On Memorial Day

Honor the fallen — and that for which they fell

An AI rendering of the first Memorial Day

Memorial Day is the day on which we honor the fallen, a day held in memory of those who died while serving in our armed forces, and so a day of mourning. But also a day of pride, for everyone who visits the grave of a soldier on this grey day places there an American flag, as we not only honor the fallen but take this day to remind ourselves that for which they gave their lives.

As

Jonah Goldberg

often observes, the political left in this country has lost the language of patriotism. They are by their own ideology so corrupted they now praise terrorists and murderers while casting patriotic love as imperialist racism. Many no doubt would sooner fly the Palestinian flag before they would ever raise the Stars and Stripes. Unsurprisingly then, this Memorial Day weekend, Google’s AI chatbot Gemini made headlines by telling people patriotism is “complex and controversial,” citing “white Memorial Day” as part of the problem.

But Gemini is trained on content from the web, meaning this is not a glitch so much as an echo, and we know whose voice is being reflected back to us: Representatives Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and Ayanna Pressley, as well as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and all those who describe America as white supremacist.

We are now used to the fact now that every time America takes a national pause to honor something noble or unifying, someone inevitably pipes up to declare it racist. The irony here is that the black slaves who endured actual white supremacy did not hold America in such mean regard. They did not look upon whites as instruments of evil nor view their fellow Americans as inescapably racist.

They so loved this nation they gave us Memorial Day on May 1, 1865, when 10,000 former slaves gathered in Charleston, South Carolina, to dig up a mass grave of 260 white Union soldiers who had died in a Confederate prison camp:

The race track in question was the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club in Charleston, South Carolina. In the late stages of the Civil War, the Confederate army transformed the formerly posh country club into a makeshift prison for Union captives. More than 260 Union soldiers died from disease and exposure while being held in the race track’s open-air infield. Their bodies were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstands.

Thanks to the work of Yale historian David Blight, we now know how the story ended, and how Memorial Day began:

Well, the black folks at Charleston got organized. They knew about all this. They went to the site. They re-interred all the graves, the men. They couldn’t mark them with names. They didn’t have any names. Then they made them proper graves and they built a fence all the way around this cemetery, about 100 yards long and 60 yards deep, and they whitewashed the fence and over an archway they painted the inscription “Martyrs of the Racecourse.” And then on May 1st, 1865, they held a parade of 10,000 people on the racetrack, led by 3,000 black children carrying armloads of roses and singing “John Brown’s Body,” followed then by black women, then by black men — it was regimented this way — then by contingents of Union infantry. Everybody marched all the way around the racetrack, as many as could fit got into the gravesite. Five black preachers read from scripture. A children’s choir sang the national anthem, “America the Beautiful,” and several spirituals. And then they broke from that and went back into the infield of the racetrack and did essentially what you and I do on Memorial Day. They ran races, they listened to 16 speeches, by one count, and the troops marched back and forth and they held picnics. This was the first Memorial Day.

Now that’s how you honor the fallen. And though they had suffered literal slavery, they loved the blessed nation that made them free. They cared not that the soldiers were white. They were united in patriotic love, and consecrated the ground with that love. Three years later, Union veteran General John A. Logan proclaimed May 30 as “Decoration Day” to honor those who died in the Civil War, and this is often seen as the formal beginning of the holiday, but that gathering in Charleston was the first — and the spiritual start.

This Memorial Day, remember that the former slaves who gave us this day would not have agreed our nation is rooted in evil. We can honor the fallen, and that for which they fell, by uniting to celebrate the American way and all those who fought and died to keep it whole. So whether you’re having a barbecue or making a solemn trip to a grave, remember to consecrate this day with patriotic love.