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===Confederate Memorial Day=== {{Main|Confederate Memorial Day}} In the spring of 1866, the [[Ladies Memorial Association]] of Columbus passed a resolution to set aside one day annually to memorialize the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] dead. The secretary of the association, [[Mary Ann Williams]], was directed to write a letter inviting the ladies of every Southern state to join them in the observance.<ref name="History of Confederate Memorial Day">{{cite web |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0zczAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA156 |title=Georgia's Landmarks, Memorials, and Legends ...: Under the code duello. Landmarks and memorials. Historic churchyards and burial-grounds. Myths and legends of the Indians. Tales of the revolutionary camp-fires. Georgia miscellanies. Historic county seats, chief towns, and noted localities |first=Lucian Lamar |last=Knight |date=July 12, 2018 |publisher=author |via=Google Books}}</ref> The letter was written in March 1866 and sent to representatives of all of the principal cities in the South, including Atlanta, [[Macon, Georgia|Macon]], Montgomery, Memphis, [[Richmond, Virginia|Richmond]], St. Louis, Alexandria, Columbia, and [[New Orleans]]. This was the beginning of the influential work by ladies' organizations to honor the war dead. The date for the holiday was selected by Elizabeth Rutherford Ellis.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2901 |title=Lizzie Rutherford (1833β1873) |website=New Georgia Encyclopedia}}</ref> She chose April 26, the first anniversary of Confederate General [[Joseph E. Johnston|Johnston's]] final surrender to Union General [[William Tecumseh Sherman|Sherman]] at [[Bennett Place]], North Carolina. For many in the South, that act marked the official end of the Civil War.<ref name="History of Confederate Memorial Day"/> In 1868, General [[John A. Logan]], commander in chief of the Union Civil War Veterans Fraternity called the [[Grand Army of the Republic]], launched the [[Memorial Day]] holiday that is now observed across the entire United States. General Logan's wife said he had borrowed from practices of Confederate Memorial Day. She wrote that Logan "said it was not too late for the Union men of the nation to follow the example of the people of the South in perpetuating the memory of their friends who had died for the cause they thought just and right."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hUEOAAAAIAAJ&q=%22not+too+late+for+the+Union+men+of+the+nation+to+follow+the+example+of+the+people+of+the+south%22%22&pg=PA246 |title=Reminiscences of a Soldier's Wife: An Autobiography |first=Mrs John A. |last=Logan |date=July 12, 2018 |publisher=C. Scribner's Sons |via=Google Books}}</ref> While two dozen cities across the country claim to have originated the Memorial Day holiday, Bellware and Gardiner firmly establish that the holiday began in Columbus. In ''The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday in America'', they show that the Columbus Ladies Memorial Association's call to observe a day annually to decorate soldiers' graves inaugurated a movement first in the South and then in the North to honor the soldiers who died during the Civil War.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday in America |last=Bellware |first=Daniel |author2= Richard Gardiner |publisher=Columbus State University |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-692-29225-9 |pages=1β181}}</ref>
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