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Uniting the living through the dead: how voluntary associations made death a selective benefit

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Our women die, or pass on to other work, but, as a rule, they ‘never surrender’.

- Mrs. Katharine Lente Stevenson, Corresponding Secretary of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, in her 1896 Report to the National Convention.

Abstract

Voluntary membership associations played a pivotal role in the development of American society after the Civil War. These associations were active in the practices of death, but the extant literature has yet to provide a framework for understanding death as a selective benefit of membership, especially for politically oriented associations. This study adds to scholars’ understandings by providing a tripartite classification of death as a selective benefit: the ritual of death (funerals), the presentation of death (cemeteries, headstones, and grave markers), and the memorialization of death (memorial days). Through these actions, associations of this era were able to use death to motivate existing membership, uniting them to a greater purpose, demonstrating to members that their associational lives would not perish upon their passing. In this way, associations used death to build social and political capital among the living.

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Notes

  1. This was similar to a decision made by the Knights of Pythias in 1894 (Emery and Herbert Emery 1999, p. 97), though it retained its funeral benefit.

  2. Albanese’s (1974) work goes further, noting that Memorial Day became “an ideal vehicle for the dramatic expression of unity” in which “the unifiers and integrators of the community were the dead themselves” (387).

  3. On organizations and the social capital they produce, see Putnam (1995, 2000), Skocpol (2003) and Schlesinger (1944).

  4. We also know that at least Ohio and Michigan eventually passed such laws (Index: Confederate Veteran1909, 426). Flags, too, were important, and the GAR pushed for localities to fund this too for Memorial Day (New York Grand Army of the Republic 1914, pp. 231–232).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Coastal Carolina University, P.O. Box 261954, Conway, SC, 29528-6054, USA

    Adam Chamberlain

  2. High Point University, One University Parkway, Drawer 34, High Point, NC, 27268, USA

    Alixandra B. Yanus

  3. Pennsylvania State University-Altoona, 3000 Ivyside Park, Altoona, PA, 16601, USA

    Nicholas Pyeatt

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  1. Adam Chamberlain
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  2. Alixandra B. Yanus
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Correspondence to Adam Chamberlain.

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Chamberlain, A., Yanus, A.B. & Pyeatt, N. Uniting the living through the dead: how voluntary associations made death a selective benefit. Int Groups Adv 8, 600–620 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-019-00071-y

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