Though there was never fighting at Columbus, the end of the war found some fifteen hundred soldiers’ graves in Friendship Cemetery, perhaps twoscore of the number being those of Federals.  The citizens were, at this time, too poor and too broken in spirit to erect memorials, but several ladies of Columbus made it their custom to visit the cemetery and care for the graves of the Confederate dead.  This movement, started by individuals—­Miss Matt Moreton, Mrs. J.T.  Fontaine, and Mrs. Green T. Hill—­was soon taken up by other ladies of the place and resulted in a determination to make the decoration of soldiers’ graves an annual occurrence.

In an old copy of the “Mississippi Index,” published at the time, may be found an account of the solemn march of the women, young and old, to the cemetery, on April 25, 1866—­one year after Robert E. Lee’s surrender—­and of the decoration of the graves not only of Confederate but of Federal soldiers.  It is the proud boast of Columbus that this occasion constituted the first celebration of the now national Decoration Day—­or, as it is more properly called, Memorial Day.

It should perhaps be said here that Columbus, Georgia, disputes the claim of Columbus, Mississippi, as to Memorial Day.  In the Georgia city it is contended that the idea of decorating soldiers’ graves originated with Miss Lizzie Rutherford, later Mrs. Roswell Ellis, of that place.  The inscription of Mrs. Ellis’ monument in Linwood Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia, states that the idea of Memorial Day originated with her.

It seems clear, however, that the same idea occurred to women in both cities simultaneously, and that, while the actual celebration of the day occurred in Columbus, Mississippi, one day earlier than in Columbus, Georgia, the ladies of the latter city may have been first in suggesting that Memorial Day be not a local celebration, but one in which the whole South should take part.

The incident of the first decoration of the graves of Union as well as Confederate soldiers appears, however, to belong entirely to Columbus, Mississippi, and it is certain that this exhibition of magnanimity inspired F.W.  Finch to write the famous poem, “The Blue and the Gray,” for when that poem was first published in the “Atlantic Monthly” for September, 1867, it carried the following headnote: 

The women of Columbus, Miss., animated by noble sentiments, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings to the memory of the dead.  They strewed flowers on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers.

This episode becomes the more touching by reason of the fact that the Columbus lady who initiated the movement to place flowers on the Union graves, at a time when such action was sure to provoke much criticism in the South, was Mrs. Augusta Murdock Sykes, herself the widow of a Confederate soldier.