Grand Army of the Republic: Union Veterans Who Planned Their Own End

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The Grand Army of the Republic began in Decatur, Illinois, on April 6, 1866, when Dr. Benjamin Franklin Stephenson formed a fraternal group for veterans of the Union Army, Navy and Marines, built on fraternity, charity and loyalty. Its local posts nearly collapsed by the early 1870s. As veterans aged and old wounds and illnesses caught up with them, new leaders turned the GAR into a pension lobby, using a structure of posts, state departments and a national command to send tens of thousands of letters to Congress and vote as a bloc against opponents.

In 1868, commander-in-chief John A. Logan's General Order No. 11 set May 30 as a day to decorate soldiers' graves, the origin of Memorial Day. Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and McKinley were all GAR members, while Grover Cleveland, who had paid a substitute, vetoed hundreds of private pension bills. Because only those who served from 1861 to 1865 could join, membership peaked at over 400,000 in 1890 and then dwindled. The 83rd and final encampment met in Indianapolis in 1949, and the GAR dissolved in 1956 when its last member, Albert Woolson, died.

Robert A. Pinn, an African American veteran, was elected commander of a predominantly white GAR post in Ohio.
Pension files of Black Union soldiers are now a major source for African American genealogy.
Sarah Emma Edmonds, who served as Franklin Thompson in the 2nd Michigan Infantry, won a pension and was admitted to the GAR in 1897.
Kady Brownell, who served alongside her husband in Rhode Island regiments, has the GAR insignia engraved on her gravestone.
U.S. Route 6 is designated the Grand Army of the Republic Highway along its entire length.

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