Memorial Day reminds us of the Americans sacrificed in war; it also stimulates thought about the enterprise of memorializing. 
Such holidays are one of the ways we imagine and refashion our history, one of the ways we create “collective memory.” (The Lincoln Memorial, which I recently revisited amidst throngs of tourists, illustrates another tool – monumental statuary – for shaping collective memory.)
Initially propelled by Union veterans’ desire to memorialize their fallen comrades, Memorial Day (also once called Decoration Day) expanded to cover the fallen of both sides in the Civil War. Expanding the holiday was one of the ways that Americans sought, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to reconcile and reintegrate the South. A past in which the Blue and the Gray dead were equally brave and honorable served a present need. That reconciliation, at the same time, suppressed memories of the slavery which brought on the war.
The politics of shaping collective memory around Memorial Day was mild compared to some of the struggles we have recently seen about how Americans should understand the American past.
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MADE IN AMERICA 