ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an address by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., for Memorial Day. This Memorial Day Address was the first of two speeches that established Holmes reputation as a spokesman for his class and generation as far as the popular understanding of the Civil War was concerned. Interest in the war was peaking by this point in the United States, and the Union veterans organization, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), was a powerful political and social force in the nation. Given that Holmes was addressing Civil War veterans on Memorial Day, it is not surprising that Holmes was seeking to establish his own military credentials in this speech, nor devoted so much of it to honoring the dead. The claim Holmes staked that the Civil War generation was set apart by its experiences in the war is frequently quoted uncritically, but it placed greater emphasis on military experience than on any moral meaning that may have inspired it.
