Just across the state line, on either side of Alabama, are the cities of Columbus, Georgia and Columbus, Mississippi. Both (along with several other cities) claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day.
“I have a good friend from Columbus, Georgia, and we go around and around on this,” said Ken P’Pool, the deputy state historic preservation officer in Mississippi. “This goes back a long, long time.”
Columbus, Miss., was a hospital town, and in many cases a burial site, for both Union and Confederate casualties of Shiloh, brought in by the trainload. And it was in that Columbus where, at the initiation of four women who met in a 12-gabled house on North Fourth Street, a solemn procession was made to Friendship Cemetery on April 25, 1866.
As the story goes, one of the women spontaneously suggested that they decorate the graves of the Union as well as the Confederate dead, as each grave contained someone’s father, brother or son.
A lawyer in Ithaca, N.Y., named Francis Miles Finch read about this reconciliatory gesture and wrote a poem about the ceremony in Columbus, “The Blue and the Gray,” which The Atlantic Monthly published in 1867.
“My view is it’s really the poem that inspired the nation,” said retired district attorney, Rufus Ward.
The Georgians dispute little of this. But they argue that the procession in the other Columbus was actually inspired by the events in their Columbus.
Either town can make a strong case for its claim, and most historians agree the decoration of graves of soldiers from both sides of the conflict was started by ladies from the Old South, but somehow Lyndon Johnson designated Waterloo, New York the official birthplace of Memorial Day by presidential proclamation in 1966.
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