History of Memorial Day

The 3 day weekend that kicks off the summer season in the United States, Memorial Day has its origins rooted in the bloodiest chapter in US History, the
American Civil War which saw over 6,000 soldiers being killed over state rights in regards to racial liberty. The day was initially called Decoration Day (due to graves being decorated with flowers (or stones if the deceased veteran was Jewish) and started on 1 May 1868 as per suggestion by John A Logan who fought on the Union side and wanted a day to remember the war's dead. It is said that freed slaves also played a hand in the birth of Memorial Day all the way back in 1865, with African American children signing John Brown's Body and carrying flowers in baskets.
As the day was initially conjured in the north of the United States, the southern states who were part of the controversial Confederate states were opposed to the idea of Memorial Day as they saw it as a day to remember Union soldiers and not Confederate soldiers. That was until the First World War when starting in 1917 and up until November 1918, American soldiers from both sides of the US were deployed to the war in Europe with 117,000 of them being killed in action. This war changed the purpose of Memorial Day which would now recognise all those slain in battles since the Revolutionary War (the American War of Independence). Memorial Day is similar to Veterans Day in a way that dead soldiers are being remembered for the service in wars gone by but Veterans Day also includes living soldiers while Memorial Day is mainly a day to commemorate the lives of deceased soldiers and no living soldiers. Memorial Day is now celebrated on the last Monday in May which became so in 1971 when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act went into effect as a federal workers holiday.