Nebraska's Grand Army of the Republic, 1867-1920
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
University of Nebraska at Omaha DigitalCommons@UNO Student Work 8-1-1997 This great fraternity: Nebraska's Grand Army of the Republic, 1867-1920 Richard Evans Keyes University of Nebraska at Omaha Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/studentwork Recommended Citation Keyes, Richard Evans, "This great fraternity: Nebraska's Grand Army of the Republic, 1867-1920" (1997). Student Work. 476. https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/studentwork/476 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Work by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THIS GREAT FRATERNITY: NEBRASKA’S GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC, 1867-1920 A Thesis Presented to the Department of History and the Faculty of the Graduate College University of Nebraska in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts University of Nebraska at Omaha by Richard Evans Keyes August, 1997 UMI Number: EP73114 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI EP73114 Published by ProQuest LLC (2015). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 THESIS ACCEPTANCE Acceptance for the faculty of the Graduate College, University of Nebraska, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts, University of Nebraska at Omaha. COM M ITTEE /g/ - v D a t e ABSTRACT America’s Civil War transformed the political, economic and social landscape of the nation. Nowhere did this transformation manifest itself so clearly as in the lives of the men who flocked to the Union colors. The world of combat created a landscape of death, dismemberment and disease, while destroying Victorian concepts of knightliness and romance. Veterans spent a lifetime in successfully reintegrating themselves into the nation’s mainstream, while constantly harkening back to the discipline and organizational skills learned in the war. Their efforts came to fruition with the establishment of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1866, which became the most politically powerful veterans’ group in American history. In Nebraska a combination of factors—the Homestead Act, the state’s fertile soil, and an exponential growth in railroad building—attracted thousands of ex-soldiers in the postwar period. After a series of false starts (and an apparently near-fatal involvement in Republican party politics), the Grand Army coalesced under the leadership of Paul Vandervoort into a dynamic and influential group after 1878. Its recruiting efforts reflected a substantial number of the new state’s upper and middle classes. Grand Army men who engaged in politics tended to do so in the Republican party, while simultaneously denying any political involvement by the veterans’ organization. The Grand Army’s first initiatives in the community focused on Memorial Day celebrations, campfires and reunions. These communitarian projects flourished throughout the 1880s and 1890s, crossing class and generational lines, while bringing the veteran into the forefront of Nebraska’s social and political life. Such actions bore even more fruit when the Grand Army began to press for soldiers’ homes and local relief for indigent veterans in the 1880s. Eventually two soldiers’ homes would be built in Milford and Grand Island, while county agencies provided some funds for the needy veteran. During this same period, the state group marched at the national Grand Army’s side as it fought for disability and service pensions from the national government. In the 1890s immigration from southeast Europe, labor unrest and the rise of Populism caused the state Grand Army to join in a national battle over school textbook treatment of the Civil War. This drive eventually became subsumed by a desire to inculcate the teaching of patriotism in the schools. Military instruction, patriotic programs and veneration of the flag were the focal points of Grand Army initiatives from around 1896 to the beginning of World War I. As their numbers steadily decreased, survivors embarked on a spree of monument building throughout Nebraska, symbolizing the end of the Grand Army as a political force and its entrance into American memory. DEDICATION To my wife Renate whose love and support carried me through, To David Wells, of Omaha, in whose heart “the boys” still live, and to The memory of my great-grandfather, Sergeant John Gabriel Evans, Company C, 137th Volunteer Pennsylvania Infantry: Stone Mountain, Antietam, Chancellorsville. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge the wisdom, patience and counsel of Dr. Tommy Thompson and Dr. Harl Dalstrom, who kept me on course in the shaping of this work. I must also thank Dr. William Pratt and Dr. Gerald Simmons, whose enthusiasm and scholarly approach to history helped prepare me for this endeavor. Many thanks are also due to Mrs. Charlotte Smith and Mrs. Deborah Smith of Alabama, typists extraordinaire, who deciphered my handwriting and carried out the arduous tasks of revision. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................... i CHAPTER ONE The Soldier’s Landscape ......................................................................... 1 CHAPTER TWO Something Besides Politics: The Rise and Growth of an Organization ......... 28 CHAPTER THREE The Strife and Clash of Parties ............................... 77 CHAPTER FOUR The Imaginary Camp: Reunions and Campfires ............................................... 103 CHAPTER FIVE The Bivouac of the Dead: Nebraska Celebrates Memorial Day ..................... 130 CHAPTER SIX An Act of Slow Justice ........................................ 161 CHAPTER SEVEN Pensions Are Due Them ..................................................................................... 183 CHAPTER EIGHT “No Room For Anarchists”: Patriotism and the Schoolhouse .......................... 223 CHAPTER NINE Of Monuments, Memory, and Time .................................................................. 256 / SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................. 283 PREFACE This is a study of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans’ group once so powerful and influential that it might better have been styled the Grand Army nation. In 1866 a group of veterans came together in Illinois after America’s bloodiest conflict for the stated purpose of rekindling “Fraternity, Loyalty and Charity.” In the process of gathering the “brotherhood of war,” the Grand Army would ensure the permanent commemoration of their comrades through the pageantry of Memorial Day celebrations. In addition, as a key late nineteenth century interest group, the Army would see to completion the establishment of a pension system which became a precursor for today’s social security administration, and work to inculcate military and patriotic training in the schools. The reunions and campfires of the Army enabled the members to exist comfortably in the heart of the post-Civil War era’s social and political life. Before the last veterans passed away they would witness the erection of monuments symbolizing their own passage into American memory. And yes, “the boys,” as they were so fond of calling one another, still live. Interest in the Civil War remains high to this day, evidenced by the continued production of battle studies, regimental histories, “The Civil War” on the Public Broadcasting System, reenactors’ groups, and a variety of popular newsstand magazines. But while preparing this manuscript, the mention of “GAR” or “ Grand Army” seemed to elicit only puzzlement even from historically literate acquaintances. Memory of the soldiers is strong; remembrance of the veterans has withered. Perhaps this is appropriate, considering that so much of what the Grand Army of the Republic was about as an organization was a lasting nostalgia for the unrecoverable days of their youth. A poem dedicated to Major S. Pierre Remington, 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, eloquently captured this longing: Backward, turn backward, oh, time in your flight, Make me a soldier boy just for tonight Major, come back from the echoless shore, And take command again just as of yore.1 This work focuses on the rise and spread of Nebraska’s portion of that Grand Army nation, and centers on the years between 1878 and the First World War. Nebraska’s veterans, virtually all of whom had arrived in the state after the war, formed a microcosm of the Union armies. I have therefore found it useful to contextualize their progress within the path taken by the national GAR. This is not a linear organizational history. While the Nebraska Historical Society contains an endless litany of statistical data, there is a singular lack of material which could flesh out the hidden conflicts and controversies which abound within any large society. One striking example of this void is a General Order published in 1879, listing the names of twenty-three members