Booknotes: Our Onward March

New Arrival:

• Our Onward March: The Grand Army of the Republic in the Progressive Era by Jonathan D. Neu (Fordham UP, 2025).

The GAR was first and foremost a veterans fraternal organization, with posts all around the country (even in the former Confederacy), but Jonathan Neu's Our Onward March: The Grand Army of the Republic in the Progressive Era emphasizes the GAR's political activism component of its mission.

According to Neu, "Union veterans of the GAR drew on lessons they learned in the Civil War―lessons about broad principles like democracy, freedom, and loyalty―to undertake grassroots civic projects designed to address the rampant social ills and challenging foreign policy issues associated with US modernization. Armed this time with sage wisdom and unwavering principles, they mobilized again to consummate their wartime victory with reform-minded activism on behalf of establishing an even more perfect Union."

Over the decades following the end of the Civil War and into the new century, GAR passion for public engagement and reform took many different forms. More from the description: "Extending the boundaries of America’s post–Civil War era, Neu investigates the GAR during the Progressive era, a period in the organization’s history that scholars have overlooked. Countering stubborn notions that the GAR was merely a pension advocacy group or an insular bastion of sentimental nostalgia, he reveals instead that the organization reached a turning point in 1890, after which it became an active and decentralized civic association whose members worked to instill a commitment to public life, engagement with community issues, and pride in the democracy they had defended as young men."

The author arrived at his conclusions through fresh examination of neglected source materials. "Anchored by illuminating new source material, including post-minute books and fraternal records, Our Onward March places aging GAR members squarely among the diverse constellation of turn-of-the-century social reformers, using their memory of the Civil War to promote robust, veteran-led civic engagement. By situating Union veterans in this context, we see a more accurate portrait of the GAR post in American culture―as a local center of progressive activism."