Memorial Day Weekend at Antietam National Cemetery

Every year, local school children visit the Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Maryland just before Memorial Day weekend to pay homage to those who gave their lives during the American Civil War. The students visit the cemetery to place small American flags next to the graves of American soldiers killed during the 1862 Battle of Antietam, the Battle of South Mountain, and some of those killed in the 1864 Battle of Monocacy, which took place just south of Frederick, Maryland. From these battles, there are 4,776 Civil War dead interred in the cemetery. The students also place flags next to the graves of those who have been killed in America's 20th century conflicts, as well as those who served in foreign wars and who are interred in the National Cemetery. While the cemetery was closed for further burials years ago, the most recent interment is that of Patrick Roy, a US Sailor killed in the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.



This act of placing flags next to graves in the cemetery lies at the heart of Memorial Day, a holiday which began in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. From its origins, Memorial Day was meant to be a day honoring those who died in service of their country. When young students visit the cemetery each May to place flags next to the graves of American soldiers, they are fulfilling the true purpose of Memorial Day. They are pausing to say thank you for the sacrifices made many years ago by men they never knew, who, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, "here gave their lives that that nation might live."

Here are a few images of the activities this morning in the Antietam National Cemetery...

"Old Simon" stands watch over the National Cemetery...

SCA Education Intern Mark Chaney assists the students with placing flags.

A few of the students who helped place the flags in the National Cemetery this morning...

Color Sergeant George Simpson, 125th PA, who was killed at Antietam while holding his regiment's flag, staining it with his blood, has his grave decorated with an American flag just in time for Memorial Day...

Perhaps the most fitting conclusion is found in the words of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which is posted inside the Antietam National Cemetery, describing the meaning of the sacrifice made by so many Americans through this nation's history...

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Dan Vermilya

Park Ranger