United Confederate Veterans
Abbreviation | UCV |
---|---|
Successor | Sons of Confederate Veterans |
Formation | June 10, 1889 |
Dissolved | December 31, 1951 |
Type | American Civil War veterans' organization |
Purpose | Social, literary, historical and benevolent |
Headquarters | New Orleans, Louisiana |
Publication | The Confederate Veteran |
Affiliations | United Daughters of the Confederacy |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Unidentified_Civil_War_veteran_in_United_Confederate_Veterans_uniform_with_Southern_Cross_of_Honor_medal_LCCN2016652271_%28cropped%29.tif/lossy-page1-220px-Unidentified_Civil_War_veteran_in_United_Confederate_Veterans_uniform_with_Southern_Cross_of_Honor_medal_LCCN2016652271_%28cropped%29.tif.jpg)
The United Confederate Veterans (UCV, or simply Confederate Veterans) was an American Civil War veterans' organization headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was organized on June 10, 1889, by ex-soldiers and sailors of the Confederate States as a merger between the Louisiana Division of the Veteran Confederate States Cavalry Association; N. B. Forrest Camp of Chattanooga, Tennessee; 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) Veterans' Association; Louisiana Division of the Army of Tennessee; and Louisiana Division of the Army of Northern Virginia.[1][2]
The Union equivalent of the UCV was the Grand Army of the Republic.
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.[2]
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.[3]
The UCV sponsored Florida's Tribute to the Women of the Confederacy (1915).
Reunions[]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Cherokee_Confederates_Reunion.gif/325px-Cherokee_Confederates_Reunion.gif)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/UCV_Reunion.jpg/220px-UCV_Reunion.jpg)
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, Arkansas—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 Selma, Alabama.[3] The following year, 1951, the United Confederate Veterans held its sixty-first and final reunion in Norfolk, Virginia, 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.[5] The last verified Confederate veteran, Pleasant Crump, 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. Founded as an independent publishing venture in January 1893, by Sumner Archibald Cunningham, 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.[6]
See also[]
- Confederate Memorial Day
- List of Confederate monuments and memorials
- Grand Army of the Republic
- Confederate Memorial Hall
- Confederate Memorial Hall Museum
- Southern Cross of Honor
- Lost Cause of the Confederacy
- Louisiana in the American Civil War
- Sons of Confederate Veterans, headquartered in Columbia, Tennessee
Notes[]
- ^ Minutes U.C.V., I, Constitutional Convention Proceedings, pp. 3–8.
- ^ a b Hattaway, 1971, p. 214.
- ^ a b Hattaway, 1971, p. 215.
- ^ "Arago: United Confederate Veterans Final Reunion Issue". arago.si.edu.
- ^ "61st and final UCV reunion in 1951".
- ^ Hattaway, 1971, pp. 215–16.
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." 16.1 (1975): 5–37. in JSTOR
- Hattaway, Herman (Summer 1971). "Clio's Southern Soldiers: The United Confederate Veterans and History". Louisiana History. Louisiana State University. XII (3): 213–42.
- Marten, James Alan. Sing Not War: The Lives of Union & Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2011).
Primary sources[]
- United Confederate Veterans (1907). Minutes of the United Confederate Veterans. I. New Orleans, La. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1907). Minutes of the United Confederate Veterans. II. New Orleans, La. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1909). Minutes of the United Confederate Veterans. III. New Orleans, La. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1910). Minutes of the United Confederate Veterans. IV. New Orleans, La. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1910). Minutes of the United Confederate Veterans. V. New Orleans, La. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1920). Minutes of the Thirtieth Annual Meeting and Reunion of the United Confederate Veterans. New Orleans, La.: Rogers Printing Co. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1926). Minutes of the Thirty-sixth Annual Meeting and Reunion of the United Confederate Veterans. New Orleans, La.: Rogers Printing Co. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1896). Organization of 850 United Confederate Veteran Camps. New Orleans, La. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1897). Organization of 1026 Camps in the United Confederate Veteran Association. New Orleans, La. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1903). Organization of 1523 Camps in the United Confederate Veteran Association. New Orleans, La. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1908). Organization of Camps in the United Confederate Veterans. New Orleans, La.: Hyatt Stat'y Mfg. Co. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1910). Organization of Camps in the United Confederate Veterans. New Orleans, La.: J. G. Hauser. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1912). Organization of Camps in the United Confederate Veterans. New Orleans, La.: J. G. Hauser. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1914). Organization of Camps in the United Confederate Veterans. New Orleans, La.: A. W. Hyatt Stat'y Mfg. Co. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United Confederate Veterans (1921). List of Organized Camps of the United Confederate Veterans Corrected to August 31, 1921. New Orleans, La.: Rogers Printing Co. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- United States. Cong. Senate (1918). Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual Reunion of the United Confederate Veterans, the Eighteenth Annual Convention of the Confederated Southern Memorial Association, and the Twenty-second Annual Reunion of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Washington, D.C.: GPO. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
External links[]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to United Confederate Veterans. |
- 1914 Confederate Veterans Convention at The World Digital LibraryP. P. Zimmerman, member of the United Confederate Veterans in 1905
- Confederate Veteran Organizations at the New Georgia Encyclopedia
- Minutes of the Annual Meetings and Reunions of the United Confederate Veterans at the Online Books Page
- Organization of Camps in the United Confederate Veterans at the Online Books Page
- United Confederate Veterans Association Records at Louisiana State University
- United Confederate Veterans Collection at James Madison University
- United Confederate Veterans Politicians at The Political Graveyard
- United Confederate Veterans Reunions held in Memphis at Historic-Memphis
- United Confederate Veterans Reunion of 1911 at Encyclopedia of Arkansas
- United Confederate Veterans Reunion of 1928 at Encyclopedia of Arkansas
- United Confederate Veterans Reunion of 1949 at Encyclopedia of Arkansas
- United Confederate Veterans Tennessee Division Records at the Tennessee State Library and Archives
- United Confederate Veterans Virginia Division Records at the Library of Virginia
- United Confederate Veterans (UCV) at Encyclopedia of Arkansas
- Works by or about United Confederate Veterans at Internet Archive
- 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
- Lost Cause of the Confederacy
- Organizations established in 1889
- Organizations disestablished in 1951