Grand Army of the Republic

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Grand Army of the Republic

By early 1865, the United States of America – now short 14 states – awoke to the realities of a lost war and an economy revocering from the post-war resession. In earlier conflicts, the care of veteran warriors had been the responsibility of the family or community – soldiers then had been friends, relatives and neighbours who had gone off to fight together and – so circumstances allowing – had returned together also.

By the end of the War of Southern Secession, units fighting for the Union had become less homogenous, though, and men from different regions and walks of life had been joined, and lasting bonds of friendship and trust had been formed.

As they returned, they were faced with a situation only increasing the feeling of rage at having fought a war for no reason: whereas the community had before been able to cope with the demands brought about by warring, the war just past had been of far larger scope than anything before it, and the number of returning veterans was far larger. To this was added both the resulting greater number of widows and orphans, and the larger number of cripples brought about by the advances in care and movement of the wounded.

Cripples, widows and orphans needed support, and ablebodied veterans needed jobs.

On top of that came the feeling of emptiness. Men who had fought and foraged, lived and survived together, found it hard to return to the everyday humdrum of merely making a living. Coupled with the neglect by the administration to come through on its promises to care for the veterans, this soon produced an atmosphere where groups of veterans began joining together, first for cameraderie, later for political power. Emerging as probably the most powerful of the various veterans organisations was the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), which by 1890 had an estimated membership of 800.000 (the actual number is somewhat debatable, as the organisation was outlawed in the USA(W).

Founded in 1865 in Decatur, Illinois by Benjamin F. Stephenson, membership was initially limited to veterans of the Union Army, Navy or Marine Corps who had served during the War of Southern Independence. The smallest unit of the GAR, on the community level, was a ”Post”, all of which were numbered consecutively within each department, but many of which were also in addition named after a war hero or distinguised post-war deceased veteran.

The next step over the ”Post” was the ”Department”, gathering in all posts within a state. At the top came the ”Commandery-in-chief”. Initially, all commanders, junior and vice commanders were elected, using much of the ritual employed by the masonic orders, but by the late 60s/early 70s, the military system of promotion on merit (or connections) had been adopted in the armed formations the GAR maintained in the street warfare against German, Union, Democrat and Irish gangs.

In the Political branch of the GAR, almost always alligned with the Radical (later American) Party, the official body of the ”Department” was the annual ”Encampment”, which was presided over by the elected Department Commander, Senior and Junior Vice Commanders and the Council. Encampments were elaborate multi-day events which often included camping out, formal dinners and memorial events. As the streetfighting became more extensive, especially in the west during ”Grants War” 1875-79, so-called ”Allied Orders” also began attending, gathering in young and old that had not fought in the war, but wanted to join in the fighting in the street. In many places, both GAR and Sons of American Veterans (SAV) organisations fielded entire units of the respective states´ militia or national guard.

The ”National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic” was presided over by a Commander-in-Chief who was elected in political events which rivaled national political party conventions. The Senior and Junior Vice Commander-in-Chief as well as the National Council of Administration were also elected.

Politically, the GAR mostly confined itself to work inside the American Party for soldiers´ homes, relief work, pension- and anti-immigration legislation, and given the size of the GAR voting block, the organisation normally had its way. Three GAR members were elected US president (though only one in the entire post-secession period, with two others being elected in the eastern US).

With GAR membership limited strictly to war veterans, there always was the prospect of its influence dying out with its membership. Though postponed somewhat by Grants War that, accepted as a continuation of the same struggle against un-American elements that the War of Secession was, made hundreds of thousands of new members flood into the GAR, it eventually led to the encouragement of the formation of so-called ”Allied Orders”. Vicious infighting soon developed between numerous male organisations over the right to be accepted as such. Initially, only the Sons of Veterans of the United States of America (later renamed the Sons of Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, or SVGAR – and only open to male descendants of veterans of the war of secession) was accepted, with the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic a separate organisation open to widows, nurses and the like. The set of organisations was finally rounded off with the accept of the Daughters of Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organisation formed in 1889.

Following Grants War, or rather the part of it labelled the ”German Insurrection” by the GAR, the states stretching in a broad band from New York to Kansas were left outside the control of the Grant administration, and there the GAR eventually was outlawed as the obvious tool of the ”dictatorial administration in the eastern USA” (or EA for short), opening the way for more veteran-affair-oriented organisations in those states.

The GAR itself in those states soon split in its military and political arms, with the former continuing for some 5 decades a campaign of bombing and assassination, while the latter continued as a lobby group within the American, later the Populist Party.

With the aging of the veterans themselves, the organisation in the Eastern USA (EA) slowly lost in power over the next decades. The final Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic was held in Albanany, New York in 1962 and the last member, Herbert Thatcher died in 1969 at the age of 109 years.

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