I was reading that Memorial Day has its origins in Decoration Day. The Grand Army of the Republic, led by Illinois politician and union general John A. Logan, made it a national holiday to decorate the graves of civil war soldiers.
In Logan's time, Decoration Day was an occasion for speeches that would be considered politically incorrect today. Logan's Decoration Day proclamation made it clear which side of the Civil war armies was being honored.
"Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic."
Frederick Douglass was more explicit in an 1894 Decoration Day speech.
"Fellow citizens: I am not indifferent to the claims of a generous forgetfulness, but whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery; between those who fought to save the Republic and those who fought to destroy it."
Today the nation honors Americans who died in any war, on any side, regardless of whether the cause they were fighting for was a just one, or whether the war they died in was popular. Even deceased white confederate soldiers can be the beneficiaries of political correctness.