section_path: Precedents in the South/Columbus, Georgia
section_name: Columbus, Georgia
paragraph_text: Columbus, Georgia
  
  ... e can keep alive the memory of debt we owe them by dedicatingat least one day in the year, by embellishing their humble graves withflowers, therefore we beg the assistance of the press and the ladiesthroughout the South to help us in the effort to set apart a certain dayto be observed, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and be handeddown through time as a religious custom of the country, to wreathe thegraves of our martyred dead with flowers... Let the soldiers’ graves,for that day at least, be the Southern Mecca, to whose shrine hersorrowing women, like pilgrims, may annually bring their gratefulhearts and floral offerings...
  
  The National Cemetery Administration, a division of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and scholars attribute the beginning of a Memorial Day practice in the South to a group of women of Columbus, Georgia. The women were the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus. They were represented by Mary Ann Williams (Mrs. Charles J. Williams) who as association secretary wrote an open letter to the press on March 11, 1866 asking for assistance in establishing an annual holiday to decorate the graves of soldiers throughout the South. The letter was reprinted in several southern states and the plans were noted in newspapers in the North. The date of April 26 was chosen, which corresponded with the end date of the war with the surrender agreement between Generals Johnston and Sherman in 1865.
  
  The holiday was observed in Atlanta, Augusta, Macon, Columbus and elsewhere in Georgia as well as Montgomery, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; New Orleans, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi, and across the South. In some cities, mostly in Virginia, other dates in May and June were observed. General John Logan commented on the observances in a speech to veterans on July 4, 1866, in Salem, Illinois. After General Logan's General Order No. 11 to the Grand Army of the Republic to observe May 30, 1868, the earlier version of the holiday began to be referred to as Confederate Memorial Day.
  
  ... e can keep alive the memory of debt we owe them by dedicatingat least one day in the year, by embellishing their humble graves withflowers, therefore we beg the assistance of the press and the ladiesthroughout the South to help us in the effort to set apart a certain dayto be observed, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and be handeddown through time as a religious custom of the country, to wreathe thegraves of our martyred dead with flowers... Let the soldiers’ graves,for that day at least, be the Southern Mecca, to whose shrine hersorrowing women, like pilgrims, may annually bring their gratefulhearts and floral offerings...
  
  The National Cemetery Administration, a division of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and scholars attribute the beginning of a Memorial Day practice in the South to a group of women of Columbus, Georgia. The women were the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus. They were represented by Mary Ann Williams (Mrs. Charles J. Williams) who as association secretary wrote an open letter to the press on March 11, 1866 asking for assistance in establishing an annual holiday to decorate the graves of soldiers throughout the South. The letter was reprinted in several southern states and the plans were noted in newspapers in the North. The date of April 26 was chosen, which corresponded with the end date of the war with the surrender agreement between Generals Johnston and Sherman in 1865.
  
  The holiday was observed in Atlanta, Augusta, Macon, Columbus and elsewhere in Georgia as well as Montgomery, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; New Orleans, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi, and across the South. In some cities, mostly in Virginia, other dates in May and June were observed. General John Logan commented on the observances in a speech to veterans on July 4, 1866, in Salem, Illinois. After General Logan's General Order No. 11 to the Grand Army of the Republic to observe May 30, 1868, the earlier version of the holiday began to be referred to as Confederate Memorial Day.