b a c k  t o  b i r d d r o p p i n g s

Each year on April 26th, Confederate Memorial Day, I encourage every Southerner to pause and reflect and remember their past. I usually do this by watching or reading part of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind.

May 30 was, until 1947, a remembrance of the Union war dead. Congress in their infinite wisdom, chose to convert May 30, later changed to the last Monday in May, and renamed it Memorial Day, a day to reflect on all US war dead. Call me a rebel, but I like to remember our Confederate soldiers on their own day, and not the day originally set aside for the opposition.

 

CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY

Author Unknown

The marching armies of the past
  Along our Southern plains,
Are sleeping now in quiet rest
  Beneath the Southern rains.

The bugle call is now in vain
  To rouse them from their bed;
To arms they'll never march again--
  They are sleeping with the dead.

No more will Shiloh's plains be stained
  With blood our heroes shed,
Nor Chancellorsville resound again
  To our noble warriors' tread.

For them no more shall reveille
  Sound at the break of dawn,
But may their sleep peaceful be
  Till God's great judgment morn.

We bow our heads in solemn prayer
  For those who wore the gray,
And clasp again their unseen hands
  On our Memorial Day.