Grand Army of the Republic Monument

The Grand Army of the Republic was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army, Union Navy, and the Marines who served in the American Civil War. It was founded in 1866 in Springfield, Illinois, and grew to include hundreds of "posts" across the nation. It was dissolved in 1956 at the death of its last member, Albert Woolson of Duluth, Minnesota.

Linking men through their experience of the war, the G.A.R. became among the first organized advocacy groups in American politics, supporting voting rights for black veterans, promoting patriotic education, helping to make Memorial Day a national holiday, lobbying the United States Congress to establish regular veterans' pensions, and supporting Republican political candidates. Its peak membership, at 410,000, was in 1890, a high point of various Civil War commemorative and monument dedication ceremonies.