Grand Review of the Armies 1865: Meade's Parade, Sherman's Cattle Herd

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In May 1865, one month after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Washington was still draped in black bunting when President Andrew Johnson declared on May 10 that armed resistance was virtually at an end. Government authorities ordered a formal review of the troops, and about 145,000 soldiers converged on the capital: the Army of the Potomac arriving on May 12, the Army of the Tennessee by train, and William T. Sherman's Army of Georgia marching up from North Carolina after the Carolinas campaign. This episode explains how the two-day Grand Review was staged to replace national grief with a visible display of order and survival.

Before the parade, rivalry between the Eastern and Western armies spilled into brawls in the city's taverns, and Sherman drilled his men relentlessly, fearing they would look like an unpolished horde beside the better supplied Easterners. On May 23, General George Gordon Meade led about 80,000 men down Pennsylvania Avenue in a six-hour procession. On May 24, Sherman's 65,000 followed, trailed by freed people, laborers, scavengers, and livestock taken in the Carolinas. Within a week the armies were mustered out, while the episode notes that violence moved into guerrilla bands, outlaw gangs, and the Ku Klux Klan.

• A single signal gun fired at 9 a.m. on May 23 to start the review, with infantry marching 12 men across.
• The Army of the Potomac's cavalry alone formed a continuous line about seven miles long.
• Meade dismounted at the White House reviewing stand and joined Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant to watch his own army pass.
• A herd of cattle taken from Carolina farms brought up the rear of Sherman's procession past the Treasury building.
• The modern National Memorial Day Parade follows parts of the same route along Constitution Avenue.