VA History Office
NCA Monuments Dedicated on Memorial Day
Since Memorial Day was instituted in 1868 (initially as Decoration Day), this event at the end of May became an opportunity to dedicate new monuments in national cemeteries.
[i] The installation of figurative or symbolic memorial objects on hallowed ground fulfills a goal articulated the following year by Army Superintendent of National Cemeteries Brevet Major Edmund Whitman: burial grounds were selected with an eye toward “favorable conditions for ornamentation, so that surviving comrades, loving friends, and grateful states, might be encouraged to expend liberally of their means for such purposes.”[ii] The placement of monuments (not to be confused with individual grave markers) began to arrive in the 1870s.