Saturday, July 7, 2007 1:19 AM CDT
Grand Army of the Republic: Reliving battles, seeking benefits
By HAL MALEHORN
Late in May 1865 some 150,000 members of the Union Army assembled in Washington, D.C., to march in celebration of the end of the Civil War. The parade that they comprised required two full days to pass the reviewing stand.
Once these men had been mustered out and sent home, many of them would join a new organization: The Grand Army of the Republic. Members of the GAR would assemble regularly, their fraternity representing a ritualistic fellowship and a substantial political force.
And, in dwindling numbers over the years, they would gather in encampments and, upon patriotic occasions, parade again and again — until age and infirmity bade them halt.
The GAR had its national beginnings in central Illinois; there one Benjamin Franklin Stephenson in 1866 envisioned a brotherhood of veterans united to further the political aims of two fellow Illinoisans, Gen. John A. Logan and Gov. Richard Oglesby. Stephenson, a one-time Union Army surgeon, conceived of the GAR as both a charitable and political group, where the former purpose would serve as an innocuous “cover” for the latter.
Logan, who was destined to run unsuccessfully for the nation’s vice presidency concurrent with James G. Blaine’s 1876 bid for the nation’s top job, was elected the GAR’s first commander-in-chief in 1868.
The veterans group that Stephenson and Logan combined to organize was very much like the army they had just left. The GAR at local, state and national levels employed military lingo: to move between units required a “transfer”; to leave the membership needed an “honorable discharge”; and to be absent from meetings called for a “leave of absence.”
Then, too, meeting places were “posts” manned by “sentries” who expected “passwords” for members to be admitted to sessions. Major gatherings at state and national levels were “encampments.” Members were addressed as “comrades.” A system of “courts martial” adjudicated violations of protocol — and even acted in civil matters. “Crimes” against the local post included disloyalty to the nation, disobedience to orders and offenses “scandalous against the laws of the land and prejudicial to good order and discipline.”
Uniforms were worn to all events, and officers were elected — just like many junior officers had been chosen during the war. Secret rituals governing membership and meetings, very much like those of other lodges and societies, were instituted. “Memorial halls” used for meetings centered on an altar, signifying sacrifice. The main officers reflected military roles: commander, quartermaster, adjutant, sergeant major, officer of the guard.
The first post was established in Decatur, with another in Springfield soon following. Before long there were some 300 posts in Illinois alone. And while the original plan stipulated standard use of badges and rituals — and payment of dues — the GAR never achieved the tight-knit body that its founders had hoped for.
Nonetheless, the organization at first employed graded ranks of membership: recruit, soldier and veteran. A member could not ascend in grade, except by vote of his fellows. And a single vote could blackball that promotion.
This measure kept the fraternity free of men of low moral repute. And it rejected immigrant candidates and applicants from the black race — at least, until many years after the founding of the fraternity.
Likewise, for many years the organization’s “judge advocate general” upheld a ban on admitting ex-Confederates to the order.
As the members increasingly demanded more egalitarian treatment, ranks or grades of membership were eventually eliminated. But one’s actual rank attained in the just-disbanded Union army — as well as length of active service and involvement in combat — strongly influenced his acquiring GAR leadership roles.
Not all was straight-laced observance of protocol. Local units, from time to time, also burlesqued their military order. Members poked fun at themselves and the pompous oratory that was a hallmark of solemn meetings — such as at the raising of memorial monuments. As had been true during the war, there was always near the surface the need to be free from regimentation — even for a few moments of comic relief.
Then, too, local posts often scheduled dinners, picnics, dances and other entertainments to which families were invited. And a ladies auxiliary was added. In the commercial realm outside the meeting hall, reciprocal patronage was important, along with preferential treatment in hiring.
As a charitable organization, the GAR raised money for members in need: local posts paid funeral charges for indigents, aided widows, visited their sick, and underwrote expenses for victims of fires, earthquakes and floods.
In the political arena the GAR exercised considerable clout. In the 1880s, in state after state, members collectively prodded legislatures to fund pensions for veterans’ war-related disabilities: Later, pensions were provided to cover all disabilities, war-related or not. Eventually this compensation was expanded when Congress granted a pension to any veteran, and, then, to his widow and other dependents.
Veterans claimed that by dint of their earlier sacrifices on behalf of saving the Union, they had an absolute right to the nation’s treasury. In short, it constituted a sacred obligation. By 1893 there were nearly 1 million pensioners. Demands kept escalating until eventually the veterans’ pension system consumed one-third of the tax monies collected across the land.
On the national level, the GAR, though mainly Republican in political leanings, was not especially successful in backing candidates for high office. Nevertheless, the group was able to effect two observances: Flag Day, and Decoration Day (now known as Memorial Day), when the graves of Civil War veterans were marked and honored.
The GAR was also instrumental in funding and erecting monuments upon major Civil War battlefields. And as the 19th century waned, GAR encampments increasingly became social affairs at which Union veterans fraternized with one-time Confederate foes around campfires, both sides swapping stories of long-past wartime feats.
After peaking with more than 400,000 members in 1890, the GAR began a slow but inevitable decline. Refusing to include veterans of other wars, the organization succumbed to Mother Nature and Father Time.
The GAR officially disbanded in 1956. By then the letters GAR stood not only for the Grand Army of the Republic; they also represented an illustrious past: Gone, Although Remembered.
Hal Malehorn portrays Alfred Balch at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site.
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