Suggested Holiday Resources

Memorial Day/Armistice Day

Professor Jackson's article will give students plenty to think about in light of current United States involvement in still another armed conflict, this time in Iraq. You might want to discuss why different kinds of holidays are especially appropriate for different wars - a day of remembrance of the fallen, not the anniversary of a battle, for a civil war; or a day remembering the end of fighting, not the anniversary of a peace treaty, for a war as long, costly, and drawn-out as World War I

For issues raised in the article, you'll find plenty of material.

The best starting place for further study of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and the burial ground that he helped to dedicate is the website of the Gettysburg National Military Park site. Here you'll find a wealth of material, including texts of eyewitness accounts of the battle ("Voices of Battle", part of the "Virtual Tour" under "History and Culture"), the cyclorama depicting Pickett's charge, bibliographies of books and articles about the battle, the Address, and a picture of? the cemetery. The Park also offers a fine "Teacher's Guide" section - suggestions for lesson plans you can use in conjunction with a visit to the Park, distance-learning programs, the "traveling trunks" of Civil War artifacts that can be provided to classrooms around the country, and a bibliography of books on the Civil War and Gettysburg appropriate for all grade levels.

http://www.nps.gov/gett/

Memorial Day

For the inauguration of Memorial Day itself, begin with
    Harmond, Richard P., and Thomas J. Curran. A History of Memorial Day: Unity, Discord and the Pursuit of Happiness. (New York: P. Lang, 2002).
More specialized websites relating to the holiday include one from Waterloo, New York, on the 1866 Memorial Day celebration in that town:

http://www.waterloony.com/MemDayHistory.html

The U.S. Army's Center for Military History offers a useful timeline of the evolution of Memorial Day observances in the late nineteenth century at:

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/faq/memday/MD-Dev.htm

And this article surveys "Decoration Day" celebrations in a small Massachusetts town from Reconstruction through World War II:
    Dewey, Robert Merrill. "The Civil War as Memories: The Old Vets." American Heritage 22, no. 3 (1971): 54-7, 108.
Don't ignore Confederate Memorial Day, either. These websites help place these observances in context:

http://home.att.net/~mysmerelda/confederate.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/confederate-memorial-day

Armistice Day/World War I/Veterans Day

This excellent website provides brief essays on all topics relevant to World War I, along with bibliographies and links to everything you can imagine:

http://www.firstworldwar.com/index.htm

Unknown Soldier

Here are several good articles and websites dealing with the American Unknown Soldier:
    Bruns, Roger A. "Known But to God." American History 31, no. 5 (1996): 38-42, 73. Discusses the decision to expand the significance of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to encompass the fallen in later wars.

    Kegel, James. "A Tribute to the Unknown Soldier: Lest We Forget." American History Illustrated 16, no. 7 (1981): 16-22. Survey of the events in 1921 culminating in the re-interment of the soldier's remains at Arlington.

    Wyman, Thomas S. "Known But to God." Naval History 10, no. 6 (1996): 45-8. Information on the selection and transport of the Unknown Soldier from France to Arlington National Cemetery in 1921.
On the Internet, go to the official website for the "Tomb of the Unknowns" at Arlington Cemetery:

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/tombofun.htm

Refer to the Military District of Washington's useful "Fact Sheet" on the Tomb: http://www.mdw.army.mil/fs-a04.htm

And look at the American War Library guide to online resources for the Unknown Soldier:

http://members.aol.com/veterans/warlib67.htm

As for memorials to "Unknowns" in other nations, you might begin with this webpage (part of the "Home of the Heroes" site), which provides links to Web material on memorials to "Unknowns" not only in Britain but also in France, Belgium, Italy, and Rumania. Be prepared for pop-up ads:

http://www.homeofheroes.com/gravesites/
unknowns/foreign_greatbritain.html

The movement to honor "Unknowns" of World War I continues to this day. See this webpage on an initiative to do so currently under way in New Zealand, more than eighty-five years after the end of the war:

http://asia.news.designerz.com/new-zealand-welcomes-home
-unknown-world-war-i-soldier-90-years-on.html

Poetry and Literary Prose:

The writings by and about servicepeople in World War I are among the most moving in early twentieth-century literature, and they might be of special interest to your classes. For the complete text of Laurence Binyon's "For the Fallen," as well as the poems by McCrae and Brooke cited in Dr. Jackson's article, go to the "Prose & Poetry" section of the FirstWorldWar.com website. It contains full-text versions of well-known works by American and British authors as well as excellent links to related sites:

http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/index.htm

These are some recent printed anthologies of English-language literature from the "Great War" of 1814-1918 and other conflicts:
    Callaghan, Barry, and Bruce Meyer. We Wasn't Pals: Canadian Poetry and Prose of the First World War. (Toronto: Exile Editions, 2001).

    Hedin, Robert, ed. Old Glory: American War Poems from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terrorism. (New York: Persea Books, 2004).

    Silkin, Jon, ed. The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry. (New York: Penguin Books, 1981).

    Vansittart, Peter. Voices from the Great War. (New York: Watts, 1984). Prose and poetry.

    Wienen, Mark W., ed. Rendezvous with Death: American Poems of the Great War. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).

© The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005. All Rights Reserved.