What is the mood of the poem? How—and why—do Roy and his Grandma care for Grandpa as they do? What is the meaning of the last two lines? Why is the poem called “Roy’s Decoration Day”?

I brought blue violets from the dell
For Grandpa’s grave today,
For Grandma says he loved them well
Before he marched away.

The other Grandpas all are old,
With thin hair almost gray,
But he has curls that shine like gold,
And blue eyes full of play.

Grandma showed me his picture, hung
Upon a chain of gold;
How strange that he should be so young,
And she should be so old.

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Soon after Root’s publication of the song, lyricist William H. Barnes, the manager of the Atlanta Amateurs, a group of volunteer musicians who performed for the benefit of various soldiers’ relief funds, produced a Southern version, for which the composer Hermann L. Schreiner modified Root’s music.

Look closely at each stanza and at the chorus in both songs. What are the reasons given for going into battle? Like Root’s original, the Southern version makes “Freedom” its battle cry. How can both sides be crying “Freedom”? Do they understand the same thing by “freedom”? Where the Northern version says, “Down with the traitor,” the Southern version says “Down with the eagle,” and speaks of the motto of resistance—“To the tyrants we’ll not yield!” Do these differences point to different reasons for why these men are fighting?

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To celebrate Memorial Day’s forgotten roots, our selection today is the Marching Song of the First Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment. This song, taken from our Memorial Day collection, is a personal favorite of the WSPWH editors, who find it a supreme expression of human dignity.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, signed January 1, 1863, newly freed black slaves were urged to join the Union Army. Almost immediately, the First Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment (African Descent) was organized, and it saw action that year and the next in Mississippi and Louisiana. This marching song, sung to the tune of “John Brown’s Body,” was written for this regiment by Lindley Hoffman Miller (1834–64), lawyer, orator-poet, son of a United States Senator, and Union officer who requested assignment to a colored unit, joining the First Arkansas Regiment in November 1863. 

What is the spirit of the song and its singers? Why, according to the different verses, are these ex-slaves fighting? How do their reasons differ from those expressed in “We Are Coming, Father Abraham”? Can you imagine the scene of the last stanza, as the Regiment, proudly bedecked in Union blue beneath the Stars and Stripes, passes other “colored brethren,” inviting them to join their ranks? Does it move you? If so, how and why?

For a musical rendition, listen to Tennessee Ernie Ford perform the Marching Song of the First Arkansas Regiment.

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These lines are inscribed on the west face of the McClellan Gate at Arlington National Cemetery. During the Civil War, as the cemetery was being established (1864), Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs ordered lines from the poem inscribed on the cemetery’s gate, although without attributing them to their author—Kentucky-born journalist and poet Theodore O’Hara. 

O’Hara (1820–67) was an officer in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War. After the Battle of Buena Vista (1847), he wrote his famous poem, “Bivouac of the Dead,” as a memorial tribute to the dead of this battle. Although O’Hara later fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, his poem became deeply connected with the mourning of Union dead.

Read the poem, and then consider the following questions. What is the meaning of the title of the poem? Explain how the image of the camp of the dead functions and resonates throughout the poem. Why does O’Hara personify Fame and Glory (first stanza)? Why, according to this poem, is being buried at home—and with other soldiers—so important for the dead? Can one properly memorialize those who gave their lives in battle without speaking of the cause for which they died? Follow the movement of thought and feeling through the poem. What, according to the last two stanzas, are our duties to the dead? How realistic is the ultimate promise that their glory will not fade? Can this promise be kept? If so, how?

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John McCrae (1872–1918) was a Canadian physician, poet, and soldier serving with the Allied Powers in Belgium. On May 2, 1915, he was called upon to perform burial rites for a close friend who was killed at the Second Battle of Ypres. The next day, McCrae, deeply moved by the sight of poppies growing around the graves of fallen soldiers, composed ”In Flanders Field“ while riding in the back of an ambulance. It is written from the perspective of the dead. (McCrae himself died during the war of pneumonia, contracted while commanding a Canadian military hospital that he had set up in Boulogne). 

McCrae’s poem resonated deeply with the public, even in the then-neutral United States. Three years later, when the United States had entered the conflict, Moina Michael (1869–1944), an American educator and volunteer trainer of nurses, wrote “We Shall Keep the Faith,” as a response of the living to the call of the dead in McCrae’s poem. Soon afterwards, she launched the tradition of selling and wearing red poppies to aid and honor wounded war veterans. Michael’s autobiography,The Miracle Flower: The Story of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy, published in 1941, is dedicated to the late Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.

Compare the mood, tone, and content of Michael’s poem with “In Flanders Fields.” Who is speaking in Michael’s poem, and how is it an answer to the summons from McCrae’s poem? How exactly do “we keep the Faith / with All who died”? The central verse concerns the red poppy. How does Michael reinterpret its meaning? What does it mean to say that “We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought / In Flanders Fields”? What was that lesson, and how can it be taught? If we fail to teach it, will those who fell have died for naught?

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Two different views can be found in Frederick Douglass’ 1871 Address at the Monument of the Unknown Dead and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s 1884 remarks, “In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched with Fire.”

In his address, former slave and abolitionist leader Douglass rejects the claim that it is the zeal, courage, and personal nobility of the wartime dead that most deserve our honor and respect. Borrowing directly from Scripture (Psalm 137) Douglass says: “I would not repel the repentant; but may my ‘right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth’ if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.”

In his speech, Holmes, a Civil War veteran and later a distinguished justice of the United States Supreme Court, deliberately sets aside questions about justice, about who started the war and for what each side fought. He abstracts from the larger purposes and meaning of the Civil War to provide, as he puts it, “an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.” In celebrating Memorial Day, he argues, we celebrate the courage of both sides and the convictions of those “who g[a]ve all for their belief.”

Closely read each speech, and then consider the following questions. What, according to Douglass and Holmes, is the purpose and significance of Memorial Day? What do you think accounts for the differences in their views? Which speech do you find more persuasive? Why? What does true reconciliation require? Which speech is more conducive to that cause? How should we celebrate Memorial Day today?

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From our introduction to “Chamberlain”:

Courage is a virtue difficult to cultivate, especially among self-interested citizens oriented toward the pursuit of their own happiness. At the extreme, why shouldn’t I prefer the preservation of myself to the preservation of my nation? If there is both a natural and cultural tendency to cowardice, how is courage to be cultivated? Although courage usually grows only through repeated acts in the face of fear and danger, inspiring speeches can rally groups of men on the eve of battle. This selection—excerpted from The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1928–1988), an account of the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War—and General George S. Patton’s Speech to the Third Army exemplify two such inspiriting speeches, in some ways similar, in some ways different.

Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, before the war a professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College, is faced with the unexpected burden of guarding 120 mutinous soldiers, eager to return home after two years in the Union army. Summoned to march toward battle and lacking men to guard these prisoners, Chamberlain appeals to them to join his regiment, succeeding beyond his wildest expectations. What are the various aspects of Chamberlain’s appeal? How and why do his words—and his deeds—succeed with these previously recalcitrant men? Imagine yourself among the mutineers: would you have been moved to join the fight, and why?