United Confederate Veterans – Researching a Soldier’s Post War Life
Just like their northern counterparts Confederate Civil War veterans met in small local groups across the South after the war. With differing names and missions, the various local groups banded together to become the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) in 1889. Organized in New Orleans, the UCV came to represent Confederate veterans. The United Confederate Veterans membership was open to all former soldiers and sailors who fought honorably for the Confederacy. Their mission was to renew old friendships, preserve their military history and honor their fallen brethren while helping the less fortunate veteran or his family left behind. Like most post-war veteran’s groups the UCV was set up in a military style. The local organizations were known as “Camps”. The Camps were numbered and named. The Camps belonged to a Division (State), Divisions came under a Department. Originally there were three Departments named for the Army of Northern Virginia, Army of Tennessee and Trans-Mississippi. Finally all fell under the National organization. At its peak there were 1,885 Camps in the UCV with a membership of 160,000. The UCV never wielded the national political clout the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) did in the late nineteenth century but it did have […]
