Editor, Gazette-Journal:

This day of remembrance is said to have originated in 1861, but then it was called Decoration Day and that is when the South placed flowers on the graves of the Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. It wasn’t until 1863, when the cemetery dedication at Gettysburg officially honored all who died in the Civil War, but historians in Boalsburg, Pa., claimed that the ladies there decorated soldiers’ graves on the 4th of July, 1864, and they consider this as the birthplace of Memorial Day.

But what is most important is the fact that this war was the beginning of our nation on its way to honoring the words in our Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Every time I read these words, I feel the power of God in the making of America and once again they affirm what the Founders...