So the Atlantic City GAR Centennial Committee, a nonprofit adjunct of the Atlantic County Library Foundation, has formed to commemorate the commemoration.
At a minimum, the group hopes to raise $2,500 to place a historical marker Sept. 25 on the Boardwalk near Steel Pier, where many of the official encampment activities were held. But it would like to do a lot more.
If the grassroots group - which includes Civil War reenactors, historians, and library researchers - can raise enough money, it hopes to hold a daylong event that would include a parade, an encampment reenactment, and living-history exhibits along the Boardwalk.
"It's an important aspect of history that people don't think about, or even know about," said David Hann, 50, an organizing member of the committee. "It's a story that needs to be told."
Even though the Grand Army of the Republic met in Atlantic City nearly a half-century after the war, the country was still bitterly divided. And though many agendas during the event centered on veterans' pensions and benefits, there was also much talk of the Grand Army's wish to "inculcate in future generations a reverence for the flag and for the songs that have stirred men on the battlefields," according to an account of the proceedings in the Atlantic Review.
Perhaps organizers had hoped the vast Atlantic Ocean and gaslit charm of the post-Victorian-era resort would inspire the former Union and Confederate soldiers to put aside their differences once and for all. Even former President Theodore Roosevelt pledged to do all he could to "bring about the closest good feelings between the North and South" when the Gettysburg Post of Boston met with the Confederate veterans of South Carolina during a reunion on Steeplechase Pier.
