by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Memorial Day is our nation’s preeminent means of honoring and mourning the women and men who died while serving our country in the armed forces and, as Decoration Day, was formally established through a “Memorial Day Order” by General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union Army veterans group in May 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, setting aside the 30th of the month for the commemoration. This followed at least four years of organized effort in communities to place flowers, at the height of the spring growing season, on the graves of Civil War soldiers who died during that conflict.
In Los Angeles, there was no mention of Decoration Day until 1869, but, over the course of the next several years, there were no organized, official, recognized events. This may have been due at least largely to the fact that Logan’s order specified that the observance “is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” In the Angel City, however, there was no such example.
In 1876, which marked the centennial of the Declaration of Independence (a talk at the Homestead this coming 12th of July will look at how Los Angeles marked the anniversary and that in 1926 for the 150th), the Los Angeles Herald of 24 May reprinted a portion of a general order issued by G.A.R. California commander William Crosby, in which it was stated, “in places where posts of the Grand Army exist the services will be conducted under their direction,” including requesting clergy to offer related sermons on the Sunday prior to the 30th and to take part in the events of that day. Crosby, however, added,
Where there are no posts patriotic citizens are requested to aid in keeping alive the memory of those who gave their lives for our country, by strewing flowers upon their graves where such are found, by displaying flags at half mast, and by holding such public services as are practicable and fitting.
Crosby’s order, distinct from Logan’s proclamation, concerned those who generally died while in the service, which seems to correlate with how Memorial Day is commemorated now, as noted on the website of the Department of War. While there was not yet a Los Angeles post of the Grand Army, Crosby’s directive did allow for the possibility of official services, as well as individual observance, though whether any of the latter occurrences took place during this period is not known.
In its edition of the 30th, the Los Angeles Express observed, “this is Decoration Day and the fallen soldiers’ graves throughout the Union are being strewn with flowers” while “in San Francisco all public business is suspended,” though this was not the case in the City of the Angels. The same day’s Los Angeles Star commented that “we received no stocks or markets last night on account of to-day being ‘Decoration Day,'” this meaning no telegraphed dispatched on financial information.
The following day, the paper published a special dispatch by telegram from New York City about the more widespread observance there than in previous years and, a few days later, in reporting on Los Angeles residents who were in the east for the centennial celebration held in Philadelphia, it was noted that ex-Governor John G. Downey and merchant Harris Newmark were in the Big Apple, so it was likely one of them who sent the description.
In its 1 June number, the Herald editorialized on Decoration Day observances generally and it should be noted that, in 1876, more than decade after the war, the end of Reconstruction in the South was inevitable, but the paper focused on a broad sense of unity as it remarked that “the ceremonies of decoration day are suggestive, and there was a beautiful harmony throughout the entire celebration.”
Adding that the idea came from the South and was adopted in the North, the piece continued that “there was a gracefulness about the ceremonial that at once captured the finer sensibilities of both sections, and we believe it to be typical of an enduring harmony of sympathy and fraternal union that may last for centuries to come.” It asserted that the manner of commemoration was “evidence of the prevalence of a desire for future harmony throughout the land” and “a more cordial union of the States” reflective of “a common interest and a common destiny” that were based on a “substantial fundamental principle underlying all of our institutions.”
Continuing with this rosy, if not realistic, outlook, the Herald remarked that Union and Confederate veterans alike participated in the decoration of the graves of the fallen on both sides, and it concluded,
Let the dead past bury the dead, and may the flowers of yesterday be but the type of the fragrance of a future harmonious union. None but the sordid can object to this harmonious demonstration, and none can question its utility in a social and political point of view, but those who would ever keep alive the animosity of the past and transmit the unpleasant memories of other days, in a kind of mean, vindictiveness. We know the occasion and rejoice in the fraternal spirit manifested.
Perhaps there was more discussion of the day in 1876 because of the centennial as well as the national political scene involving the presidential election, which proved to be highly controversial and, following which, Reconstruction came to an end, but, in 1877 and 1878, relatively little was said in the Los Angeles press. The Los Angeles Star, in its 13 May edition, cited a Louisville, Kentucky account from the first of the month, in which a newspaper owner agreed to deliver an oration for soldiers, including Union ones, at the national cemetery, and wrote of honoring the spirit “that joins all the people in a lasting union of free States.”
For the paper, this forecast that Decoration Day “will witness the most glorious national picture ever presented to the world” and it exhorted, when it came to placing flowers on the graves of all soldiers, “let us, then, love them all, and honor them all, and make Memorial Day our National Psalm.” The use of “Memorial Day,” first observed in local papers three years prior, was becoming more common.
In its issue of 25 May, the Star commented on the positive commemoration in New York City with Union and Confederate veterans participating together in a way suggestive that “time, the great healer, has removed every trace of resentment and animosity from the breasts of those who warred against each other but a few short years ago.”
The paper’s edition of 31 May 1878 very simply observed that “Memorial Day was not observed in Los Angeles” and that bells tolling at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral were for a Roman Catholic holy day. In its 6 June number, the Herald, having not mentioned anything about the lack of commemoration locally, took General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose march to the sea that helped turn the tide of the Civil War remained a bitter memory to Southerners, to task as a “treason monomaniac” for what it considered his “petulant remarks in his customary vein, full of raw-head and bloody bones” to “take advantage of Decoration Day” in a speech the paper considered insolent regarding the postwar environment.
Despite the minimal mentions of the holiday during those two years, a major local development took place in July when a G.A.R. post was established and named after General George Armstrong Custer, who, in late June 1876, was killed along with many of his men by Cheyenne and Lakota Indian warriors at the Battle of Little Big Horn (the news was largely publicized on the centennial Independence Day).
When it was learned, however, that the Custer name was already taken by another California post, the Los Angeles group selected that of Frank Bartlett. While some sources suggest the honor was for Frank C. Bartlett, a Union veteran from Wisconsin, the namesake was actually William Francis Bartlett, who went by Frank. Bartlett (1840-1876) was a Harvard University student when, despite his sympathy for Southern succession, he volunteered for the Union Army four days after the Civil War erupted and was commissioned a captain in a Massachusetts infantry company.
A few months into the war, he lost a leg at the siege of Yorktown, Virginia (and completed his degree at Harvard while recovering at home) and, returning to action, was wounded twice more, in May 1863 at the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana and in April 1864 at the Battle of the Wilderness. In July, he was captured at the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg, Virginia and became very ill from confinement in one of the South’s notorious prisoner of war camps. While paroled in September and sent home, he returned again to service, this time in garrison duty at Washington, D.C. after the war’s end when he was breveted as a major general. He worked for a Richmond, Virginia iron works, took a centrist position on Reconstruction, gave a well-received commencement speech at Harvard in 1874, and died of tuberculosis two years later.
When a G.A.R. monument was placed at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights in 1891, the Herald of 27 April reported that, in a copper box set in the foundation stone, were “newspaper clippings referring to General Bartlett and his actions during the war, [and] a button from the general’s coat, worn during the war.” In 1906, his widow, Mary Agnes, visited the Los Angeles area and the Times of 1 April recorded that “Mrs. Bartlett, widow of Gen. Frank Bartlett, after whom the old Bartlett Post, G.A.R., of this city was named” was honored by the post, which recently combined with that named for General Logan.
With the Bartlett post in operation, it prepared for the Decoration Day of 1879, including a mid-May request to the Common (City) Council that the holiday be declared a legal one for city, which was adopted. In its issue of the 23rd, the Star remarked that the Bartlett post “will direct the ceremonies” and asked all veterans in the county to meet at the G.A.R. Hall, the former Union Hall (this apparently the former Union Club quarters in a building on Spring Street constructed by F.P.F. Temple) “to organize for the occasion.” It was added that “ladies are requested to furnish bouquets and leave them at the Hall, if they cannot go to the graves.
An advertisement was taken out on the 28th by Post Commander and Grand Marshal George E. Gard, a volunteer with a California infantry unit from 1864-1866 and later police chief and county sheriff as well as a founder of the San Gabriel Valley of Alosta, now part of Glendora, in which “all civic societies, fire companies, military [personnel and veterans] and citizens, who contemplate participating in the procession on Decoration Day” were asked to be “at their different stations at 1:30 P.M.”
A trio of divisions was organized, under three of Gard’s aides, to gather on Spring Street, with the first comprised of civil societies, the second including the mayor and council as well as the volunteer fire department, and the last to be formed by the G.A.R., military members and citizens. The route was to go north on Main Street to the Plaza, then back down Main and then to Spring, which then met at a triple intersection with Temple Street, and down to Third Street. From there, a return north to that triple intersection was to be followed by heading west on Temple to Buena Vista Street (later made part of Broadway) and then a right turn led to the gates of the City (Fort Moore Hill) Cemetery.
While the exercises took place there, it was noted that G.A.R. personnel were also to “be sent to the other Cemeteries,” meaning the Catholic Calvary at the base of the Elysian Hills and the recently opened Evergreen. As noted above, women were asked “to contribute floral decorations in the way of bouquets, wreaths or loose flowers to be placed on the graves of our nation’s honored dead.” Moreover, Gard’s notice included “we ask that our national flag be placed at half mast.”
In its coverage of the procession and exercises, the Herald of the last day of May commented,
Yesterday was made memorable in the annals of Los Angeles by the first observance of Decoration Day, a day that, in other sections of the Union, has almost become a national holiday. In deference to the occasion business was generally suspended during the afternoon—the wholesale houses on Los Angeles street being closed entirely. Flags were half-mast on all the public buildings and hotels, and notwithstanding the heat, which was comparatively intense, the streets were lined with people.
The parade was described much as in Gard’s notice, though fraternal orders like the Knights of Pythias and the Odd Fellows, the 38s and Confidence volunteer fire companies, the Los Angeles Guards and Latino Rifleros militia companies and the Mexican-American War veterans were specified as taking part.
The Herald continued that,
At the graveyards flowers had been provided in the greatest profusion—wreaths, bouquets and loose flowers—and when the [City] cemetery was reached orders were given that the graves of all soldiers—Union and Confederate—were to be decorated alike—an order that was strictly observed. Detachments of the Grand Army were sent to the other cemeteries and the same rule observed in decorating the graves.
Attorney and Colonel James G. Eastman, who settled in Los Angeles in 1875 after living and working in Marysville in northern California for seven years and who quickly became known as a riveting public speaker, including the 1876 Independence Day celebration (but whose alcoholism led him to dissipation and destitution so that he died a pauper in 1889).
In the flowery prose expected of the oratory of the day, Eastman asked that “in the presence of these mighty dead, these silent heroes of patriotism,” whose graves were decorated, whether they wore the blue of the Union or the gray of the Confederacy, “should we not waive all questions of sectional strife” and “bury in the deep vaults which hold their sacred bones all causes of dissension which may imperil the liberty and grandeur of the greatest government the world has ever known?”
During his address, another lawyer and colonel, John F. Godfrey, who volunteer from Maine to fight for the Union and served from 1861 to 1864, noted the recent formation of the G.A.R. post and dedicated much of his discourse to General Bartlett, detailing his wartime service, injuries and postwar efforts, which it was stated, “were devoted to conciliation, charity and the cultivation of paternal feelings between the two distracted sections of the country.” In the orator’s telling Bartlett “felt that the union of these States, hallowed by memories that can never die, should ever be preserved . . . that party feeling and partizan [sic] strife should be restrained and curbed” and “Americans all—should come again together united as a people, united as one nation under one flag forever.”
Godfrey told the assemblage that the renaming of the post for “this young hero with so brave a heart and such charitable, chivalrous views” was likely to “commend us to the favor of those who fought in grey as well as those who fought in blue.” He concluded by imploring his fellow veterans, who sacrificed so much in the war, “show your love of country by endearing it to all . . . [and] by giving a good, honest, secure and liberal government to them all.”
Orchardist Albert F. Kercheval’s poetry was frequently published by Angel City papers and his verse for the day included these lines:
Comrades, rest, your march is done!
Written Fame’s immortal story;
Fought the fight, the victory won,
Dream no more of death and glory . . .
Free from base, polluting slaves*,
With a soldier’s high endeavor,
Comrades, we will keep your graves,
Holy Shrines of Glory ever . . .
Gone from life’s dark sentry-tramp,
O’er the dim eternal river;
Resting in the heavenly camp,
Comrades, sleep in peace forever!
(*It is not sure if by this he meant Black slaves)
The holiday issue of the Express remarked that “Decoration Day is being observed in Los Angeles with more than the usual interest, thanks to the efforts of the Bartlett Post and other organizations, the City’s official acts, the women who brought flowers for grave decoration. The editorial was composed as the exercises were ongoing and the paper reported that residents had “a deep interest in the observances.” It propounded that Civil War feelings of enmity “are obliterated and a common tribute is offered upon every grave” and the paper claimed that,
In no city has Decoration Day been more generally or profoundly honored than in Los Angeles where the survivors of both armies dwell together in harmony and friendship.
As the decade came to a close, the Decoration Day holiday of 1880 featured the Bartlett Post, headed by Civil War Union veteran Irving A. Dunsmoor and assisted by another Union vet, Horace Hiller, again taking the lead for the commemoration, including calling for young women in the schools, and the community broadly, individually or in groups and participating in the procession, to decorate soldiers’ graves with flowers to be left at the Good Templars Hall. The Council also accepted an invitation to take part, but was sure, as economic times continued to be challenging during the Long Depression that covered most of the Seventies, to resolve that no city funds be spent in doing so.
The Los Angeles Commercial of the 1st of June went into detail regarding the day’s commemoration, noting that the procession included two divisions, with the first including the councilmembers, volunteer firefighters from the Angel City and Anaheim, the Los Angeles Guards and mounted police and the second comprised of Mexican-American War veterans, two other volunteer fire companies, G.A.R. member widows, the “old soldiers,” flowers conveyed in carriages, citizens walking and riding, speakers and the Bartlett Post membership. The parade began at Spring and 1st streets next to the hall, went south to 4th Street, east to Main, north to the Plaza, then back to Temple, west to Buena Vista and north to the City Cemetery.
In addition to grave decorating, there was a prayer from the Bartlett Post chaplain, a quartet, including the well-known local musician Miguel S. Arévalo, performing a song called “Decoration Day,” and a speech by lawyer and Union veteran from New York Henry T. Lee, who commented that,
All burial places are hallowed ground, but, with sadder hearts and tenderer thoughts, with sterner purpose and tumultuous memories, come we to the presence of the Union dead [note no mention of Confederates] . . . Of all the days upon the calendar it is the red-letter day of the Grand Army of the Republic, and it is right and fitting that it should be so . . . It is well that, with the kindly aid of sympathizing friends, we should in fraternal spirit, deck with flowers the graves of our departed comrades.
Lee forcefully emphasized a soldier’s loyalty to government, law, public trust and religion and, before the reading of another Kercheval poem, which was not reprinted by the paper, and a closing prayer by the Rev. Marion M. Bovard of the Methodist Episcopal Church and who, several months later, became the first president of the University of Southern California, Lee concluded with,
My comrades, we have a sacred trust; let us see to it that our dead shall not have died in vain. Let us thank God and take courage that, out of the wreck and ruin of the past, out of the thickness of the battle cloud, aye—above the noisome mists of political corruption and abuse, the solid structure of nationality, standing firm on the broad deep foundations of eternal right and liberty, still rears itself in calm, proud strength.
On this Memorial Day, there is much to glean from the remembrance by residents of 150 or so years ago of the sacrifice made by those who died in the service of the country, as well as the utterances of orators about the need for unity and commitment to the maintenance of the American democratic experiment—especially as this year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.