“Weakness and Lack of Patriotism:” Resolutions of the Granville Moody Post, G.A.R.

Questions over how American society remembers the Civil War are not unique to the 21st century, having been around since the war ended and the decades immediately following it. 

That issue is not usually a major emphasis of my writing, but one example involving men from Campbell County appeared in the early 1900s, not quite 50 years after the war had started, and recently came to my attention. It is among the most unexpected local stories I have uncovered. 

The Granville Moody Post of the Grand Army of the Republic was based in Bellevue, Campbell County. During my research, I’ve seen many mentions of this post, including names of group members and mentions of post meetings and officer elections, all in various local newspapers I have perused. I must say that coming across this in the National Tribune, of Washington D.C., was certainly out of left field.

To me, it is intriguing that this otherwise quiet group of veterans made such strong and public resolutions on this situation and that a newspaper in the nation’s capital published these concerns. The men of this post certainly left no doubt of their feelings on the proposed homage to their wartime enemies. 

Two accounts, basically the same information, but with different wording, appeared in the Tribune.

The first, on November 25, 1909, consisted of these few lines.

Then, a few months later, on March 17, 1910, it printed another version.

One surprise was in finding this in a paper from out of the area instead of one of the local journals, but after another search, I did find this mentioned in the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune on November 9, 1909. Perhaps my research had not been good enough at first, but I’ll take a lead to a good story anywhere I find it.

A major part of this complaint concerned the statue of Robert E. Lee shown below. The state of Virginia had provided it for the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol in 1909, the same year that the G.A.R. men expressed their disapproval. It was removed from the Capitol on December 21, 2020, more than a century after the Moody Post had made its feelings known. 

The Robert E. Lee statue that stood in the US Capitol, photo courtesy of Wikipedia. 

It may seem surprising that a group in Kentucky, which had supplied thousands of men to the Confederate army and which a cliché claims “joined the Confederacy after the war” would issue such a statement against Confederate iconography, but perhaps this was a reaction to such feelings. True Union men like these did live throughout the state despite its reputation, and it would not be hard to believe that these men were frustrated at (or embarrassed by) the state’s split loyalties and reputation. Perhaps the plans to give national honors to Confederate leaders was the proverbial "straw that broke the camel’s back” that convinced these men to express their feelings. Were they pushing back against the “Confederate Kentucky” narrative or did they look at this as a purely national issue of loyalty? Did they believe the concept of reconciliation was going too far? It is too bad none of their meeting minutes or other comments are known to exist.

Whatever the exact motivation the men of the Moody Post held, they did issue this statement, and though it had no immediate effect as the Confederate displays continued to exist long into the future, the sentiments they expressed became far more widespread in the second decade of the 21st century, eventually leading to the removal of the Lee statue and other Confederate symbols from public places. These Union veterans did not live to see it, but their wish eventually came true as part of a new fight of public memory 150 years after the fighting on the battlefields had ended.

Bibliography & Notes of my Nelson/Davis research

Here are the sources and resources I used to look into the aftermath of the Jefferson C. Davis murder of William "Bull" Nelson on September 29, 1862. I have added a few notes and comments here as well.

Please read that post at this link

This illustration is from Harper's Weekly of October 18, 1862 and is captioned: "The Assassination of General Nelson by General Jefferson C. Davis - sketched by Mr. H. Mosler"  It is courtesy of www.sonofthesouth.net   I thought it was appropriate to use it in this discussion, but with my first post already being so long, I added it to this entry instead.

Listed below are the theories I found and the sources in which I found them. These sources either cited a specific reason for Davis to go unpunished or included enough reaction to the event that I found it appropriate to include these reactions as possible explanations about how this event played out.

My breakdown of the categories and how often I saw them was (a couple of sources used more than one that fit into the categories I decided to use)
:
1. Davis's influential friends or individuals helping him: 7 times (5 times Oliver Morton, 2 times Horatio Wright)
2. Nelson's reputation/unpopularity: 5 times (plus 1 other disagreeing with this view)
3. "Matter of honor:" 3 times
4. Buell's command uncertainty/business: 4 times
5. Union need for talent and leadership in the theater: 3 times
6. Davis was honorably acquitted at trial:  1 time. (His obituary mentioned this, but this claim is incorrect. I still feel it is worth mentioning) 




Bibliography

Books
Bobrick, Benson.  Testament: A Soldier's Story of the Civil War, New York, Simon & Schuster,
   2003. Print.

Engle, Stephen Douglas.  Don Carlos Buell: Most Promising of All, Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Print.

Heidler, David S., ed and Heidler, Jeanne T., ed. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social and Military History, New York, W.W Norton & Company,  2000. Print.

Noe, Kenneth W.  Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle, Lexington, KY, University Press of Kentucky,
     2001. Print.

Street Jr, James, and Editors of Time-Life Books. The Struggle for Tennessee: Tupelo to Stones River, Alexandria, VA, Time-Life Books, 2nd printing, revised 1987. Print. 

Blogs 
Powell, David A "Women and War, Politics and Bedfellows."  Retrieved October 23, 2010 from http://chickamaugablog.wordpress.com/

Talbott, Tim, "Personality Spotlight: William "Bull" Nelson."  Retrieved October 23, 2010 from  http://randomthoughtsonhistory.blogspot.com/

Websites
Clark, Donald A. "General Jefferson Columbus Davis, USA" Historycentral.com Accessed October 23, 2010, http://www.historycentral.com/bio/UGENS/USADavis.html

Clark, Donald A. "General Nelson William Bull USA" Historycentral.com, Accessed October 23, 2010, http://www.historycentral.com/bio/UGENS/USANelson.html

Groom, Winston, "Murder in the Civil War" historynet.com, Accessed October 23, 2010, http://www.historynet.com/murder-in-the-civil-war.htm/1

Robinson, Bill, "Battlefield Park getting pistol belonging to Gen. Nelson's killer" RichmondRegister.com, Accessed October 23, 2010, http://richmondregister.com/localnews/x752937183/Battlefield-Park-getting-pistol-belonging-to-Gen-Nelson-s-killer

Author unknown, "Jefferson C. Davis" worldlingo.com, Accessed October 23,2010,  http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Jefferson_C._Davis#Murder_of_General_Nelson

Author unknown, "Although not convicted of murder, Davis was passed over for advancement in rank" KentuckyCivilWarBugle.com, Accessed October 23, 2010, http://www.thekentuckycivilwarbugle.com/2010-1Qpages/murder.html

Author unknown, "Gen. Jefferson C. Davis Dead" query.nytimes.com, Accessed October 23, 2010, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60E11FC3D5A137B93C0A91789D95F4D8784F9

Author unknown "An encounter between Union generals turns fatal"  history.com, Accessed October 23, 2010, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/an-encounter-between-union-generals-turns-fatal

Author unknown "Camp Nelson National Cemetery"  United States Department of Veterans' Affairs website. Accessed October 23, 2010, http://www.cem.va.gov/pdf/cnelson.pdf (direct link to the article in .pdf format) or http://www.cem.va.gov/ to the website