Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1897 — Birth of the Day. [ARTICLE]

Birth of the Day.

It comes to us of to-day like n strange, tragic dream, this memory of a war of more than three decades ago, when the sound of shot and shell rent the silence and peace of the beautiful summer days, and there was a vacant chair in the home of every patriot in the land. Then the soldiers were divided into two factions, the boys in blue and the boys in gray. Now they are united in one band —those that are left—and they are all boys in gray. Time lias given them their uniform. N The blue was mingled with the skies, And we were boys in gray. Southern" women gave to our country its Jirat Memorial Day—the women of Alabama, who paid tribute to their soldier dead on April 2(1, 1800. The first fohnal services in eopmemoration of the soldiers who gave their lives for the Union was on May 5. 1808, by order of Ueu. John A. Logau, who was at that time Commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. The first State to take legislative action on Memorial Day was New Jersey, and New York was the first State to make it a legal holiday. Congress adjourned as a mark of respect to the memory of the men who had died fighting their country's battles. On the first occasion when the order was general for an observance of the day, which was that proclaimed by Gen. Logan, there was a great display of soldiery, and most pathetic scenes were witnessed, for the sears of war were yet fresh. At Arlington, where 15,000 soldiers reposed, Gen. Garfield —afterwards President of the republic—made an oration that melted all who heard it to tears. It was not only a magnificent tribute to the dead, but a classic and valorous lesson of encouragement to the living. It was on that occasion that he uttered this grand peroration: “If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of 15,000 men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem the music of which can never be sung.”