On Hallowed Ground.
This morning, I joined many from the area in Anoka for the American Legion’s Memorial Day ceremony. As Mayor Skogquist reminded us, this holiday began as Decoration day, born in the aftermath of the Civil War as the nation was trying to find itself by honoring the dead who made it possible.
One of the speakers read the Gettysburg Address.
I’ve been to Gettysburg. I’ve ridden horses across that hallowed ground. There’s something about moving slowly over a battlefield, seeing those stone and wooden fences the way some soldiers would have - it changes how you understand what might have happened there. You feel the scale of it. The impossibility of it. The cost.
“We cannot dedicate, we cannot concentrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.”
Lincoln said those words four months after the battle, dedicating a resting place, but also explaining what all of it was for, too.
What I didn’t fully understand on horseback those years ago, was how connected I was to Anoka. Because one of the first men to answer Lincoln’s call, to sign up for the First Minnesota, the first of the first regiments of the Union, was from right here. And that regiment many say is the one that saved the union on July 2nd, 1863 to the toll of over 80% of their men.
That is what today is about.
It wasn’t born from victory. It’s born of grief, and from the stubborn, painful work of putting a divided country back together. Not from pretending the division didn’t happen, but deciding that what we shared was worth more than what tore us apart
We are a divided country again. Not in the same way, but divided in some ways that feel just as intractable on occasion. I know something about that. I spent most of my adult life in one political caucus and came to see it wasn’t the one I thought it was. That journey cost me relationships. It cost me a certain kind of certainty I’d carried for years. It also gave me something: the ability to talk to people across that divide, because I’ve lived both sides of it. Because I’ve accepted that change is ok, and change makes us better.
The men of the First Minnesota didn’t charge because they were certain of survival. They charged because the moment required it, and because someone had to.
I think a lot about that on days like today. About what the moment requires. About who shows up. And about who is willing to change for it.
We must honor the fallen. And then get back to the work that they made possible.
⁃ Brian Walker
