Our View: He launched Memorial Day 150 years ago

This editorial was originally published on May 23, 2018. Dates have been updated.

Dixon city leaders of the 19th century must have thought quite highly of Gen. John A. Logan (1826-1886), a Murphysboro politician and a Civil War military leader.

They thought so highly of their fellow Illinoisan that they named a street after him. Logan Avenue runs from River Street to Factory Street on the city’s southwest side.

Nearby streets bear the names of other Civil War-era personages: Lincoln, Douglas, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer and Hancock.

Logan’s appeal is also for what he did after the Civil War.

He was commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veterans organization. He served in the U.S. Senate. He was a vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket.

And, he basically invented the nationwide observance now known as Memorial Day.

That’s not what they called it at first, but it’s the reason that many people have a three-day holiday weekend coming up. It was 154 years ago this month that Gen. Logan issued his famous General Order No. 11 to GAR posts across the country.

Logan was aware of scattered commemorations to honor deceased soldiers, sailors and Marines whose graves filled cemeteries across the country.

His order to Grand Army of the Republic posts across the land effectively “nationalized” the celebration of Decoration Day, now Memorial Day.

The first Decoration Day under Logan’s order was May 30, 1868.

Logan chose that day in late May because, by then, flowers across the land would be in full bloom. A ready supply of “the choices flowers of springtime,” therefore, would be available for mourners to decorate the graves of loved ones who died in the Civil War.

Logan also called for the U.S. flag to be raised above the graves, and for those who attended to renew their pledges to aid the widows and orphans of the honored dead.

Logan’s order included a request that newspapers play a role in the holiday.

“He [Logan] earnestly desires the public press to call attention to this Order, and lend its friendly aid in bringing it to the notice of comrades in all parts of the country in time for simultaneous compliance therewith,” Logan’s order stated.

Logan’s General Order No. 11 is the one act upon which his lasting fame rests, but there were others.

One of them is Logan’s own story of redemption and transformation. Before the Civil War, he was an ardent supporter of slavery. After the Civil War, he became a champion of civil rights for the freed slaves.

Logan, by the way, is one of three men named in the Illinois state song. Lincoln and Grant are the other two.

Biographer Gary Ecelbarger believes Logan is perhaps “the most noteworthy 19th-century American to escape notice in the 20th and 21st centuries.”

This Memorial Day weekend, please keep in mind the man who launched this solemn national observance 154 years ago.