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 many 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.
To understand what really happened, 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 later became known as Memorial Day after World War II. It was officially moved to the last 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.
