Federal holiday in the United States
Memorial Day (originally known as Decoration Day) is one of the federal holidays in the United States for honoring and mourning the U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. It is observed on the last Monday of May. Memorial Day is also considered the unofficial beginning of summer in the United States.
It is a day for visiting cemeteries and memorials to mourn the military personnel who died in the line of duty. Volunteers will place American flags on the graves of those military personnel in national cemeteries. Others such as family and friends will also come to lay flowers and grieve on the graves of those who died in the US military.
The first national observance of Memorial Day occurred on May 30, 1868. Then known as "Decoration Day" and observed on May 30, the holiday was proclaimed by Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic to honor the Union soldiers who had died in the American Civil War. This national observance followed many local observances which were inaugurated between the end of the Civil War and Logan's declaration. Many cities and people have claimed to be the first to observe it. However, the National Cemetery Administration, a division of the Department of Veterans Affairs, credits Mary Ann Williams with originating the "idea of strewing the graves of Civil War soldiers—Union and Confederate" with flowers.
Official recognition as a holiday spread among the states, beginning with New York in 1873. By 1890, every Union state had adopted it. The world wars turned it into a day of remembrance for all members of the U.S. military who fought and died in service. In 1971, Congress standardized the holiday as "Memorial Day" and changed its observance to the last Monday in May.
Two other days celebrate those who have served or are serving in the U.S. military: Armed Forces Day, which is earlier in May, an unofficial U.S. holiday for honoring those currently serving in the armed forces, and Veterans Day on November 11, which honors all those who have served in the United States Armed Forces.
Claimed origins.
A variety of cities and people have claimed origination of Memorial Day. In some such cases, the claims relate to documented events, occurring before or after the Civil War. Others may stem from general traditions of decorating soldiers' graves with flowers, rather than specific events leading to the national proclamation. Soldiers' graves were decorated in the U.S. before and during the American Civil War. Other claims may be less respectable, appearing to some researchers as taking credit without evidence, while erasing better-evidenced events or connections.
Precedents in the South.
Virginia.
On June 3, 1861, Warrenton, Virginia was the location of the first Civil War soldier's grave to be decorated, according to an article in the "Richmond Times-Dispatch" in 1906. This decoration was for the funeral of the first soldier killed during the Civil War, John Quincy Marr, who died on June 1, 1861, during a skirmish at the Battle of Fairfax Courthouse in Virginia.
Jackson, Mississippi.
On April 26, 1865, in Jackson, Mississippi, Sue Landon Vaughan decorated the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers according to her account. The first reference to this event however did not appear until many years later. Mention of the observance is inscribed on the southeast panel of the Confederate Monument in Jackson, erected in 1891. Vaughan's account is contradicted by contemporary sources.
Charleston, South Carolina.
On May 1, 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina, the recently freed Black population held a parade of 10,000 people to honor 257 dead Union soldiers. The soldiers had been buried in a mass grave at the Washington Race Course, having died at the Confederate prison camp located there. After the city fell, the freed Black population unearthed and properly buried the soldiers, placing flowers at their graves. The event was reported contemporaneously in the "Charleston Daily Courier" and the "New-York Tribune." Historian David Blight has called this commemoration the first Memorial Day. However, no direct link has been established between this event and General John Logan's 1868 proclamation for a national holiday.
Columbus, Georgia.
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 . . . [W]e can keep alive the memory of debt we owe them by dedicating
at least one day in the year, by embellishing their humble graves with
flowers, therefore we beg the assistance of the press and the ladies
throughout the South to help us in the effort to set apart a certain day
to be observed, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and be handed
down through time as a religious custom of the country, to wreathe the
graves of our martyred dead with flowers. . . Let the soldiers’ graves,
for that day at least, be the Southern Mecca, to whose shrine her
sorrowing women, like pilgrims, may annually bring their grateful
hearts and floral offerings. . . 
 —Mary Ann Williams 
 , March 11, 1866
The National Cemetery Administration, a division of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and scholars attribute the beginning of a Memorial Day practice in the South to a group of women of Columbus, Georgia. The women were the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus. They were represented by Mary Ann Williams (Mrs. Charles J. Williams) who as association secretary wrote an open letter to the press on March 11, 1866 asking for assistance in establishing an annual holiday to decorate the graves of soldiers throughout the South. The letter was reprinted in several southern states and the plans were noted in newspapers in the North. The date of April 26 was chosen, which corresponded with the end date of the war with the surrender agreement between Generals Johnston and Sherman in 1865.
The holiday was observed in Atlanta, Augusta, Macon, Columbus and elsewhere in Georgia as well as Montgomery, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; New Orleans, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi, and across the South. In some cities, mostly in Virginia, other dates in May and June were observed. General John Logan commented on the observances in a speech to veterans on July 4, 1866, in Salem, Illinois. After General Logan's General Order No. 11 to the Grand Army of the Republic to observe May 30, 1868, the earlier version of the holiday began to be referred to as Confederate Memorial Day.
Columbus, Mississippi.
Following Mary William's call for assistance, four women of Columbus, Mississippi a day early on April 25, 1866, gathered together at Friendship Cemetery to decorate the graves of the Confederate soldiers. They also felt moved to honor the Union soldiers buried there, and to note the grief of their families, by decorating their graves as well. The story of their gesture of humanity and reconciliation is held by some writers as the inspiration of the original Memorial Day.
Other Southern precedents.
According to the United States Library of Congress, "Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers even before the Civil War’s end. Records show that by 1865, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina all had precedents for Memorial Day." The earliest Southern Memorial Day celebrations were simple, somber occasions for veterans and their families to honor the dead and tend to local cemeteries. In following years, the Ladies' Memorial Association and other groups increasingly focused rituals on preserving Confederate culture and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy narrative.
Precedents in the North.
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The 1863 cemetery dedication at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, included a ceremony of commemoration at the graves of dead soldiers. Some have therefore claimed that President Abraham Lincoln was the founder of Memorial Day. However, Chicago journalist Lloyd Lewis tried to make the case that it was Lincoln's funeral that spurred the soldiers' grave decorating that followed.
Boalsburg, Pennsylvania.
On July 4, 1864, ladies decorated soldiers' graves according to local historians in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. Boalsburg promotes itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day. However, no published reference to this event has been found earlier than the printing of the History of the 148th Pennsylvania Volunteers in 1904. In a footnote to a story about her brother, Mrs. Sophie (Keller) Hall described how she and Emma Hunter decorated the grave of Emma's father, Reuben Hunter, and then the graves of all soldiers in the cemetery. The original story did not account for Reuben Hunter's death occurring two months later on September 19, 1864. It also did not mention Mrs. Elizabeth Myers as one of the original participants. A bronze statue of all three women gazing upon Reuben Hunter's grave now stands near the entrance to the Boalsburg Cemetery. Although July 4, 1864, was a Monday, the town now claims that the original decoration was on one of the Sundays in October 1864.
National Decoration Day.
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 ... Let us then gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of Springtime; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us as a sacred charge upon a Nation's gratitude—the soldiers' and sailors' widow and orphan.
 —John A. Logan 
 , May 5, 1868
On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan issued a proclamation calling for "Decoration Day" to be observed annually and nationwide; he was commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of and for Union Civil War veterans founded in Decatur, Illinois. With his proclamation, Logan adopted the Memorial Day practice that had begun in the Southern states two years earlier. The northern states quickly adopted the holiday. In 1868, memorial events were held in 183 cemeteries in 27 states, and 336 in 1869. One author claims that the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of any particular battle. Logan's wife noted that the date was chosen because it was the optimal date for flowers to be in bloom in the North.
State holiday.
In 1873, New York made Decoration Day an official state holiday and by 1890, every northern state had followed suit. There was no standard program for the ceremonies, but they were typically sponsored by the Women's Relief Corps, the women's auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), which had 100,000 members. By 1870, the remains of nearly 300,000 Union dead had been reinterred in 73 national cemeteries, located near major battlefields and thus mainly in the South. The most famous are Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania and Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.
Waterloo proclamation.
On May 26, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson designated an "official" birthplace of the holiday by signing the presidential proclamation naming Waterloo, New York, as the holder of the title. This action followed House Concurrent Resolution 587, in which the 89th Congress had officially recognized that the patriotic tradition of observing Memorial Day had begun one hundred years prior in Waterloo, New York. The legitimacy of this claim has been called into question by several scholars.
Early national history.
In April 1865, following Lincoln's assassination, commemorations were extensive. The more than 600,000 soldiers of both sides who fought and died in the Civil War meant that burial and memorialization took on new cultural significance. Under the leadership of women during the war, an increasingly formal practice of decorating graves had taken shape. In 1865, the federal government also began creating the United States National Cemetery System for the Union war dead.
By the 1880s, ceremonies were becoming more consistent across geography as the GAR provided handbooks that presented specific procedures, poems, and Bible verses for local post commanders to utilize in planning the local event. Historian Stuart McConnell reports:
on the day itself, the post assembled and marched to the local cemetery to decorate the graves of the fallen, an enterprise meticulously organized months in advance to assure that none were missed. Finally came a simple and subdued graveyard service involving prayers, short patriotic speeches, and music ... and at the end perhaps a rifle salute.
Confederate Memorial Day.
In 1868, some Southern public figures began adding the label "Confederate" to their commemorations and claimed that Northerners had appropriated the holiday. The first official celebration of Confederate Memorial Day as a public holiday occurred in 1874, following a proclamation by the Georgia legislature. By 1916, ten states celebrated it, on June 3, the birthday of CSA President Jefferson Davis. Other states chose late April dates, or May 10, commemorating Davis' capture.
The Ladies' Memorial Association played