Support of Veterans Organizations

Congressional concern over the multitude and diversity of battlefield preservation bills submitted in the first decades of the century prevented further action on H.R. 277 and the many subsequent Manassas proposals that Congressman Rixey and others submitted. The Antietam Plan may have provided the federal government with an economically attractive solution to establishing parks, but Congress also saw the need for a national historic preservation policy to determine which areas most deserved park status. Toward this goal, Congress debated, but never resolved, the value of a National Military Park Commission that would identify, survey, investigate, and acquire lands for parks. As the possibility of a national commission persisted through the 1920s, Congress delayed action on specific park proposals, including Manassas, resulting in only five battlefield bills becoming law between 1900 and 1925. [19]

While Congress remained stalled on the Manassas bills, George Carr Round garnered support for the battlefield park from the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the largest of the Civil War veterans groups, which met in annual reunions called encampments. Capt. C. A. E. Spamer, impressed by a tour of the battlefield he took in 1901, wrote a personal recommendation to the Cleveland national encampment to call attention to the idea of establishing a park at Manassas. The encampment failed to address the subject due to the furor resulting from the assassination of President William McKinley. [20]

With interest aroused within the Grand Army of the Republic, Round pursued the idea of a Manassas park. In 1903 he attended the San Francisco national encampment as a delegate-at-large from the Department of the Potomac and secured the endorsement of the committee on resolutions of H.R. 1964, which Congressman Rixey introduced that year. During the same convention, the Manassas Picket Post of Union Veterans presented a memorial to the encampment, asking for such action by the organization to carry on the "pious and patriotic" goals that had inspired the erection of the Manassas monuments. Despite the favorable support of the committee, Round failed to get the full endorsement of the encampment due to resistance by the Department of Pennsylvania. The following year, the Department of Maryland reintroduced the resolution at the Boston encampment, but action did not reach beyond the committee. [21]

Grand Army of the Republic support for the Manassas park proposal gained a new infusion of energy when the Society of the Army of the Potomac met in Manassas in May 1905. Some of the Pennsylvania delegates who had opposed the 1903 proposition attended this convention, and Round took the opportunity to educate them on the resolution's significance. He succeeded in converting at least one of the opponents, Brig. Gen. Lewis Wagner, who later worked with Round to provide the phrasing for one of the subsequent Manassas bills.

In 1906 Round finally succeeded in gaining the formal support of the Grand Army. The 1905 Denver encampment established the Bull Run Battlefield Monument Committee and authorized it to consider the original proposition. This committee, composed of three Grand Army members, reported favorably the following year at the Minneapolis encampment. At this convention, the Grand Army resolved that the United States should acquire the land where the 1865 monuments stood and provide for roadways to these areas. The resolution also suggested that the federal government administer Manassas through the proposed park at Fredericksburg.

E. W. Whitaker, one of the Bull Run Battlefield Monument Committee members, testified in 1912 before the House Military Affairs Committee and provided Congress with the Grand Army's resolution. [22]

CONTINUED