Over 3 million men served as soldiers or sailors during the Civil War; well over 2 million of them survived the ordeal to return home. As they adjusted to civilian life, a great number of these former soldiers and sailors formed or joined veterans’ societies as a means to keep in touch with old comrades and further their collective interests. For decades, they met at reunions, big and small, to commemorate their wartime experiences. Shown below are images of Union and Confederate veterans made over the postwar decades. (All images courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
Veterans of Co. C, 4th Michigan Cavalry, gather at Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1890.
Members of the Randall Post No. 142 of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)—the nation’s largest and most influential Union veterans’ organization—gather in Randall, Iowa, circa 1900.
This image shows the reunion, in November 1913, of members of the George M. Emack Camp No. 1471 of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV)—the largest Confederate veterans’ organization—at Annapolis, Maryland.
This portrait of a group of veterans from a racially integrated GAR Post (No. 207, Nantucket, Massachusetts) was made in May 1894. The African American veterans include a former soldier, a former cavalryman, and a former sailor.
Union veteran Albert Woolson, a former drummer boy of Co. C, 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery, stands beside an artist making his bust sculpture, which was used to create a Grand Army of the Republic memorial at Ziegler’s Woods in Gettysburg.
A familiar face at many veterans’ gatherings was Daniel Sickles (center), who, as a Union general at Gettysburg, lost a leg to an artillery shell. This photo, taken on the Gettysburg battlefield in 1886, also shows former Union generals Joseph Bradford Carr (left) and Charles Kinnaird Graham.
A Union and Confederate veteran shake hands at a veterans’ encampment held early in the 20th century.
Confederate veterans John Bradford (left) and Thomas Sneed pose for the camera at a photographer’s studio in Franklin, Tennessee, in October 1910.
The last surviving veterans of the GAR’s Chamberlain Post No. 1, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in the 1930s.
Veterans of the 21st New York Cavalry gather in Ithaca, New York, in the 1880s.
African-American GAR members march in a parade in New York City on May 30, 1912.
Southern veterans don Confederate uniforms at a reunion in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1924.
A woman holds the first Confederate national flag at a gathering of unidentified Civil War veterans around 1900.
A reunion of veterans of Co. M, 5th Michigan Cavalry, sometime between 1890 and 1910.
Long lines of Civil War veterans and children carrying American and Alaska flags parade through an unidentified downtown street, sometime in the 1910s.
A meeting of Confederate veterans in Winchester, Tennessee, in 1905.
Philo H. Ravlin, as he appeared in 1861 as a drummer in Company I, 47th Indiana Infantry (left), and as a veteran, wearing medals and carrying a drum, in 1914.
Veterans and their families gather at a UCV reunion in Little Rock, Arkansas, circa 1920.
Veterans of the GAR’s General George Meade Post No. 48 gather on Memorial Day in San Francisco, California, in 1906.
This photo, titled “All Enmity Forgotten,” shows unidentified Union and Confederate veterans shaking hands at the 1913 reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg.
