There’s something poignant about the image and subject of today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued on August 29, 1049 to commemorate the last (and 83rd) annual encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a fraternal organization of men who had fought for the Union in the Civil War.

While the GAR had more than 400,000 members at its peak in the late 1800s, by the time of the last encampment only 16 were still alive and only six were able to attend the gathering. At the final campfire, the GAR’s colors were retired for the last time, and a Marine Band bugler played “Taps.” The group dissolved seven yers later when its last member, Albert Woolson of Duluth, MN passed away.

This, in and of itself, is poignant. But I think there’s something more, and it involves important missed opportunities in the GAR’s history.

When it was founded in 1866, the GAR, which was open to white and Black veterans, strongly supported the Republican Party’s efforts to protect Black voting rights during Reconstruction. But when the Republican Party’s commitment to reform in the South waned in the 1870s, the GAR’s mission became ill-defined and the organization floundered and almost folded. In the 1880s, GAR reemerged as a powerful force when it began advocating in support of Federal pensions for veterans. But, tellingly, it only lobbied for white veterans. As a result, while white veterans got pensions, most black veterans of the war never received any pension or remuneration for wounds they incurred.

To make matters worse, in the 1880s the GAR, began to periodically hold joint Blue and Grey reunions with the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), an organization that in the late 1800s and early 1900s played a central role in the construction of numerous Confederate monuments and in the reframing of the Civil War in textbooks and curriculum. (I wrote about this in a May post about a similar stamp, issued in 1951 to commemorate UCV’s the last gathering). In fact, several thousand Union veterans and several thousand Confederate veterans attended a joint GAR/UCV reunion at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and at least 5,000 GAR and UCV members attended a similar gathering in Atlanta in 1900.

The shifts in focus coincided with a rise in GARs political power. In the latter part of the 19th century, Republican candidates for president could not be nominated unless they had the support of GAR’s leadership. Such backing helped ensure that Republicans won six of eight presidential elections in the second half of the nineteenth century. Moreover all the Republican victors – Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, and Benjamin Harrison -were Civil War veterans who also were members of GAR. (Grover Cleveland, the lone Democrat to serve in the latter part of the 19th century, did not serve in the Civil War.)

John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” provides a taste of the group’s influence via the character of Cyrus Trask, father of Adam Trask, a key character in the book. Despite the fact that his brief military career was cut short by the loss of his leg, Cyrus joins the GAR and becomes one of its national leaders at the height of the group’s power. He tells Adam: “I wonder if you know how much influence I really have. I can throw the Grand Army at any candidate like a sock. Even the President likes to know what I think about public matters. I can get senators defeated and I can pick appointments like apples. I can make men and I can destroy men. Do you know that?”

All of that is why I find the stamp, which shows an old veteran in the foreground and his young soldier self in the background, so poignant. Yes the stamp is a powerful reminder of the inexorable passage of time, a process that took the group from over 400,000 members to just 16 when the stamp was issued. But looking at the stamp, I am struck by the missed opportunities it portrays. I think about how a group that initially strongly supported voting rights for Blacks in the crucial years right after the Civil War, was unable and/or unwilling to forcefully push back against the forces that denied those rights. I think about how the group didn’t even advocate strongly for Black veterans. I think about its willingness to partner with UCV. And I think that all of this is particularly troubling in light of the fact that GAR was such a powerful political force for so many decades.

So while the wistful look on the soldier’s face in the stamp clearly shows a man contemplating the passage of time, I choose to believe that it’s also a portrait of a man ruminating on what he knows he should have done differently. I know that’s probably not the case, but, I think, it’s an idea worth considering, if only to remind ourselves to act now so we don’t regret not acting later, even if (or maybe especially if) it means pushing back against the dominant forces of our time.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.