Remembering Our Civil War Veterans
Veterans
at the 75th reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg reminisce
on the Civil War
Memorial
Day Addresses by: Quotations
by: Duryée's
Zouaves
Veterans Day
Remembrance Day The Significance of Memorial Day Memorial
Day, originally called Decoration Day, honors United
States' armed services personnel killed during wartime.
Those who will may raise monuments of marble to perpetuate the fame of heroes. Those who will may build memorial halls to remind those who shall gather there in after times what manhood could do and dare for right, and what high examples of virtue and valor have gone before them. But let us make our offering to the ever-living soul. Let us build our benefactions in the ever-growing heart, that they shall live and rise and spread in blessing beyond our sight, beyond the ken of man and beyond the touch of time. -
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Heroism is latent in every human soul.... However humble or unknown, they (the veterans) have renounced what are accounted pleasures and cheerfully undertaken all self-denials; privations, toils, dangers, sufferings, sicknesses, mutilations, life-long hurts and losses, death itself—For some great good, dimly seen but dearly held. -
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, See Inspirational Words by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain for more quotations by Chamberlain.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr., Image of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. as Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr., [Both quotations by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. are excerpted from "Memorial Day," an address delivered May 30, 1884 at Keene, NH before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic.] See Thoughts on Life, Dreams, and Pursuits for more quotations by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Image of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. taken during wartime years.
Theirs was a sublime amalgam of patriotism, duty, devotion, acceptance of self-sacrifice, and idealism—above all, idealism. They were the least apathetic people in our Nation's history. And while doubtless many rallied to the colors because they, like their neighbors and friends, were electrified by the summons of the fife and drum, those who found themselves locked in that terrible four-year ordeal persisted to the finish, or to their deaths, out of a sense of idealism—devotion to ideals they cherished more than life itself. Their devotion was a "Transcendence of Self." I bless and revere them—North and South alike—heroes to me forever. As the poet wrote, 'Love and tears for the Blue; Tears and love for the Gray.' May their gallant souls rest in peace, and be honored and glorified, to the last pulse of this country's existence! - Brian Pohanka Read the poem "The Blue and the Gray" by Francis Miles Finch (referenced in this quotation) in the Portraits of Valor section.
Special
thanks to Brian Pohanka for these quotations and images
of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and to Bill Styple for the
image of veterans at the 75th reunion at Gettysburg,
information about veteran Charles Hopkins, and image of
Hopkins's Memorial Day button. Please contact dota@yahoo.com for permission to use
any of this material. Thank you. And thanks to all our
veterans for their service and sacrifices. We honor and
salute you. Return to the top of the list
in this section. Copyright © 2001 - 2009 1st Dragoon's Civil War Site. All rights reserved. |
Memorial
Day celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a
national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the
most impressive form our belief that to act with
enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly.
To fight out a war, you must believe something and want
something with all your might. So must you do to carry
anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that,
you must be willing to commit yourself to a course,
perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to
foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is
required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard
as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may
fall—at the beginning of the charge or at the top of
the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the
rewards of victory. 
...The generation that carried
on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through
our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were
touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the
outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference,
and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of
ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and
above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it
is for us to bear the report to those who come after us.
But, above all, we have learned that whether a man
accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward
and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will
scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his
to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.