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Civil War America
The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic
In the years after the Civil War, black and white Union soldiers who survived the horrific struggle joined the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)--the Union army's largest veterans' organization. In this thoroughly researched and groundbreaking study, Barbara Gannon chronicles black and white veterans' efforts to create and sustain the nation's first interracial organization.
According to the conventional view, the freedoms and interests of African American veterans were not defended by white Union veterans after the war, despite the shared tradition of sacrifice among both black and white soldiers. In The Won Cause , however, Gannon challenges this scholarship, arguing that although black veterans still suffered under the contemporary racial mores, the GAR honored its black members in many instances and ascribed them a greater equality than previous studies have shown. Using evidence of integrated posts and veterans' thoughts on their comradeship and the cause, Gannon reveals that white veterans embraced black veterans because their membership in the GAR demonstrated that their wartime suffering created a transcendent bond--comradeship--that overcame even the most pernicious social barrier--race-based separation. By upholding a more inclusive memory of a war fought for liberty as well as union, the GAR's "Won Cause" challenged the Lost Cause version of Civil War memory.
According to the conventional view, the freedoms and interests of African American veterans were not defended by white Union veterans after the war, despite the shared tradition of sacrifice among both black and white soldiers. In The Won Cause , however, Gannon challenges this scholarship, arguing that although black veterans still suffered under the contemporary racial mores, the GAR honored its black members in many instances and ascribed them a greater equality than previous studies have shown. Using evidence of integrated posts and veterans' thoughts on their comradeship and the cause, Gannon reveals that white veterans embraced black veterans because their membership in the GAR demonstrated that their wartime suffering created a transcendent bond--comradeship--that overcame even the most pernicious social barrier--race-based separation. By upholding a more inclusive memory of a war fought for liberty as well as union, the GAR's "Won Cause" challenged the Lost Cause version of Civil War memory.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published April 4, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 15, 2021
The Grand Army of the Republic was the largest organization for Union veterans of the Civil War. But Gannon's book, whose title stands against the "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy, is about much more than veterans' affairs.
The GAR, at the height of its political power and influence in the decades after the Civil War, was the most powerful political lobby in the country, successfully winning military pensions for its members that absorbed up to 20% of the federal budget. Members included presidents of the United States, leaders of business and of course, lots of ordinary folk, both Black and white.
What makes the GAR especially interesting was that in a way, it was a pioneering civil rights organization. The only major group to accept Black members on an equal footing with whites in an era of Jim Crow segregation, the GAR gave Black men a chance to mingle with white men, and also, sometimes, to exercise leadership. Some posts were segregated, especially in the South, where a huge group of GAR men were Black. Integrated posts were found throughout the North and especially in the Midwest, where the experience of the war's more integrated western theater informed the memories of the veterans. But whether integrated or not, local GAR posts paid each other respect and worked together fraternally on the regional and national levels.
Sadly, but understandably given conditions in society at the time, the GAR's commitment to equality of comrades inside the group did not extend to campaigning for civil rights outside the group. When Black members asked, occasionally a GAR group would denounce some instance of racism against Black war veterans. But that's as far as this veterans group would go.
Unlike the rest of American society, most GAR members rejected the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and its call to reconciliation between North and South. While willing to accord respect to Southern veterans as fellow warriors, the men who wore the blue were better than most white Americans at remembering the Civil War not merely as a contest for union, but as a principled, moral fight for liberty, to end slavery and make all Americans equal.
But rather than channeling this feeling into civil rights activism, the GAR generally channelled its memory of fighting for Liberty and Union, as its members often quoted Daniel Webster, into supporting America's wars to bring liberty to foreign nations, starting with the Spanish American War. That war brought together North and South to free Cuba and the Philippines from colonial rule. Nationally, the war was celebrated as a final reconciliation between the formerly warring sections of the U.S., a watershed moment in American history when Yankees and Southrons could shake hands and move on from the grievances of the Civil War.
GAR members generally supported war against Spain, but they insisted on remembering that southerners had started an earlier war that led to the death and suffering of so many Union men like themselves. As the GAR man remembered slavery as the cause of that war, so he also would not forget that the slaveowner unleashed havoc on his fellow countrymen. So, at the much ballyhooed North-South reunion events at Gettysburg in the early 20th century, many GAR men remained lukewarm at best in clasping hands with the men who had shot at them after they had fired on Fort Sumter.
Gannon's book is filled with fascinating and surprising quotes from GAR men (and the women who staffed their ladies' auxiliary organizations) showing a high level of solidarity between Black and white. The quotes alone are worth the price of the book. For example, a report by white GAR leaders spoke out against forcing Black comrades into segregated groups:
"During that fierce struggle for the life of the nation, we stood shoulder to shoulder as comrades tried. It is too late to divide now on the color line. A man who is good enough to stand between the flag and those who would destroy it when the fate of the nation was trembling in the balance is good enough to be a comrade in any Department of the Grand Army of the Republic."
Likewise, Black GAR men showed their respect of and friendship for their white comrades. The GAR was an island of equality and cross-racial fraternity in a sea of segregation and racial violence. Its bond of comradeship among soldiers proved strong enough to offer its own Black members a version of a free and equal America that would not be found in the larger society for another century or more.
Perhaps most importantly, the GAR's focus on the war as about slavery and not only about union preserved a memory of the "Won Cause," a coinage of Gannon's, to counter the much more popular and successful narrative of the Southern Lost Cause. For decades, seduced by the Lost Cause and its promise of sectional reconciliation through white solidarity, northerners forgot about the Won Cause. The GAR helped keep that cause alive through those dark decades until the civil rights movement could take it up again.
The last GAR member died in 1956, consigning the organization literally to memory. But two years earlier, the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education, overturning legal segregation. This would lead to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and ultimately, to the election of Barack Obama as America's first Black president. Gannon argues that the steadfastness of GAR men, Black and white, to remember the Won Cause, deserves some credit for America's later progress on civil rights.
The GAR, at the height of its political power and influence in the decades after the Civil War, was the most powerful political lobby in the country, successfully winning military pensions for its members that absorbed up to 20% of the federal budget. Members included presidents of the United States, leaders of business and of course, lots of ordinary folk, both Black and white.
What makes the GAR especially interesting was that in a way, it was a pioneering civil rights organization. The only major group to accept Black members on an equal footing with whites in an era of Jim Crow segregation, the GAR gave Black men a chance to mingle with white men, and also, sometimes, to exercise leadership. Some posts were segregated, especially in the South, where a huge group of GAR men were Black. Integrated posts were found throughout the North and especially in the Midwest, where the experience of the war's more integrated western theater informed the memories of the veterans. But whether integrated or not, local GAR posts paid each other respect and worked together fraternally on the regional and national levels.
Sadly, but understandably given conditions in society at the time, the GAR's commitment to equality of comrades inside the group did not extend to campaigning for civil rights outside the group. When Black members asked, occasionally a GAR group would denounce some instance of racism against Black war veterans. But that's as far as this veterans group would go.
Unlike the rest of American society, most GAR members rejected the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and its call to reconciliation between North and South. While willing to accord respect to Southern veterans as fellow warriors, the men who wore the blue were better than most white Americans at remembering the Civil War not merely as a contest for union, but as a principled, moral fight for liberty, to end slavery and make all Americans equal.
But rather than channeling this feeling into civil rights activism, the GAR generally channelled its memory of fighting for Liberty and Union, as its members often quoted Daniel Webster, into supporting America's wars to bring liberty to foreign nations, starting with the Spanish American War. That war brought together North and South to free Cuba and the Philippines from colonial rule. Nationally, the war was celebrated as a final reconciliation between the formerly warring sections of the U.S., a watershed moment in American history when Yankees and Southrons could shake hands and move on from the grievances of the Civil War.
GAR members generally supported war against Spain, but they insisted on remembering that southerners had started an earlier war that led to the death and suffering of so many Union men like themselves. As the GAR man remembered slavery as the cause of that war, so he also would not forget that the slaveowner unleashed havoc on his fellow countrymen. So, at the much ballyhooed North-South reunion events at Gettysburg in the early 20th century, many GAR men remained lukewarm at best in clasping hands with the men who had shot at them after they had fired on Fort Sumter.
Gannon's book is filled with fascinating and surprising quotes from GAR men (and the women who staffed their ladies' auxiliary organizations) showing a high level of solidarity between Black and white. The quotes alone are worth the price of the book. For example, a report by white GAR leaders spoke out against forcing Black comrades into segregated groups:
"During that fierce struggle for the life of the nation, we stood shoulder to shoulder as comrades tried. It is too late to divide now on the color line. A man who is good enough to stand between the flag and those who would destroy it when the fate of the nation was trembling in the balance is good enough to be a comrade in any Department of the Grand Army of the Republic."
Likewise, Black GAR men showed their respect of and friendship for their white comrades. The GAR was an island of equality and cross-racial fraternity in a sea of segregation and racial violence. Its bond of comradeship among soldiers proved strong enough to offer its own Black members a version of a free and equal America that would not be found in the larger society for another century or more.
Perhaps most importantly, the GAR's focus on the war as about slavery and not only about union preserved a memory of the "Won Cause," a coinage of Gannon's, to counter the much more popular and successful narrative of the Southern Lost Cause. For decades, seduced by the Lost Cause and its promise of sectional reconciliation through white solidarity, northerners forgot about the Won Cause. The GAR helped keep that cause alive through those dark decades until the civil rights movement could take it up again.
The last GAR member died in 1956, consigning the organization literally to memory. But two years earlier, the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education, overturning legal segregation. This would lead to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and ultimately, to the election of Barack Obama as America's first Black president. Gannon argues that the steadfastness of GAR men, Black and white, to remember the Won Cause, deserves some credit for America's later progress on civil rights.
December 14, 2013
This had really great evidence and was interesting, but the writing itself was pretty bad and very hard to get through (because of its repetitiveness and obvious statements). I wish it had more analysis other than repeating the same things over and over again without really explaining them, because it's obvious that a LOT of really amazing research went into it.
December 15, 2011
A solid argument weakened by some pretty turgid prose and an inability to follow through with the deeper implications of the war.
February 17, 2022
This is a great study of the GAR, its role in preserving the memory of the civil war and the causes that it was fought for. Much of the popular commemoration of the civil war until very recently is focused on what has come to be known as the Lost Cause, the idea that the South was fighting for a just cause and was overwhelmed by the massive firepower and population of the North. Added to this, from both historians critical and those appreciative of such a view, was the idea that North and South eventually acquiesced to the Southern view of the war, and reconciled with each other in a (white) comradeship. In other words, if the South was able to get away with pushing its distortion of the war, it could only do so with Northern acquiescence, whether because the South actually was right (the Gone With the Wind/Neo-confederate view), or because of the racism which marked American society (the view of many historians, which is not completely unjustified but which needs qualification). Gannon shows that there was at least one organisation, the GAR, which did not go along with this view. It was often integrated, had some all-black posts as well as integrated ones, elected black people to official posts, extended its social outreach to African American veterans, and most importantly fought against the tide of reconciliation, and in defence of the idea that one cause was just and deserving of honour, and the other side guilty of treason, and (in its cause at least) not worthy of memorialisation or honouring. The GAR also comes across as a much more progressive organisation in its active care for its members and their relatives, both black and white. In the end, however, the GAR failed to make a significant dent in race relations because its focus was overwhelmingly inwards on veterans and members, rather than on broader society, and as other wars occurred, was sidelined in favour of more contemporary concerns and issues facing the black and white community. This is a very good, short, and readable book on this fascinating institution which is worthy of more attention and study than it has often received.
January 8, 2025
Read for comps
April 4, 2014
One of the best books yet concerning the American Civil War and national memory.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews