The story
Founded by A. Piatt Andrew, Alvin York, Bennett Champ Clark, Charles Brent, Charles H. Cole, Charles W. Whittlesey, Devereux Milburn, Dwight Filley Davis Sr., Eric Fisher Wood, Franklin D'Olier, Frederick W. Galbraith, G. Edward Buxton Jr., George A. White, Henry Dickinson Lindsley, Henry L. Stimson, John Campbell Greenway, John F. O'Ryan, Luke Lea, Robert Bacon, Roy Hoffman, Stewart Edward White, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., William Gray Price Jr. and William J. Donovan on Mar 15, 1919, in Paris.1
The American Legion was established in Paris, France, on March 15 to 17, 1919, by a thousand commissioned officers and enlisted men, delegates from all the units of the American Expeditionary Forces to an organization caucus meeting, which adopted a tentative constitution and selected the name "American Legion".
Civil war veteran groups
The aftermath of two American wars in the second half of the 19th century had seen the formation of several ex-soldiers' organizations. Former Union Army soldiers of the American Civil War of 1861–65 established a fraternal organization, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), while their Southern counterparts formed the United Confederate Veterans (UCV). Both organizations emerged as powerful political entities, with the GAR serving as a mainstay of the Republican Party, which controlled the presidency from the Civil War through William Howard Taft's administration except during Grover Cleveland's two terms in office.
In Southern politics, the UCV maintained an even more dominant position as a bulwark of the Democratic Party, which dominated there. The conclusion of the brief Spanish–American conflict of 1898 ushered in another soldiers' organization, the American Veterans of Foreign Service, known today as the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW).
1918 and founding posts
With the end of World War I in November 1918, some American officers who had participated in the conflict began to think about creating a similar organization for the two million men who had been on European duty. The need for an organization for former members of the AEF was pressing and immediate. With the war at an end, hundreds of thousands of impatient draftees found themselves trapped in France and pining for home, certain only that untold weeks or months lay ahead of them before their return would be logistically possible. Morale plummeted. Cautionary voices were raised about an apparent correlation between disaffected and discharged troops and the Bolshevik uprisings in Russia, Finland, Germany, and Hungary.
This situation was a particular matter of concern to Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr., President Theodore Roosevelt's eldest son. One day in January 1919, he had a discussion at General Headquarters with the mobilized National Guard officer George A. White, a former newspaper editor at the Portland Oregonian. After long discussion, he suggested the immediate establishment of a new servicemen's organization including all AEF members as well as those soldiers who remained stateside as members of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps during the war without having been shipped abroad. Roosevelt and White advocated ceaselessly for this proposal until they found sufficient support at headquarters to move forward with the plan. General John J. Pershing issued orders to a group of 20 non-career officers to report to the YMCA in Paris on February 15, 1919. Roosevelt had personally selected these men. They were joined by a number of regular Army officers Pershing selected.
The session of reserve and regular officers was instructed to provide a set of laws to curb the problem of declining morale. After three days, the officers presented a series of proposals, including eliminating restrictive regulations, organizing additional athletic and recreational events, and expanding leave time and entertainment programs. At the end of the first day, the officers retired to the Inter-Allied Officers Club, a converted home across the street from the YMCA building. There, Roosevelt told them of his proposal for a new veterans' society. Most of those present were rapidly won to Roosevelt's plan. The officers decided to make all their actions provisional until an elected convention of delegates could convene and did not predetermine a program for the unnamed veterans organization. Instead, they chose to expand their number with a large preliminary meeting, to consist of an equal number of elected delegates to represent both enlisted men and commissioned officers.
A provisional executive committee of four men emerged from the February 15 "Roosevelt dinner": Roosevelt in the first place, who was to return to the U.S. and obtain his military discharge when able, and then to gather assistants and promote the idea of the new veterans' organization among demobilized troops there; White, who was to travel to France touring the AEF camps and explaining the idea; veteran wartime administrator Eric Fisher Wood, who was to establish a central office and maintain contact with the various combat divisions and headquarters staffs, as well as publicize activities to the press; and former Ohio Congressman Ralph D. Cole.
Preparations for a convention in Paris began apace. Wood prepared a convention call and "invitations" were distributed to about 2,000 officers and enlisted men and publicized in the March 14, 1919 issue of Stars and Stripes. The convention call expressed the desire to form "one permanent nation-wide organization...composed of all parties, all creeds, and all ranks who wish to perpetuate the relationships formed while in military service." In addition to the personal invitations distributed, the published announcement indicated that "any officer or enlisted man not invited who is in Paris at the time of the meeting is invited to be present and to have a voice in the meeting." The conclave was slated to begin on March 15.
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The site of Ferdinand Branstetter Post No. 1 is a vacant lot in Van Tassell, Wyoming, where the first American Legion post in the U.S. was established in 1919. Branstetter was a Van Tassell resident who died in World War I. The structure housing the post has since been demolished. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969. In 1969, it was hoped that an interpretative sign would be put up, and also possibly that a restored post building would be constructed.
The first post of the Legion, General John Joseph Pershing Post Number 1 in Washington, DC, was organized on March 7, 1919, and obtained the first charter issued to any Legion post on May 19, 1919. The St. Louis caucus that year decided that Legion posts should not be named after living persons, and the first post changed its name to George Washington Post 1. The post completed the constitution and made plans for a permanent organization. It set up temporary headquarters in New York City and began its relief, employment, and Americanism programs.
On May 20, 1919, Colonel Ernest Lester Jones received a petition from 20 of the enlisted women of the U.S. Naval Reserve Force for a charter to organize a post to be known as "Betsy Ross Post No. l", composed entirely of Yeomen (F) of the U.S. Navy. In October of that year, the post changed its name to U.S.S. Jacob Jones, which commemorated the members' Navy heritage.
Congress granted The American Legion a national charter in September 1919.
The American Legion chartered Paris Post No. 1 on December 13, 1919. It was the first overseas post to be chartered and has been in continuous existence since then.
China
China Post 1, formed in 1919, and was chartered by The American Legion on April 20, 1920. It was originally named the General Frederick Townsend Ward Post No. 1, China. It is the only Post nominally headquartered in a Communist country, and has been operating in exile since 1948—presently in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Paris Caucus
Having immediately received a blizzard of acceptances to attend the opening of the "Liberty League Caucus", as he had begun to call it, Temporary Secretary Eric Fisher Wood began to search for use of a room of sufficient size to contain the gathering. The Cirque de Paris had been retained, a large, multisided amphitheater that could accommodate about 2,000 people. Delegates began to assemble from all over France. The 10:00 am scheduled start was delayed by various logistical problems, with a beginning finally made shortly after 2:45 pm.
As "Temporary Chairman" Teddy Roosevelt Jr. had already departed for America, the session was gaveled to order by Wood, who briefly recounted Roosevelt's idea and the story of the 20 AEF officers who had jointly helped to give the new organization form. In his opening remarks, Wood recommended to the delegates of the so-called Paris Caucus that they do three things: first, set up an apparatus to conduct a formal founding conference in the U.S. sometime in the winter; second, draft a tentative name for the organization; and finally, compose a provisional constitution to be submitted to the founding convention for acceptance or rejection.
William G. Price Jr. was selected to preside. Convention rules were decided upon and four 15-member committees were chosen. The Committee on Name reported back that it had considered a dozen potential names, including Veterans of the Great War, Liberty League, American Comrades of the Great War, Legion of the Great War, and The American Legion, among others. This list was whittled down to five ranked choices for the consideration of the Caucus, with "The American Legion" the preferred option. It was noted in passing during the course of debate on the topic that Roosevelt had been responsible for an earlier organization called "The American Legion" in 1914, a "preparedness" society with a claimed membership of 35,000 that had been absorbed into the Council of National Defense in 1916.
The Committee on Constitution reported with a report containing the draft of a Preamble for the organization, specifying organizational objectives. This document stated that the group:
desiring to perpetuate the principles of Justice, Freedom, and Democracy for which we have fought, to inculcate the duty and obligation of the citizen to the State; to preserve the history and incidents of our participation in the war; and to cement the ties of comradeship formed in service, do propose to found and establish an Association for the furtherance of the foregoing purposes.
The majority report of the Committee on Convention recommended that 11 am on November 11, 1919—one year to the hour after the termination of hostilities in World War I—be selected as the date and time for the convocation of a national convention. No location was specified.
The Committee on Permanent Organization recommended an organization based upon territorial units rather than those based upon military organizations, governed by an Executive Committee of 50, with half of these from the officer corps and half from the ranks of enlisted men.
St. Louis Caucus
The Paris Caucus in March was by its nature limited to AEF soldiers who remained in Europe; a parallel organizational meeting for those who had returned to the American preparatory to a formal organizational convention was deemed necessary. This was a conclave dominated by the presence of Roosevelt, who called the convention to order amid mass chanting akin to that of a presidential nominating convention—"We Want Teddy! We Want Teddy!"
A minor crisis followed when Roosevelt twice declined nomination for permanent chairman of the session, to the consternation of many overwrought delegates, who sought to emphasize the symbolism of President Roosevelt's son maintaining the closest of connections with the organization.
The St. Louis Caucus's work was largely shaped by the fundamental decisions made by the earlier Paris Caucus. Its agenda was in addition carefully prepared by a 49-member "Advance Committee", which included at least one delegate from each fledgling state organization and drew up a draft program for the organization in advance of the convention's opening.
As time before the scheduled start of the convention was short, delegation to the assembly was highly irregular. On April 10, 1919, Temporary Secretary Eric Fisher Wood mailed a letter to the governors of every state, informing them of the forthcoming gathering and making note of the League's nonpartisan and patriotic nature. Follow-up cables by Roosevelt and Wood encouraged the organization of state conventions to select delegates. This was largely a failed formality, as states lacked sufficient time to organize themselves and properly elect delegates to St. Louis. In practice, the fledgling organization's provisional Executive Committee decided to allow each state delegation twice as many votes as that state had in the United States House of Representatives and left it to each to determine how to apportion those votes.
Participants at the St. Louis Caucus were enthusiastic, but the session was not productive. Fully two days were invested choosing ceremonial officers and selecting Minneapolis as the site for the organization's formal Founding Convention in the fall. Over 1,100 participants competed to gain the floor to speechify, leading one historian to call the scene a "melee" in which "disorder reigned supreme". Consequently, the gathering's passage of the program was largely a pro forma exercise, rushed through during the session's last day, with the actual decision-making about such matters as the constitution and the organization's publications done by committee at night.
The preamble of the constitution adopted in St. Louis became one of the seminal statements of the Legion's orientation and objectives:
For God and Country we associate ourselves together for the following purposes:To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; to maintain law and order; to foster and perpetuate a 100 Percent Americanism; to preserve the memories and incidents of our association in the Great War; to inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, state, and nation; to combat the autocracy of both the classes and the masses; to make right the master of might; to promote peace and good will on earth; to safeguard and transmit to prosperity the principles of justice, freedom, and democracy; to consecrate and sanctify our comradeship by devotion to mutual helpfulness.
The St. Louis Caucus spent much of its time discussing resolutions: whether a stand should be taken on the League of Nations, Prohibition, or the implementation of universal military service; whether posts composed of Black soldiers should be established; and whether Secretary of War Newton D. Baker should be impeached for his apparent leniency toward conscientious objectors in the months after the war.
A particularly hard line was taken toward the American radical movement, with one resolution passed on the final day calling on Congress to "pass a bill or immediately deporting every one of those Bolsheviks or Industrial Workers of the World." Minneapolis, Minnesota, was chosen for the site of the organization's founding convention in November over the more centrally located Chicago after much acrimonious debate about the Chicago city administration's perceived political transgressions.
Founding convention
The formal founding convention was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from November 10 to 12, 1919. 684 delegates from across the nation attended.
From the outset, The American Legion maintained a strictly nonpartisan orientation toward electoral politics. The group wrote a specific prohibition of the endorsement of political candidates into its constitution, declaring:
this organization shall be absolutely non-political and shall not be used for the dissemination of partisan principles or for the promotion of the candidacy of any person seeking public office or preferment; and no candidate for or incumbent of a salaried elective public office shall hold any office in The American Legion or in any branch or post thereof.
One semi-official historian of the organization has noted the way that this explicit refusal to affiliate with a political party had the paradoxical effect of rapidly building great political power for the organization, as politicians from both of the "old parties" competed for the favor of the Legion's massive and active membership.
One of the gathering's primary accomplishments was the establishment of a permanent National Legislative Committee to advance the Legion's political objectives as its lobbying arm. The first iteration of this official Washington, D.C.–based lobby for the Legion included only four members—two Republicans and two Democrats. After 1920 the National Legislative Committee was expanded to consist of one member from each state, with additional effort made at the state level to exert pressure upon various state legislatures.
Chief on the Legion's legislative agenda was a dramatic improvement of the level of compensation for soldiers who suffered permanent disability during the war. At the time of the end of World War I, American law stated that soldiers who suffered total disability were to receive only the base pay of a private—$30 per month. The Legion concentrated its lobbying effort in 1919 on passage of legislation increasing payment for total disability suffered in the war to $80 a month—a sum roughly sufficient to provide a living wage. Those partially disabled by their wounds would receive lesser payments. A flurry of lobbying by the Legion's National Legislative Committee in conjunction with cables National Commander Franklin D'Olier sent to Congressional leaders helped pass this legislation by the end of 1919.
The Legion's chief base of support during its first years was among the officers corps of the reserves and the National Guard. The regular army was comparatively small and its representation in the League in its earliest days was even more limited. Consequently, for nearly two decades The Legion maintained a largely isolationist perspective, best expressed in three resolutions passed by the Minneapolis founding convention:
1. That a large standing army is uneconomic and un-American. National safety with freedom from militarism is best assured by a national citizen army and navy based on the democratic principles of equality of obligation and opportunity for all.2. That we favor universal military training and the administration of such a policy should be removed from the complete control of any exclusively military organization or caste.3. That we are strongly opposed to compulsory military service in time of peace.
Additional resolutions the founding convention passed emphasized the need for military preparedness, albeit through a citizens' army of reservists and National Guardsmen rather than the costly and undemocratic structure of a vast standing army led by a professional military caste. This nationalist isolationism remained in place until the eve of American entry into World War II.
Centralia massacre
November 11, 1919, the first anniversary of Armistice Day and the occasion of the Legion's formal launch at its Minneapolis Founding Convention, was also a historic moment of violence and controversy. On that day a parade of Legionnaires took place in the mill town of Centralia, in southwestern Washington. Some of the marchers planned at the conclusion of their patriotic demonstration to storm and ransack the local hall maintained by the Industrial Workers of the World, a labor union founded 14 years earlier at a convention of socialists, anarchists, Marxists, and radical trade unionists from all over the U.S., which had been the target of multiple arrests, large trials, and various incidents of mob violence during the months of American participation in World War I. But the plans for this violence had reached union members (commonly called Wobblies), and 30 or 40 IWW members had been seen coming and going at their hall on the day of the march, some of them carrying guns.
From Wikipedia’s article on American Legion, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5