Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1875-06-02
A DECORATION BLAST.

The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
(Radical) of the 29th Of May thus lee
lures those ex-Federals who would clasp
hands with rebels in cemeteries:
To-day is legal holiday. having been
made so by the Legislature as means
of doing honor to the men who died for
their country in the days Of the rebel
lion. To-day their comrades publicly,
and their relatives and friends privately,
are engaged in renewing the tributes Of
aifectionate and patriotic remembrance
by the decoration of the thousands Of
mounds that mark the last sleeping
places Of the men who did not count
even their lives dear to them if the sac
rifice of them might save the Union.
Man never died for purer or nobler
cause. Man never fought against a
more needless or wicked one than that
which cost patriotic America three han
dred thousand Of her best lives, that
filed her homes with mourning widows
and orphans and sowed her bosom thick
with untlmely graves.
Whether it was needful to make Dec.
oration day legal holiday may perhaps
be questioned, but there can be no ques.
ton as to the propriety Of its observance
so long as the patriotic sentiment OF
which it was born lives in the hearts OF
the people. The one objection to max.
ing 1t legal holiday lies just here, in
the fact that there is great danger that
the form will remain upon the statute.
book long after the life of the celebra-
ton has yielded to that certain process
of Time which levels all graves, as it
obliterates all other public memories.
Already Decoration Day has been de-
spoiled of much of its true significance
by the miserably false and mawkish sent.
ment that had poisoned the public mind
with its transparent sophistries about
mingling the Blue and the Gray" This
pernicious teaching, springing some
times from the low art of the dema
gogue, who would always rather catch a
hurrah than tell a truth, and sometimes
from the unreasoning generosity ol
brave men, who fancy that we are bound
to forget whatever we forgive, has al
ready spread its evil Influences far and
wide, implanting a principle that may
one day rend the Union into hopeless
fragments. The man who teaches that
the Gray is as good as the Blue, who
recognizes the same duty to rebel &
grave as to the grave Of the man who
died fighting for his country's flag, has
altogether forgotten the meaning of Dec.
Grafton Day. Ifit means nothing better
than this; If the rebel and the patriot
merit the same honor; if the child is to
be taught that the wreath that lies upon
his fathers grave is no more deserved
than that which decorates the grave oil
him whose madness and folly took his
father from him, there is but one logical
conclusion, and that is that his father
died for nothing that entities him to
/ special honor. And the ultimate logical
sequence, fraught with such supreme
danger to this country, is that in the tu.
ture, should the unhappy day come when
the Union is again threatened with dis
ruption, we shall have people thor
oughly indoctrinated in this false teach
ing that we may honorably tear down
our country's flag and have our graves
garlanded with flowers for doing so.
II would be as foolish as it would be
unchristian and wrong TO foster the bit
terness of the dreadful strife through
which we have passed. But while we
would bury all raneor, and bind together
North and South into that genuine
fraternity which the emancipation ofthe
South from Slavery has made possible
we would either have Decoration day
continue to teach its sad, solemn, true
lesson that only he is to be honored who
has died for his county, or we would
have the day abandoned as a public
celebration altogether The very name
Of the day, Decoration" day, continual.
ly revives the trite maxim of Horace
"Dulce ct decorum est pro patria mori,
and when the day mingles any other
lesson with this it becomes thing more
honored in the breach than in the OBJ
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