And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts:
1 of 26
African-American Civil War veterans wearing Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) caps and uniforms marching in a procession in New York. May 30, 1912.Bain News Service/Library of Congress
2 of 26
Two members of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of veterans of the Civil War. Southern Pacific station, Southern California. 1926.Dick Whittington Studio/Corbis via Getty Images
3 of 26
Civil War musicians in a Memorial Day parade in Los Angeles. 1915.California Historical Society/Wikimedia Commons
4 of 26
Civil War veteran reunion at Lee Square in Pensacola, Florida. 1890.State Library and Archives of Florida/Wikimedia Commons
5 of 26
Civil War veterans attend the funeral of General Horace C. Porter. 1921.Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images
6 of 26
Civil War veterans at Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Tomb during memorial services. Date unspecified.William Hoff/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
7 of 26
Civil War veterans on Main St., Ortonville, Minnesota. July 4, 1880.CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
8 of 26
Elderly Civil War veterans playing cards together. Date and location unspecified.Bettmann/Getty Images
9 of 26
United Confederate Veterans reunion in Marianna, Florida. September 1927.State Library and Archives of Florida
10 of 26
George Washington Custis Lee, son of Robert E. Lee, on horseback with staff reviewing Confederate Reunion Parade in Richmond, Virginia, in front of a monument to Jefferson Davis. June 3, 1907.Edyth Carter Beveridge/Wikimedia Commons
11 of 26
Confederate veterans reunited for group portrait in Crawfordville, Florida. 1904.State Library and Archives of Florida/Wikimedia Commons
12 of 26
Confederate veterans at the Gamble Plantation in Ellenton, Florida. 1920.State Library and Archives of Florida/Getty Images
13 of 26
Group portrait of the 114th Regimental reunion in Norwich, NY, including an African-American veteran holding the American flag. May 30, 1897.Library of Congress
14 of 26
47th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Civil War Volunteers at the Center Square Monument in Allentown. 1925.Lehigh County Historical Society/Wikimedia Commons
15 of 26
Three Civil War veterans wearing forage caps. Date and location unspecified.Archive Photos/Getty Images
16 of 26
Two then-prominent Civil War veterans visit Presidnet Hoover: Samuel R. Van Zandt (L), a former Governor of Minnesota and past Commander of the G.A.R., and James E. Jewel, then-present Commander of the organization. January 1931.Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress
17 of 26
A large group of Union veterans of the Civil War, including William Tecumseh Sherman, posed front row, center. 1884.Library of Congress
18 of 26
Civil War veterans in parade. Location unspecified. Circa late 1890s or early 1900s.Mark Jay Goebel/Getty Images
19 of 26
Reunion parade of Civil War veterans in Jacksonville, Florida. 1914.State Library & Archives of Florida/Wikimedia Commons
20 of 26
Confederate veterans in uniform leaving the Confederate Veteran Memorial in Arlington, Virginia. 1914.Library of Congress
21 of 26
Union veterans march with furled Civil War battle flags in Washington, D.C. 1915.Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress
22 of 26
Confederate veterans pose on a former battlefield in Harrisburg, Mississippi, where General Nathan Bedford Forrest began his charge during the Battle of Harrisburg, also known as the Battle of Tupelo. 1921.Mississippi Department of Archives and History
23 of 26
Two veterans seated on steps and shaking hands during a Gettysburg celebration. 1913.American Press Association/Library of Congress
24 of 26
Union Army Veterans William H. Young, 95, and Col. John T. Ryan, 90, working as White House doorkeepers. Both told the photographer they vividly recall Generals Grant, Sherman, and Early. May 28, 1937.Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress
25 of 26
The London branch of the US Civil War Veterans parade through the city on America Day. April 1917.Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
“Those Long Ago Battle Hymns”: Civil War Veterans In Photographs
View Gallery
In August 2017, the debate over whether or not Confederate monuments should still stand on American soil landed Civil War-era figures and debates on the front pages (and homepages) of newspapers across the globe. With Civil War history often relegated in the popular imagination to the offerings of textbooks, Ken Burns documentaries, Mathew Brady daguerreotypes, and these controversial statues, it's easy to forget about the ailing and aging veterans in the decades after the war. How were they treated? What brought them together?
With a battle of this scope, it's unwise to generalize about the mental and moral makeup of its participants. But historians offer us a glimpse at how a small cross-section of these veterans lived. At the end of the 19th century, for example, many Civil War veterans felt like their service offered them special political insight:
"They believed their military service gave them a 'moral authority' in addressing the nation’s issues, but found that civilians did not always grant them it. ... [S]omething of a divide existed among veterans themselves, between those that had participated in significant combat and those that had served more in support roles. The former group believed they had greater moral authority, while the latter group argued their service was just as valuable and entitled them as well to make the same claims on the nation."
There were also tensions, naturally, between Union and Confederate veterans: "Union veterans tended to grant themselves greater moral authority than their former enemies, something that Confederates were not willing to concede."
In the new century, one group of 100 or so Union veterans somehow found each other across the pond. On September 20, 1910, John Davis, head of the London Branch of Civil War Veterans, kept minutes of a group meeting describing the purpose of their gathering:
“Fraternizing, Fellowship, Camp Fire Tales, Lower Deck yarns, Jabbering and Singing those long ago Battle Hymns. Thanking God for sparing mercies. Our beautiful brass band playing Sherman’s March, Star Spangled Banner, We are coming, Father Abram, and 300,000 more, while we all stand up and the Chaplain thanks God we are yet alive.”
In 1913, upon the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, 54,000 Union and Confederate veterans gathered; 25 years later, 2,000 were still alive to show up for the battle’s next big milestone in 1938. Between Appomattox and the early days of World War II, Civil War veterans struggled to adjust to civilian life, battled suicidal thoughts -- more commonly in the South than in the North -- and fought against an American public reportedly "ambivalent" about their pensions.
The gallery above is just a small sample of photographs documenting how Union and Confederate veterans gathered in the decades following the Civil War, both separately and together, to remember the deadliest conflict yet on U.S. soil.
Kellen Perry is a veteran writer on topics including television, history, music, art, video games, and food. His work has also appeared on Grunge, Ranker, and Looper.
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
Citation copied
COPY
Cite This Article
Perry, Kellen. "“Those Long Ago Battle Hymns”: Civil War Veterans In Photographs." AllThatsInteresting.com, September 4, 2017, https://allthatsinteresting.com/civil-war-veterans. Accessed November 9, 2024.