tradition, to decorate graves
to remember loved ones lost, but this tradition was now shared all over the
country, for soldiers from the north and the south.
Maybe it was a way to bring the people of the north
and the south together after the war. It took the South a long time
after the Civil War before they joined in the celebration in a national way. As
a matter of fact, it took another war, World War I.
There were many organizations of southern women’s
groups that went about in local areas decorating the graves of the Confederate
soldiers on random but different dates in May each year, and they finally came
to see that this day was not about division, but about reconciliation and
coming together. It was to be a time for honoring the soldiers who
gave their all for all of us.
The North and The South finally came together and
began placing flowers on the graves of their heroes who were buried in the
Arlington National Cemetery.
The Civil War was such a misunderstood war. Most
people haven’t heard the whole story. It wasn’t really all about
slavery, as many think. It was mostly about state’s rights and
taxation without representation.
As wrong as slavery was, many believed that the whole
situation would have worked itself out eventually with the invention of the
cotton gin and new farming machinery. At any rate, the subject was
often used for a political soap-box in order to get at some of the underlying
issues that were really more important to those involved. It is a sad
fact that though people did care about the situation of slavery, the truth was
that neither side would be willing to send their sons to fight over the issue of
slavery. They were, however, willing to die for their freedom to own and
keep their own property, and their right to make a living and receive the
financial benefit from it without government interference. Hmmmm…..I
wonder how people are feeling about that today?
To understand what really happened way back then, you
must first see and note the contrast in the cultures. The North and
The South were two totally different cultures, with two totally different ways
of life. Out of the 5.5 million people living in the south, there
were really only 12 rich and powerful southern plantation owners, who owned
over 500 slaves each. These men had a lot of political power, and
they were involved with legislation. In 1860 everything in the South
evolved around agriculture, mostly cotton. Everything in the North
evolved around manufacturing goods. There were 140,000 manufacturing
facilities in the North in 1860. The North thrived on exporting
goods. The South thrived on exporting cotton. Most of the
southern cotton was bought by England. The English people
manufactured their own products, and were not likely to import the North’s
exports, but they were glad to export their own to the southern traders. As
a matter of fact the English had a good trade deal established with the South,
where they would buy their cotton and in turn the Southern plantation owners
would receive good prices on English products.
The South wound up buying goods from England instead
of buying the goods being manufactured in the North. In order to
counteract this, the North, who controlled the House of Representatives and the
Senate at that time, decided to tax both imports and exports. That
put the South paying high taxes on both the cotton they exported, and the goods
they imported from England.
By 1860 the South was actually paying approximately
85% of the taxes collected by the U.S. They felt they were
overtaxed and under represented by our government. That was the main
issue, and slavery was the song it traveled on. The politicians of
the day knew that slavery was the political subject that would pull at people’s
heartstrings and evoke emotion, and they used it to their own advantage to stir
up people’s hearts.
Many good people, most from the north, but also some
good godly people from the south, were already hard at work trying to change
the situation of slavery. Slaves were considered to be
property, and therefore, they were a good source of tax revenue for the
government. In this respect, the north was just as guilty as
the south in not stopping slavery. They thrived from the revenue
received because of slavery from the large plantations. There were
also excessive property taxes taken from the huge lands that made up the
southern plantations where the slaves lived and worked.
Remember “Gone With The Wind”? A huge part
of the story came to light because of the lack of tax money to pay Tara’s
taxes. This was a catch 22 type situation though – when it came time
for the numbers to be counted of people in an area, the southern plantation
areas could count their slaves and claim a larger stake of the pie. There
was legislation over this, and some real odd ways came about by trying to
justify whether a slave counted in a region as a whole person or not. The
North got the slaves reduced to a fractional number until after the war when
the whole issue was corrected.
Because of the heavy taxation, and the reduction of
the number of people the southern legislators represented, the southerners
became financially and politically strapped. They could not
exist any longer under the current tax situation, and they could not gain any
power in the House and Senate to make a change. Desperate, they
exercised their state’s rights to pull out. When they did, everyone
suffered. The northern industrial states had depended on southern plantations
for their food sources.
It was a mess, and it was a stupid and greedy
mess. It took both sides a long time to recover from their
wounds.
I find it very ironic that a war within our own
country was the event that evolved into a time of remembering and honoring the
soldiers that died protecting our country from other countries. It
actually started out because we needed to protect ourselves from each
other.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of the Civil War was about
coming together as a people of one voice, and putting aside our differences and
creating workable solutions for all. The abolishing of slavery
certainly falls under this huge umbrella. The Union soldiers never
mentioned in their historical diaries that they were fighting to abolish
slavery. What you read in their writings was the fact that they were
fighting to protect and establish the Union. They wanted The United
States of America to stay The United States of America, which was established
as “one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.” They
gave their lives for the idea that we, as a nation, should always stay together
and work out our problems, under all circumstances.
Hence, Decoration Day was established, which became
known as Memorial Day after World War II. It was officially moved to
the third Monday of May in the 1970’s. This was done so that all of
America could enjoy a long weekend while they remembered those who died for
their freedom.