Today’s guest post is from Ken Alford, an Associate Professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. After serving almost 30 years on active duty in the United States Army, he retired as a Colonel in 2008. While on active duty, Ken served in numerous personnel, automation, acquisition, and education assignments, including the Pentagon, eight years teaching at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and four years as Professor and Department Chair at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. His most recent book, Civil War Saints, was published in 2012. Ken and his wife, Sherilee, have four children and ten grandchildren.

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was the largest and most influential Civil War veterans organization. GAR membership was officially available for every Union veteran who served honorably in the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, or a state regiment “called into active service” between April 12, 1861, and April 9, 1865, “in the war for the suppression of the rebellion.”[1] Former Confederates were never eligible to join, and, as it turned out, veterans of the Utah’s Lot Smith Cavalry Company had difficulty joining for almost half a century after the Civil War ended.

Utah Territory provided only one active duty military unit during the Civil War. Commanded by Captain Lot Smith (who was the youngest soldier enlisted in the Mormon Battalion and a terror to the U.S. Army marching across present-day Wyoming during the Utah War), the Utah Cavalry Company served May to August 1862. Their mission was to guard portions of the overland trail in what is today southwest Wyoming. Just over one hundred Latter-day Saints from Utah served with Lot Smith.

During the 19^th century, Utah’s GAR membership consisted of non-Mormons, often businessmen, miners, and government employees who moved to Utah following the war. Utah’s GAR membership records are incomplete, but it appears no Latter-day Saint veterans from the Lot Smith Company joined the GAR before the turn of the century.

There are many possible reasons why non-Mormons did not support GAR membership for Lot Smith Company veterans. First, Utah’s few Civil War soldiers were not viewed as authentic veterans by many veterans. The Lot Smith Cavalry Company faced no Confederate forces, saw no combat, and served just over ninety days (but that did not make their unit unique). Second, GAR members generally believed that Mormons were disloyal to the Union–a charge which, if true, would have made them ineligible for GAR membership. Article IV of the GAR Rules and Regulations specified that “No person shall be eligible to membership who has at any time born arms against the United States,”[2] and many Utah GAR members felt that rule excluded from membership any Mormon, such as Lot Smith, who had taken up arms against the federal government during the Utah War. A third reason was that the GAR, having defeated slavery (the first “relic of barbarism”), was openly against the practice of polygamy–the second “relic of barbarism.”

Many possible factors may have contributed to Lot Smith Company veterans finally applying for GAR membership; the Manifesto, Utah’s statehood, or a desire to secure a federal pension. Sentimentality may also have played a role, as the surviving veterans were growing old. Regardless of the motivations, Lot Smith Company veterans began applying for GAR membership after the turn of the century. In 1907 Seymour B. Young, a nephew of Brigham Young who served as a corporal in the Lot Smith Utah Cavalry (and was then serving as senior president of the Seventy), applied for GAR membership in Salt Lake City. His application was rejected, and his membership fee was returned. In 1908, the same post commander ordered a second vote, and Young’s application was accepted. Some members questioned the vote’s legality, and the Utah GAR judge advocate voided the second ballot.[3] By 1909, although many [Lot Smith Company veterans] had applied for membership, only two, Charles Crismon, Jr., and Dr. Harvey C. Hullinger, had successfully joined the GAR.[4]

To complicate their GAR eligibility, a ruling by the federal pension bureau board declared that Utah Cavalry veterans were ineligible to receive federal Civil War pensions. In December 1909, the commissioner of the federal Bureau of Pensions reinstated veteran status and pension eligibility for the Lot Smith Company.[5]

For the next two years, Utah’s GAR leadership worked to deny membership to Lot Smith Company veterans. At one point, Utah’s department commander even appealed the decision of his own Court of Inquiry to the national commander-in-chief. The right of Utah’s Lot Smith Company veterans to join the GAR was finally settled on July 7, 1911 by Thomas S. Hopkins, GAR national judge advocate general. In his ruling, Hopkins stated that the Lot Smith Company “was just as much a part of the Army of the United States as were any of the regiments that formed the great armies of the east and west.”[6]

The first GAR post organized by Lot Smith Company veterans was named after John Quincy Knowlton (a second lieutenant) on October 9, 1911.[7] The names of both Lot Smith and First Lt. Joseph S. Rawlins (second in command of the Lot Smith Company) were unacceptable to Utah’s GAR leadership because of their active involvement during the Utah War. Seymour B. Young served as the first commander of the Knowlton Post.[8]