Memorial Days past.

Byline: The Register-Guard

NOTE: This archived version of the column contains all three items

that ran in today's paper (Memorial Days past; Generous in victory; The Gettysburg Address).

In years past, when the Civil War veteran was a common sight at patriotic festivals, Memorial Day was a real holiday, rivaled only by the Fourth of July. The late Charles Stanton, for many years editor of the Roseburg News-Review, recalled what it was like.

If you're an old "graybeard'' like myself, perhaps you dimly recall how we used to celebrate Memorial Day.

The "Boys of the G.A.R.'' spent a week or so erecting a platform and draping it with bunting. The site was the park or picnic grounds. All towns had such a gathering place in those days.

Early in the morning farmers began arriving, carrying their families and well-filled hampers of food in four-seated hacks drawn by teams resplendently groomed for the occasion.

The populace assembled on the boardwalks of the main street.

Then came the parade!

Behind the grand marshal, mounted on a spirited horse, came the Colors and the Color Guard, followed by the Silver Cornet Band.

The G.A.R. came next, its straggling ranks thinning noticeably from year to year. Next in line were the younger and more stalwart veterans from the Spanish-American War.

Preceding the hose reel companies in the next section was the fire department's float, with its queen, half prostrate, before the traditional white cross.

The procession wound its way to the cemetery, where, in the early morning hours, a committee of veterans had placed flags at the graves of departed comrades. A solemn ceremony at the grave of the unknown soldier commanded respectful attention, and then spectators dispersed to place their by-now-wilted flowers upon the resting places of their own kin.

Then the race was on for The Grove, where picnic lunches, visiting, horseplay and the surreptitious tilting of bottles filled in the time until the overworked Silver Cornet Band struck up the `Washington Post March' from the platform.

There followed a brief concert, closing with a patriotic medley, after which the town's mayor, or some dignitary selected for his sonorous voice, delivered Logan's General Orders. A sixth-grader, with much prompting, stumbled through Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Then came the piece de resistance, a tear-jerking, flag-waving, eagle-screaming oratorical masterpiece by an imported speaker.

Kids romped on the outskirts of the crowd. Band members slipped off the stand, one by one, to visit the brewery truck dispensing free refreshments to thirsty males at the edge of the grounds. The first cornetist occasionally was a little tardy and was short of breath as he blew a damp rendition of `Taps,' preceding the benediction by one of the town ministers.

Perhaps the years have dimmed my memory. I was only a child when Memorial Day was a holiday that still called forth widespread observance. Perhaps it was celebrated differently in your town. Maybe I've missed some of the events of the day as I first knew it.

But celebrations in late years bear little resemblance to those of long ago. Our modern observance of the holiday reverts to the practices of more primitive and heathen people. We now mark the occasion with human sacrifice.

Where we once gathered in sincere tribute to those who had given their lives in the service of their country, we now leave such things to a very few of the faithful who still cling to the old mores. The rest of us worship the gods of pleasure.

Generous in victory

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease when, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.

Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.

It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.

The Almighty has his own purposes. `Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come. But woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, `The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The Gettysburg Address

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, one of the masterpieces of the language, was delivered not on Memorial Day, which was unknown at the time, but on Nov. 19, 1863, when the president was asked to dedicate a national cemetery.

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.