Over on the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace Facebook page I posted something about President Roosevelt’s 1905 Memorial Day visit to Brooklyn to unveil the statue for General Slocum. It is interesting to note that by 1905 Brooklyn was no longer an independent city but a borough within Greater New York. New York City was so big, though, that this was not the only commemoration going on that day; Manhattan held its own affair that ended at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument at 89th Street and Riverside Drive. Dan Sickles and Oliver Howard were just two of the dignitaries there.

Brief digression: Directly below the New York Times’s description of those 1905 festivities was Police Commissioner William McAdoo’s declaration that Sunday baseball was in fact legal.

In the third and final of our Memorial Day weekend posts we turn our attention to this Puck cover from 1913. This is so ripe for interpretive possibilities that I hesitate even to add my own words. All I will note is how much older the veterans are here. This would have been five weeks before the Gettysburg 50th reunion at which President Wilson spoke. So near and yet so far away . . .

I wish I could be at the Nationals game today but alas that turned out not to be possible. Happy Memorial Day.

(image/Library of Congress)