The won cause: black and white comradeship in the Grand Army of
the Republic Univ of North Carolina Press , 2011 - History - 282
pages In the years after the Civil War, black and white Union
soldiers who survived the horrific struggle joined the Grand
Army of the Republic (GAR)--the Union army's largest veterans'
organization. In this thoroughly researched and groundbreaking
study, Barbara Gannon chronicles black and white veterans'
efforts to create and sustain the nation's first interracial
organization. According to the conventional view, the freedoms
and interests of African American veterans were not defended by
white Union veterans after the war, despite the shared tradition
of sacrifice among both black and white soldiers. In The Won
Cause, however, Gannon challenges this scholarship, arguing that
although black veterans still suffered under the contemporary
racial mores, the GAR honored its black members in many
instances and ascribed them a greater equality than previous
studies have shown. Using evi