The national holiday at the end of May (originally May 30, now the last Monday of the month) began in 1868 as Decoration Day. At least 600,000 soldiers had died in the Civil War, and something on the order of another 400,000 civilians, totaling roughly 3 percent of the US population when the war ended in 1865. Few were unaffected, and the idea of a day set aside for leaving flowers on graves must have been appealing. Time moves on, the US got involved in other fights, and the name “Memorial Day”, set aside for the dead of all of our wars, gradually replaced Decoration Day.
Not all Decoration Day memorials were small and private. The parade above, marching down Broadway past Bond Street circa 1875, almost certainly included veterans of the Civil War and seems to have been well-attended.
