Grand Army of the Republic

From its formation shortly after the end of the Civil War until the middle of the 20th century, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was the largest and most powerful organization of Union Army and Navy veterans. Founded on April 6, 1866, in Decatur, Illinois, by former Army surgeon Benjamin Franklin Stephenson, its proclaimed goals were “Fraternity, Charity and Loyalty.” Its basic unit was the local post, with membership open to any honorably discharged Union veteran by a secret and unanimous vote of the post. At its height in 1890, the GAR comprised 6,928 local posts, which were important centers of for socializing and parts of a national patriotic and pension lobby that was probably the most influential voluntary organization of the Gilded Age. Except for Grover Cleveland, every president elected between 1868 and 1900 was a GAR member, and, by 1893, one dollar of every three spent by the federal government went to Union Army pensions, secured through the active lobbying efforts of the GAR.

Between 1866 and 1872, the GAR operated as a virtual wing of the Republican Party, boosting the careers of soldier–politicians such as John A. Logan, one of the managers of Andrew Johnson's impeachment in the House of Representatives. Grand Army members organized during the impeachment crisis to head off a feared presidential coup, turning out in force to elect Ulysses S. Grant in 1868. Although the Grand Army retained its association with the Republican Party into the 20th century (sparking the joke that GAR stood for “Generally All Republicans”), its overt partisanship declined following Grant's reelection in 1872. The turn away from politics, coupled with the depression of the mid-1870s and a general inclination to forget the war, pushed the GAR into decline, reaching a low of 26,899 members in 1876.

In the 1880s, the GAR revived as a fraternal order, emphasizing its secret initiation ritual (modeled on that of [Page 322]the Masons) and the provision of charity to needy veterans. A female auxiliary, the Women's Relief Corps (1883), and a hereditary auxiliary that is still in existence, the Sons of Veterans (1878), were founded. In 1890 the GAR reached its peak membership of 409,489 and enrolled about 40 percent of eligible Union veterans, after which death began to thin the ranks. In the 20th century, it served mainly as a custodian of Memorial Day (which GAR commander in chief Logan had proclaimed as Decoration Day in 1868), and as the promoter of a conservative version of American patriotism. It held its last national encampment at Indianapolis in 1949.

While active, the GAR was best known as a pension lobby. Major pieces of legislation such as the Arrears Act (1879) and the Dependant Pension Act (1890), the products of veteran political clout, had profound effects on life in the Gilded Age. The Civil War pension system transferred wealth from the South to the North and West (where most Union veterans continued to live), set a precedent for social welfare provision that was both politicized and masculinized (women qualified for pensions only as widows and orphans), and provided a rationale for high tariffs. Politically, the system was a boon to Republicans, who rushed through pension claims from pivotal states in the Midwest, and poison to Democrats, as Pres. Grover Cleveland discovered in 1887 when his veto of a pension bill provoked howls of outrage from GAR members. The system was also very expensive—the Dependent Pension Act alone had cost more than $1 billion by 1907.

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