the Republicans created Memorial Day

Lincoln-Reagan Freedom Foundation ^ | May 30, 2005 | Michael Zak

[Grand Old Partisan]

As America honors its fallen military heroes this Memorial Day, Republicans can be proud that the holiday was established by one of their own, Senator John Logan (R-IL). Logan Circle in Washington, DC and Logan Square in Chicago were named after him.

As head of the Grand Army of the Republic, an early veterans organization, John Logan proclaimed that on May 30, 1868 Americans should honor the soldiers and sailors who died in the Civil War by decorating their graves with flowers. Five thousand people came to Arlington National Cemetery for the first Memorial Day ceremony. The principal speaker that day was U.S. Representative James Garfield (R-OH), who twelve years later would be elected President of the United States. Memorial Day soon became an annual event, and President Richard Nixon signed it into law as a national holiday in 1971.

John Logan was born in southern Illinois on February 9, 1826. A lawyer by training, he served three years in the U.S. House of Representatives before joining the Union Army with the onset of the Civil War, soon rising to the rank of Major General. Though a Democrat before the war, Logan re-entered politics as a Republican. In 1866, he was elected to the first of three more terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, and two years later served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. The Illinois legislature elected Logan to the U.S. Senate in 1871, and again in 1879 and 1885.

Senator Logan was our Grand Old Party’s vice presidential candidate in 1884, but the Republican ticket lost narrowly. He and all Republicans took defeat especially hard because the Democrat elected Vice President that year, Senator Thomas Hendricks, had actually voted against the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.

When John Logan died in 1886, the body of this great Republican lay in state for two days beneath the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, as a gesture of respect by a grateful nation.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Michael Zak is the author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of the GOP from the civil rights perspective.

[alloysteel]

Decoration Day.

Yeah, I remember when it was called that.

[Sidebar Moderator]

Do you have a working link to the article? Thanks.

[Piquaboy]

What day was it that the Damolrats created?

[AntiBurr]

Earth Day celebrated on Lenin's Birthday!

[Piquaboy]

Figures!

[Mark in the Old South]

I can not remember the name of the Union General but Logan sounds right. This General I am thinking of, (together with his wife) was credited with promoting the Memorial Day commemoration. But he did not originate the idea. They had seen it in the South among the local women. Some say the idea originated in Vicksburg MS, others claim it was the ladies of Winchester Virginia, still others claim the girls attending the boarding school of Miss Dickerson in Petersburg Virginia were the first. I suspect it was a spontaneous reaction across the South to honor the war dead. These ladies would lay flowers and pray at the graves of the Glorious Dead, both Union and Confederate.

Memorial Day will always be for me a Southern Holiday.

[Rockitz]

Some say the idea originated in Vicksburg MS

Interestingly enough General Logan was the Union general responsible for the seige of Vicksburg. There is a huge statue of him mounted on his horse near Vicksburg.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Thanks. Logan was one of the better political generals in the Union Army. What the political generals lacked in experience they often made up for with aggressiveness.

[Mark in the Old South]

If he was in Petersburg at the end of the war he is our man. I first heard of this General and his wife while living in Petersburg. They make a big deal of Nora Dickerson and her girls and their influence on starting Memorial Day.