DIY Homeschooler

With Memorial Day just around the corner, you may enjoy another free eBook in the Our American Holidays series. Memorial Day: Its Celebration, Spirit, and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse with a Non-sectional Anthology of the Civil War edited by Robert Haven Schauffler is a nice complement to our Memorial Day Holiday Helps.

Published in 1911, the editor attempted to avoid the raw wounds of the Civil War:

IN harmony with the generous non-sectional spirit characterizing our Memorial Day celebration, no discrimination has been shown in this collection between the literature of South and North. For our secular All Souls Day knows neither North nor South, Blue nor Gray.

The sole discrimination shown has been in selecting from all sources the most beautiful poetry and the most eloquent prose in this first attempt to reveal, from various viewpoints, the true spirit and significance of the festival and of the events leading thereto.

With that caveat in mind, the selection of readings that follow are categorized by:

• Celebration.
• Spirit and Significance.
• The War.
• The Heroic Dead.
• Reunited.

Contributors include:

• James Whitcomb Riley.
• James Garfield.
• Theodore Roosevelt.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes.
• Walt Whitman.
• William Cullen Bryant.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• Julia Ward Howe.
• William McKinley.
• And others.

We have added this free eBook to our Memorial Day resources. Enjoy!

Free eBook

• Read online
• PDF
• Other formats (download txt and convert)

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Additional Resources

Memorial Day Holiday Helps
We’ve pulled together background information, activities, units, lesson plans, and printables to help you celebrate Memorial Day!

Enjoy the other books in the Our American Holidays series:

• Thanksgiving
• Christmas
• Lincoln’s Birthday
• Washington’s Birthday
• Flag Day
• Independence Day
• Arbor Day