The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1892-06-07
SOLDIERS DAY.
Pathetic Incident which Gave
Rise TO Decorating Gravee.

In one of the most impressive Dec
grafton Dey addresses ever delivered
these words were uttered: "When
the war was over in the South. where
under warmer skis and with more
poetic temperaments symbols and en-
blems are better understood than in
the practical North, the widows moth.
ers, and children of the Confederate
dead went out and strewed their
graves with flowers, at many places
the women scattered them impartially
also over the unknown and unmark-
ed resting place of the Uuion soldiers
As the news OF this touching tribute
flashed over the Norib it reused as
nothing else could have done, national
amity End love and allayed sectional
luminosity and passion. 1t thrilled
every household where there was a
vacant chair by the fireside and an
aching VOID in the heart for lost he.
70 whose remains had never been
found, old wounds broke out afresh
and in mingled tempest of grief and
j,y the family cried. Maybe it is
our dar:ing!' Thus out OF sorrows
common alike to North and South
came. this beautiful custom. But
Decoration Day no longer belongs to
those WHO mourn. 1t is the common
privil. ge OF us all and will be celebra-
led as long as gratitude exists and
flowers bloom"
Thus Chauncey NJ. Depew in his
declaration day address in 1879 tod
briefly of the origin OF the custom of
graves with fDwers.and Jno.
S. Wise in a speech made some years
sgo declared that the tenderest and
most touching legacy of the war was
that sentiment of common pity and
humanity to which the women gave
in a southern cemetery
when they decked the graves Of
and Federal soldiers with
impartial hand.
The custom was at first rather slow
in taking root in the north and it was
not until the Grand Army posts, by
common consent, fixed upon the 3Oth
day of May, the time of the A1wers,
as a day when they should dedicate
to a simple ceremony of
paying tribute to their lost comrades
by strewing their graves with flowers.
The custom met with such popular
that one after another of the |
legislatures Of the different states set |
apart the day legally for such observ-
ance, and now, as Henry Ward
Beecher said only a year or two before
his death, there is probably not a
in the land which will not
reveal on the eve of decoration day,
either by little flags or flowers, that
t contains the dust of one who gave
lis life in the civil war.
The suggestions that upon the bat
lefields Of the South there should be
lots of ground consecrsted as burial
H. ces for soldiers who fell upon those
elds seems to have been spontaneous.
was a popular dem md, recognized
y Congress, and legislation was early
as q result of which a ma
ional cemetery lies contiguous to every
attle6eld of importance. Appro-
riations are made by the Govern
lent for the maintenance of these
and the visitors see in the
tile marble headstones-thousandsl
nd thousands Of them at Fredericks-
urg, in the Chickahominy region, at
hickamauga, at Arlington, at Get
7sburg, the visible evidence of the
.rrible mortality which this stupen-!
Gus contest involved.
Perhaps the two most interesting
are those Of Gettysburg and I
rlipg,on. The Gettysburg battle
I'D is probably the best defined Of {
~ of the worlds great fields of bat
E. By voluntary action many of the
giments ard brigades have located a
the precise position which a
ey held at the most critical moments
those momentOus three days. q
When Gen. Lee quilted his beauti-
! home at Arlington TO accept the C
mmission rendered him by his native
,te, Virginia, the government took d
Of hi, estate all the more
nderly because it was hsllowed with s.
of Washington. Lee never =
" it again until two or three years
ter the close of the war, and when a
J eyes then rested upon it he saw e
e lovely park land which surround.
the colonial mansion dotted with el
IRE than eight thousand little white
,untains, most of them marking the k
ave of some unknown soldier. The
bit affected the General greatly. d.
orfly before he thus saw his old
me he had visited the Confederate in
netery in Richmond, and he spoke