The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was founded in Decatur, Illinois, in 1866 by Dr. Benjamin Stephenson to provide a fraternal organization for Union veterans of the Civil War (1861-1865). Believing that the Union solders’ sacrifice had been sacred and unique, from the beginning the organization refused to allow an expansion of its membership and expected that one day the last of its members would age and die. (Of the original eighty-seven members of the South Deerfield, Massachusetts, post, whose publication of war sketches is shown here, only twenty-four were still living by 1895.)

The GAR spread rapidly in its first two years, but starting around 1869 internal divisions and organizational missteps significantly reduced membership. In the 1870s the organization revived (the South Deerfield post was chartered in April 1872). By the 1890s significant percentages of veterans belonged.

The GAR was a significant political and social presence in the United States: it was instrumental in the fight for disabled veterans’ pensions; it successfully promoted Memorial Day and Flag Day and agitated for legislation that put flags into every classroom in the country; and it laid the foundations for the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps by pressing for military drill in secondary schools. By the late 1910s the GAR had faded as an active presence, though its last member lived until 1956.