“Oh beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life.”
— “America The Beautiful,” by Katharine Lee Bates
And Memorial Day comes around once more.
Gateway to the summer, to beaches, beer and barbecue, yes. But gateway, too, to reminders of all that was given, taken, lost, to make America.
Is it fanciful to think maybe the reminder is needed more this year than in many years past? Perhaps. After all, previous generations have needed reminding, too.
That was true even in October 1862, when photographer Matthew Brady opened an exhibit at his New York gallery. “The Dead of Antietam” depicted the bodies of American boys who had been killed in a pivotal Civil War battle the month before. It was the first time most Americans had seen with their own eyes the carnage and cost of war. The New York Times was stunned.
“The dead of the battlefield come up to us very rarely, even in dreams,” it editorialized. “We see the lists in the morning paper at breakfast, but dismiss this recollection with the coffee. There is a confused mass of names, but they are all strangers; we forget the horrible significance that dwells amid the jumble of type … Mr. Brady has done something to bring to us the terrible reality and earnestness of the war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along our streets, he has done something very like it.”
