by R W Owen

Created on: May 24, 2009

Cheering crowds lined the sidewalks, paying eager tribute to the veterans of three wars in which the colors of the nation were borne to victory.

By the time these words appeared in the May 31, 1921, edition of the Lowell Sun of Lowell, Massachusetts, Memorial Day had long since become an established tradition in which citizens honored the veterans of all wars in living memory. To all but the oldest readers of that edition, Memorial Day had always meant a late Spring day marked with ceremonies, parades, religious services, and visits to cemeteries. Elderly readers of that edition would have remembered the first Memorial Day holidays, separately observed by the North and South, each to honor its own Civil War dead.

Little more than a half-century before, in 1868, General John A. Logan proclaimed that a day be set aside as a memorial to the Union dead of the U.S. Civil War. At the time, General Logan was commander-in-chief of the G.A.R., a fraternal organization representing Civil War veterans who had served on the Union side. The first Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was first known, was celebrated that year on May 30. For each year following, Americans had set aside May 30 to commemorate Union soldiers who had died in the Civil War with those who had survived, i.e., the G.A.R.., as they were known. As the years wore on, the holiday evolved to include casualties from later wars: first, the Spanish War and later the World War. After World War I, the holiday was officially expanded to include American casualties of all wars. It was not until 1968 that the U.S. Congress moved Memorial Day to the last Monday in May.

Lowell, Massachusetts: The Civil War Connection

The handful of G.A.R. veterans who gallantly tramped over the course, undaunted by the heavy burden of their years, were accorded the post of honor, as being the men who established so many of the traditions given renewed glory by millions of this generation of Americans who saw service in the world's greatest war. - Lowell Sun: May 31, 1921

In addition to the 3,400 men Lowell, Massachusetts contributed to the Union effort, the city also holds another, more unique, connection to the Civil War, and by extension, to Memorial Day. The Ladd and Whitney Monument sits at the city's center and has served as the site of each year's culmination of Memorial Day festivities. The obelisk also marks the final resting place of Luther C. Ladd and Addison O. Whitney, the first two Union casualties

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