(CNN) -- Historian David W. Blight has written that the first Memorial Day took place in Charleston, South Carolina. On May 1, 1865, a crowd of African-Americans -- recently freed from slavery -- honored the Union soldiers entombed in the rocky ground of the Charleston Race Course. Twenty-nine days later, William Tecumseh Sherman concluded his farewell order from the United States Army with the words, "Your general now bids you farewell, with the full belief that, as in war you have been good soldiers, so in peace you will make good citizens." On this Memorial Day 2014, we must acknowledge, not as a member of Congress, a veteran of the Vietnam War and a journalist-filmmaker, but as one nation indivisible, that Sherman's hope for American soldiers is not being realized today.Writers: America is not fulfilling promise to soldiers to help them on their return to societyThey say veterans adrift face unemployment, homelessness, substance abuse, suicideThey say many cultures see embrace of veterans as critical. All Americans should, tooWriters: We must be one nation, together with our veterans, help them reintegrate, reconcile
In light of this crisis, we need a new kind of _.