Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery
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A long-time, faithful, and deeply astute reader who understandably prefers to remain anonymous wrote to me today as follows (verbatim) and I secured his permission to reproduce his thoughts–Bruce
Dear Bruce,
Thank you very much for running the beautiful picture from Arlington today. First things first.
I am old enough to remember when the holiday was called Decoration Day. Often when I was a small boy, we traveled then to my mother’s hometown. It was (and is) a small community in central Minnesota. Early in the morning of 30 May, much of the town would meet at the cemetery, with hand tools and flowers. The first order of business was the “decoration” of the graves of the veterans of the GAR, all of whom had simple brass medals at their stones. Then we attended to our own family graves. In the afternoon, there was a parade, and a town picnic.
Those GAR veterans were survivors of the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, which assembled in April 1861 in response to Lincoln’s first call for volunteers. They would fight at 1st Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. On the 2 July, at Hancock’s order they charged down Cemetery Ridge to give the Union troops the time to close the gap that was threatened with imminent breach . They took 82% casualties that day, but survived as a unit to carry on to the end of the war. Those who fell in far off battles were not among those buried in that little cemetery in Staples, but my great-great grandfather, George Poore, came home and died in his little home town. We can hardly imagine such things today.
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all that may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” [A. Lincoln, 4 March 1865]
[name withheld]