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RELIVING BATTLES AND SEEKING BENEFITS -- A look
at the
long and checkered history of the Grand Army of
the Republic.
Story here...
http://www.jg-tc.com/
articles/2007/07/07/features/doc4
68ef875f11ea659196640.txt
Story below:
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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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Larry Scott --
