The United Confederate Veterans (UCV, or simply Confederate Veterans) was an

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

veterans' organization A veterans' organization, also known as an en-GB, ex-service organisation, label=none, is an organization composed of persons who served in a country's armed forces, especially those who served in the armed forces during a period of war. The orga ...

headquartered in

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Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

. It was organized on June 10, 1889, by ex-

soldier A soldier is a person who is a member of an army. A soldier can be a conscripted or volunteer enlisted person, a non-commissioned officer, or an officer. Etymology The word ''soldier'' derives from the Middle English word , from Old French ...

s and

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s of the

Confederate States The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confeder ...

as a merger between the Louisiana Division of the Veteran Confederate States Cavalry Association; N. B. Forrest Camp of Chattanooga,

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

; Tennessee Division of the Veteran Confederate States Cavalry Association; Tennessee Division of Association of Confederate Soldiers; Benevolent Association of Confederate Veterans of Shreveport, Louisiana; Confederate Association of Iberville Parish, Louisiana; Eighteenth Louisiana; Adams County (

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

) Veterans' Association; Louisiana Division of the Army of Tennessee; and Louisiana Division of the Army of Northern Virginia.Hattaway, 1971, p. 214. The Union equivalent of the UCV was the

Grand Army of the Republic The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army (United States Army), Union Navy (U.S. Navy), and the Marines who served in the American Civil War. It was founded in 1866 in Decatur, Il ...

History

Background

There had been numerous local veterans associations in the South, and many of these became part of the UCV. The organization grew rapidly throughout the 1890s culminating with 1,555 camps represented at the 1898 reunion. The next few years marked the zenith of UCV membership, lasting until 1903 or 1904, when veterans were starting to die off and the organization went into a gradual decline.

Purpose

The UCV felt it had to outline its purposes and structure in a written constitution, based on military lines. Members holding appropriate UCV "ranks" officered and staffed echelons of command from General Headquarters at the top to local camps (companies) at the bottom. Their declared purpose was emphatically nonmilitary – to foster "social, literary, historical, and benevolent" ends.Hattaway, 1971, p. 215. The UCV sponsored '' Florida's Tribute to the Women of the Confederacy'' (1915).

Reunions

The national organization assembled annually in a general convention and social reunion, presided over by the Commander-in-Chief. These annual reunions served the UCV as an aid in achieving its goals. Convention cities made elaborate preparations and tried to put on bigger events than the previous hosts. The gatherings continued to be held long after the membership peak had passed and despite fewer veterans surviving, they gradually grew in attendance, length and splendor. Numerous veterans brought family and friends along too, further swelling the crowds. Many Southerners considered the conventions major social occasions. Perhaps thirty thousand veterans and another fifty thousand visitors attended each of the mid and late 1890 reunions, and the numbers increased. In 1911 an estimated crowd of 106,000 members and guests crammed into

Little Rock ( The "Little Rock") , government_type = Council-manager , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Frank Scott Jr. , leader_party = D , leader_title2 = Council , leader_name2 ...

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...

—a city of less than one-half that size. Then the passing years began taking a telling toll and the reunions grew smaller. But still the meetings continued until, in 1950 at the sixtieth reunion, only one member could attend, 98-year-old Commander-in-Chief James Moore of

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Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,765 ...

. The following year, 1951, the United Confederate Veterans held its sixty-first and final reunion in

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

, from May 30 to June 3. Three members attended: William Townsend, John B. Salling, and William Bush. The U.S. Post Office Department issued a 3-cent commemorative stamp in conjunction with that final reunion. The last verified Confederate veteran,

Pleasant Crump Pleasant Riggs Crump (December 23, 1847 – December 31, 1951) was an American soldier who was the last verifiable veteran who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Although he was survived by several other claimants in ...

, died at age 104 on December 31, 1951.

''The Confederate Veteran''

In addition to national meetings, another prominent factor contributed to the growth and popularity of the UCV. This was a monthly magazine which became the official UCV organ, the ''

Confederate Veteran The ''Confederate Veteran'' was a magazine about veterans of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War of 1861–1865, propagating the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. It was instrumental in popularizing the legend of Sa ...

''. Founded as an independent publishing venture in January 1893, by

Sumner Archibald Cunningham Sumner Archibald Cunningham (July 21, 1843 – December 20, 1913) was an American Confederate soldier and journalist. He was the editor of a short lived Confederate magazine called "Our Day" (1883-1884) published in New York. In 1893 he establish ...

, the UCV adopted it the following year. Cunningham personally edited the magazine for twenty-one years and bequeathed almost his entire estate to insure its continuance. The magazine was of a very high quality and circulation was wide. Many veterans penned recollections or articles for publication in its pages. Readership always greatly exceeded circulation because numerous camps and soldiers' homes received one or two copies for their numerous occupants. An average of 6500 copies were printed per issue during the first year of publication, for example, but Cunningham estimated that fifty thousand people read the twelfth issue.Hattaway, 1971, pp. 215–16.

Notes

References

* Cimbala, Paul A. ''Veterans North and South: The Transition from Soldier to Civilian after the American Civil War'' (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2015). xviii, 189 pp. * Dorgan, Howard. "Rhetoric of the United Confederate Veterans: A lost cause mythology in the making." in ''Oratory in the New South'' (1979): 143–73. * Hattaway, Herman. "The United Confederate Veterans in Louisiana." '' Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association'' 16.1 (1975): 5–37
in JSTOR
* * Marten, James Alan. ''Sing Not War: The Lives of Union & Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America'' (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2011).

Primary sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

1914 Confederate Veterans Convention
at The World Digital Library
Confederate Veteran Organizations
at the

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*
Minutes of the Annual Meetings and Reunions of the United Confederate Veterans
' at the

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*
Organization of Camps in the United Confederate Veterans
' at the Online Books Page

at

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

United Confederate Veterans Collection
at

James Madison University James Madison University (JMU, Madison, or James Madison) is a public research university in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Founded in 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Harrisonburg, the institution was renamed Madison Coll ...

United Confederate Veterans Politicians
at

The Political Graveyard The Political Graveyard is a website and database that catalogues information on more than 277,000 American political figures and political families, along with other information. The name comes from the website's inclusion of burial locations o ...

United Confederate Veterans Reunions held in Memphis
a
Historic-Memphis

United Confederate Veterans Reunion of 1911
at ''

Encyclopedia of Arkansas The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) ''Encyclopedia of Arkansas'' is a web-based encyclopedia of the U.S. state of Arkansas, described by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as "a free, authoritative source of information abo ...

''
United Confederate Veterans Reunion of 1928
at ''

''
United Confederate Veterans Reunion of 1949
at ''

''
United Confederate Veterans Tennessee Division Records
at the Tennessee State Library and Archives
United Confederate Veterans Virginia Division Records
at the

Library of Virginia The Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, is the library agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It serves as the archival agency and the reference library for Virginia's seat of government. The Library moved into a new building in 1997 and ...

United Confederate Veterans (UCV)
at

* {{DEFAULTSORT:United Confederate Veterans 1889 establishments in Louisiana 1951 disestablishments in Virginia Aftermath of the American Civil War American Civil War veterans and descendants organizations Defunct clubs and societies of the United States Defunct organizations based in Louisiana Neo-Confederate organizations Organizations established in 1889 Organizations disestablished in 1951