In a column entitled “Memorial Day,” Tourgée resented that the original name, “Decoration Day,” had waned and that the “festival of flowers” had been ransomed for “a little cheap laudation, in silly deference to a sickly sentimentality.” The holiday had become one only of calculated forgetting, the veteran moaned into his pipe. “To dwell upon the hero’s sufferings and ignore the motive which inspired his acts,” he wrote, “is to degrade him to the level of the mercenary. Fame dwells in purpose as well as in achievement. Fortitude is sanctified only by its aim.”61
There were those at the time that talked about forgetting truth and remembering falsely
