G. A.R.--query

[Mark Odegard]

>Grand Army of the Republic = G.A.R.  ?
>
>George Cole

That would be my guess too. The G.A.R. was the Civil War (Union side)
veterans organization. While largely forgotten, this vets org was enormously
influential in its day, culturally and politically. For the time of the
allusion, it would be 50-some years after the end of the Civil War, and the
vets would be rather like WWII vets of a few years back, or what Viet vets
will be a few years hence: old, but not quite out of it. In other words, I
think anyone reading a newspaper then would automatically associate the
G.A.R. with the vets org, and had the author meant something else, he would
have been clearer.

I remember a Methodist Church in Iowa with a G.A.R. donated memorial stained
glass window, with Lincoln as the subject.

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