New Men by Casey John A. Jr.;

Author:Casey, John A., Jr.; [Casey Jr., John A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2015-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 13. “An American Goddess Between Veterans of Two Wars.” Engraving. May 28, 1899. New Orleans Daily Picayune.

The March 16, 1898, issue of the New York Times, reprints under the title “New York Veterans Ready” a letter written by Colonel Albert D. Shaw of the Watertown, New York, post of the Grand Army of the Republic. Shaw addresses President William McKinley, himself a veteran of the Union army, and offered the services of his ten-thousand-man GAR post in the event of hostilities between the United States and Spain. The paper does not record what response, if any, Colonel Shaw received from the president, but subsequent editorials are quick to point out that any talk of these aging warriors fighting in Cuba was ridiculous. This sentiment was expressed by an unnamed staff member at the War Department, who is quoted in the March 25, 1898, issue of the Times as saying:

The next war, whether it be fought next year or ten years from now, will be fought by young men who have had no military experience. There has been a great deal said and published about the veterans of the late war forming the nucleus of the army that some of us expect to invade Cuba or defend our own coasts; but as a matter of fact, most of these veterans are barred from service. In the first place, they are too old; and, in the second place, they are drawing pensions because of disability. Either of these conditions would disqualify them from military service.55

The comments of this government official must have been particularly devastating to veterans of the Civil War, as he attempted to take away from them the last area of their lives where they felt useful to the republic. Spurred by perceived insults such as these, many Civil War veterans risked forfeiture of their pensions in order to reenlist. Despite their age and infirmity, they were unwilling to concede their authority in the realm of war. Civil War combat had made them into an elite fraternity and they were determined to protect it from upstarts and pretenders, including their own sons.

Revealing the tensions that existed between an aging population of Civil War veterans and the rising generation of middle-class white males in the last decade of the nineteenth century modifies our understanding of the role the Spanish–American War played in the cultural life of the nation. Young men of this new generation had been brought up on the memories of Civil War veterans. These memories taught them that war makes men. It was the defining event that made one a worthy citizen of the republic and fitted one for active involvement in political life. At the same time, however, they were taught they could never live up to the standards of their fathers. This contradiction set the stage in the 1890s for a struggle between sons and fathers in which one generation would be compelled to cede cultural authority in order for the other to rise to full manhood.

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