June 04, 2004

I recall when I was attending the one room school house in the country, how every Memorial day we would have some kind of school presentation. I remember memorizing and reciting the Gettysburg address when I was in the 3rd grade at such a program. Afterwards we would walk up the hill to a cemetary and place little flags on the graves. It was a good half mile trek and uphill to boot. I remember passing a smaller cemetary, with a dozen or so markers, on the way up and wondering why we didn’t stop at that one to drop our ordnance of little flags. But no, for some undecipherable reason we pressed on to a bigger cemetery up the hill. I never did figure that one out. After that we marched back to school and were released for the rest of the day, and that was always welcome. I remember that Memorial day meant that school was almost over, with usually a little more than two weeks left until Summer recess. Those last couple of weeks always seemed to drag.

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is officially a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. It was officially proclaimed on 5 May, 1868, by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, and was first observed on 30 May, 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act, P.L. 90 - 363, in 1971 to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis' birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.

But most Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. Many think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country. Many more just think it’s nice to have a three day weekend and could give a hoot less about why. I’m not particularly excited about any holiday, but whether one chooses to celebrate it or not I think it of more than passing importance to know the what and the why of the putative celebration.

The original day was undoubtedly established as a result of the holocaust of the Civil War that claimed more American lives than anything before or since in our history. It was also a needless war, like almost all before or since, which would have been best not to happen. I now see Memorial day as marking not just all the needless deaths of Americans but as also the death knell of our Constitution.

As some of the people of the era ironically observed, “in order to save our constitution Mr. Lincoln destroyed it.” And destroy it he did. He proved that the executive branch could pretty much do anything it pleased without regard to any constitutional restraints. Lincoln conclusively proved the error of those of our founding fathers who thought that such power could be restrained while he vindicated the founding fathers who maintained that such a constitution couldn’t work, and that human nature would eventually win out. In retrospect we can see that we were warned as illustrated by the specific title and some excerpts from:

Antifederalist No. 7, ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION WILL LEAD TO CIVIL WAR, December 1787
... The new constitution in its present form is calculated to produce despotism, thralldom and confusion, and if the United States do swallow it, they will find it a bolus, that will create convulsions to their utmost extremities. Were they mine enemies, the worst imprecation I could devise would be, may they adopt it. ... The Congress's having power without control-to borrow money on the credit of the United States; their having power to appoint their own salaries, and their being paid out of the treasury of the United States, thereby, in some measure, rendering them independent of the individual states; their being judges of the qualification and election of their own members, by which means they can get men to suit any purpose; ... There are men amongst us, of such dissatisfied tempers, that place them in Heaven, they would find something to blame; and so restless and self- sufficient, that they must be eternally reforming the state. But the misfortune is, they always leave affairs worse than they find them… Of all the plagues that infest a nation, a civil war is the worst. Famine is severe, pestilence is dreadful; but in these, though men die, they die in peace. ..But when a civil war is kindled, ... Life and fortune become precarious. And all that is dear to men is at the discretion of profligate soldiery, doubly licentious on such an occasion. … Fathers and sons, sheath their swords in anothers bowels in the field, and their wives and daughters are exposed to rudeness and lust of ruffians at home. And when the sword has decided the quarrel, the scene is closed with banishments, forfeitures, and barbarous executions that entail distress on children then unborn. May Heaven avert the dreadful catastrophe! In the most limited governments, what wranglings, animosities, factions, partiality, and all other evils that tend to embroil a nation and weaken a state, are constantly practised by legislators. What then may we expect if the new constitution be adopted as it now stands? The great will struggle for power, honor and wealth; the poor become a prey to avarice, insolence and oppression. And while some are studying to supplant their neighbors, and others striving to keep their stations, one villain will wink at the oppression of another, the people be fleeced, and the public business neglected. From despotism and tyranny good Lord deliver us.

Patrick Henry, foreseeing the danger of having a strong central government, and even more prescient of the Lincoln to come wrote “If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute! The army is in his hands, ..the President…, at the head of his army, can prescribe the terms on which he shall reign master, so far that it will puzzle any American ever to get his neck from under the galling yoke. ... If ever he violates the laws, one of two things will happen: he will come at the head of his army, to carry every thing before him... or do what Mr. Chief Justice will order him. If he be guilty, will not the recollection of his crimes teach him to make one bold push … Will not the immense difference between being master of every thing, and being ignominiously tried and punished, powerfully excite him to make this bold push? But, sir, where is the existing force to punish him? Can he not, at the head of his army, beat down every opposition?

The anti-federalist argued strongly, and as it turns out, correctly, but in vain to keep the American union as a confederate form of government wisely perceiving the dangers and folly of a strong central government. They knew their history and that every time such an attempt had been made it inevitably failed. At the same time they knew that the confederate form of government was the only one that succeeded in protecting liberty as Patrick Henry noted:

“The history of Switzerland clearly proves that we might be in amicable alliance with those states without adopting this Constitution. Switzerland is a confederacy, consisting of dissimilar governments. This is an example which proves that governments of dissimilar structures may be confederated. That confederate republic has stood upwards of four hundred years; and, although several of the individual republics are democratic, and the rest aristocratic, no evil has resulted from this dissimilarity; for they have braved all the power of France and Germany during that long period. The Swiss spirit, sir, has kept them together; they have encountered and overcome immense difficulties with patience and fortitude. In the vicinity of powerful and ambitious monarchs, they have retained their independence, republican simplicity, and valor”

While it is certainly grievous that so many Americans gave their lives, whether for our liberty or for the “folly of a strong central government”, Memorial day to me is the reminder that we lost our chance for liberty when the anti-federalist lost the argument about the dangers of the new constitution. It is for our lost opportunity to live a life of freedom, liberty, and self-responsibility, that I grieve.