|
The W2N.net - Wikipedia |
Link Ads Questz World |
The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army who had served in the American Civil War. The GAR was among the first organized advocacy group in American politics. It was succeeded by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW).
Contents |
After the end of American Civil War, organizations were formed for veterans to network and maintain connections with each other. Many of the veterans wished to keep in contact with each other, using their shared experiences as a basis for fellowship. Groups of men began joining together, first for camaraderie and later for political power. Emerging most powerful among the various organizations was the Grand Army of the Republic, founded on the principles of "Fraternity, Charity and Loyalty", in Decatur, Illinois on April 6, 1866 by Benjamin F. Stephenson.
The league promoted voting rights for black veterans by extolling their demonstrated patriotism. Black veterans, who enthusiastically embraced the message of equality, shunned black veterans' organizations in preference for racially inclusive groups. The GAR initially grew and prospered as a de facto political arm of the Republican Party during the heated political contests of the Reconstruction. The commemoration of Union veterans, black and white, immediately became entwined with partisan politics. But when the Republican Party's commitment to reform in the South gradually decreased, the GAR's mission became ill-defined and the organization floundered. The GAR almost disappeared in the early 1870s, and many departments ceased to exist.
Only in the 1880s did the organization revive under new leadership that provided the platform for renewed growth by advocating federal pensions for veterans. As the organization reestablished itself in the South, black veterans there, for the first time, joined in significant numbers and organized local posts.
The GAR was organized into "Departments" at the state level and "Posts" at the community level, and military-style uniforms were worn by its members. There were posts in every state in the U.S., and several posts overseas.
The expansion of the GAR consequently posed the question of whether black veterans would be gathered in integrated or segregated posts within departments and in turn whether Southern departments would be segregated within the national organization. Blacks constituted three-quarters of the potential GAR members, and on the state level they outnumbered white Union veterans by as many as three to one in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana. In these states wherever black veterans predominated, integrated GAR posts presumably would have been governed by black members. Many white veterans in the South complained of the certain banishment they would endure if they joined biracial groups and endorsed the segregation of black veterans into separate posts.
Some white veterans refused to remain members of departments in which black posts outnumbered the white posts. Moreover, according to the white veterans, blacks were too incompetent to organize and run posts. Prompted by these prejudices, white officers of the Louisiana and Mississippi Departments during the early 1890s refused to recognize black posts, thereby precipitating a contentious debate within the national organization over the merits of segregation.
Whether motivated by pragmatism or separatist leanings, some black posts accepted the proposal for segregated departments, but many more flatly rejected it. The debate over segregation within the GAR during the early 1890s attracted national attention because it was symptomatic of an ongoing revision of the meaning attached to the Civil War and to the role off the blacks in their own liberation. More and more white GAR members embraced the ascendant culture of sectional reconciliation.
In 1867, Commander-in-Chief General John A. Logan established May 30 as Memorial Day, which was originally intended to commemorate the dead of the Civil War, but some white veterans used this occasion to lambaste blacks for their alleged intellectual and moral shortcomings and to urge their emigration to a black homeland or Africa. Ceremonies were held separately for whites and blacks, where white veterans used Memorial Day exercises in the South as a pretext to repudiate Reconstruction measures and to endorse the enduring superiority of the Anglo-Saxons, Northern and Southern.
Many white veterans seemed impatient to forget that emancipation was one of the war's legacies and that blacks had a hand in Union victory. Confederate Veterans strained to celebrate blacks who served in the Confederacy. Therefore they formed an organization called United Confederate Veterans (UCV) to honor aged blacks who had worn Confederate grey and had adopted the Southern cause as their own.
The GAR's political power grew during the latter part of the Nineteenth Century and it helped elect several United States Presidents beginning with Ulysses S. Grant and ending with William McKinley. Five members were elected President of the United States, and, for a time, it was impossible to be nominated on the Republican ticket without the endorsement of the GAR voting bloc.
With membership strictly limited to "veterans of the late unpleasantness," the GAR encouraged the formation of Allied Orders to aid them in its various works. Numerous male organizations jousted for the backing of the GAR, and the political battles became quite severe until the GAR finally endorsed the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War as their heir.
The GAR reached its largest enrollment in 1890, with 490,000 members. It held an annual "National Encampment" every year from 1866 to 1949. At that final encampment in Indianapolis, Indiana, the few surviving members voted to retain the existing officers in place until the organization's dissolution; Theodore Penland of Oregon, the GAR's Commander at the time, was therefore its last. In 1956, after the death of the last member, Albert Woolson, the GAR was formally dissolved.
John Steinbeck's East of Eden features several references to the Grand Army of the Republic. Despite having very little actual battle experience during his brief military career, cut short by the loss of his leg, Adam Trask's father Cyrus joins the GAR and assumes the stature of "a great man" through his involvement with the organization. At the height of the GAR's influence in Washington, he brags to his son:
| “ | I wonder if you know how much influence I really have. I can throw the Grand Army at any candidate like a sock. Even the President likes to know what I think about public matters. I can get senators defeated and I can pick appointments like apples. I can make men and I can destroy men. Do you know that? | †|
Later in the book, references are made to the graves of GAR members in California in order to emphasize the passage of time.
Another Nobel Prize winning author, Sinclair Lewis, makes references to the GAR in his acclaimed novel Main Street.
The GAR is briefly mentioned in William Faulkner's novel, The Sound and the Fury.
The GAR is also mentioned in the seldom sung introduction to the patriotic song "You're a Grand Old Flag."
The GAR is referenced in Charles Ives's song "He Is There"
In Star Wars, the Clone Wars are fought between the Grand Army of the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, an apparent reference to the Civil War.
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Grand Army of the Republic |
The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the copyrighted Wikipedia "Grand Army of the Republic" article.
