I would argue that I'll feelings were more prevalent than many believe. The GAR couldn't endorse the Gettysburg reunions because so many of their members objected to allowing their former enemies to participate. To my mind, that's pretty telling.
Ryan
To further expand, from an article by Carol Reardon, which I will snip from and one can view it in full at the link:
On May 30, 1894, tens of thousands of former Confederates gathered in Richmond for the unveiling of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on Libby Hill. It was not the monument itself that would cause so much friction; rather, it was the words of the day's orator, Rev. R. C. Cave, that sparked a national debate and stirred the embers of sectional animosity, violating the unspoken truce of Reconciliation. In the course of his address, Cave spoke the standard lines about soldiers' bravery and devotion common at every monument dedication, be it Union or Confederate. But he went further that day, delivering what many northern writers described as a eulogy for the Confederacy. Appomattox had not been a divine verdict against the South, he argued; instead it had been the triumph of the physically strong. Going beyond the traditional Lost Cause message of overwhelming northern resources, he intoned that "brute force cannot settle questions of right and wrong." "The South was in the right," he maintained, noting that "the cause was just; that the men who took up arms in her defense were patriots." And yet he still went further, denouncing the character, motives, and actions of the North and suggesting that it was southerners, not northerners, who had been more devoted to the Union. "Against the South was arrayed the power of the North, dominated by the spirit of Puritanism," he intoned, "which … worships itself and is unable to perceive any goodness apart from itself, and from the time of Oliver Cromwell to the time of Abraham Lincoln has never hesitated to trample upon the rights of others in order to effect its own ends." When he was finished, newspapers reported that the crowd leapt to their feet in thunderous applause.
As news of Cave's remarks made its way northward, a storm of denunciation flowed from every corner of the nation. From newspapers in Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, came headlines of "Unreconstructed Rebel" and "The Rebel Yell is Heard: Treason Preached at Richmond's Monument Unveiling." The Washington Post declared Cave's statements out of place in this "era of reconciliation," reminding southerners that Union soldiers had recognized the "valor, the devotion, and the fine manhood of the Confederates" and tried to spare "them every possible humiliation in their defeat." Surely the South would denounce such brazenly treasonous speech, the paper observed. A handful of southern papers did dismiss Cave's remarks as ill-conceived and hardly representative of the South, but many southern newspapers either reprinted his speech without any commentary or explicitly endorsed him. And each time they did, northern papers responded in turn. With each salvo, the conflict continued to escalate.
(snip)
The real battle, however, erupted not between newspapers but among veterans. In early June 1894, the Columbia Post GAR of Chicago wrote to the Lee Camp of Confederate Veterans in Richmond; the letter was republished in northern newspapers. Two years earlier, the Columbia Post had travelled to the former Confederate capital, where they enjoyed "the hospitality and generous welcome" of the Lee Camp. But upon hearing of Cave's oration they were outraged. The Columbia Post informed the Lee Camp that on the very day Cave had delivered his oration, they had joined with Confederate veterans in Chicago to decorate the graves of Confederate prisoners of war without mentioning the cause of the conflict or its final settlement. Certainly, they felt, the Lee Camp that had so graciously hosted them would not endorse Cave's statements. "If the sentiments uttered by Rev. Cave … and [the] 'tremendous applause' from the audience assembled there, be the true sentiments of the average ex-Confederate veteran," they noted, "then will it indeed be hard to ever heal the breach between 'brothers of one land,' engendered by that awful conflict, and the generous action of our Union veterans seems truly wasted." Invoking Reconciliationist sentiment as a way to contest Cave's combative Lost Cause rhetoric, the Union veterans noted that, "While anxious to look with pleasure upon these reunions in your sunny South land, we cannot but regret such disloyal sentiments as these, and must protest in the name of the fallen of both sides." In the estimation of the GAR, the Confederate veterans' insistence on defending Cave's statement displayed a new surge of rebel disloyalty, more than thirty years after secession.
Finally, in July—more than a month after the unveiling—the Lee Camp responded to the Columbia Post. Expressing shock at the post's response to Cave's speech, the Confederate veterans observed that while they did not suspect "any purpose on your part to provoke sectional controversy or add fuel to the dying embers of sectional hate; but such seems to be its natural tendency." The Lee Camp proclaimed itself unable to understand how Cave's words could be interpreted as "disloyal" and affirmed his contention that Appomattox had settled the military questions but not the Constitutional ones. "Physical might cannot determine the question of legal or moral right," they observed. They noted that both sides had erected monuments to their respective causes, and that they too had laid flowers on the graves of their former foes. But most importantly, the camp noted that Cave had not spoken on Memorial Day or a monument unveiling at a battlefield in which both sides were meant to be honored. Instead, "his oration was delivered at the unveiling of a monument to the private soldiers and sailors who died in behalf of the Southern cause, in resistance to an armed invasion of their native land, and in defense … of their personal liberties and constitutional rights." It was therefore right, they argued, that "he should also refer to and vindicate 'the cause for which they fell.'"
This was the crux of the matter. Confederates believed that they were free to observe, defend, and memorialize their cause when speaking only to other Confederates. For them, the Lost Cause was the primary memory of the war. When they came together at Blue-Gray reunions or battlefield dedications, they were willing to embrace Reconciliation and remain silent on the issues of causality and consequence. But when honoring their cause among their brethren, they would not be silent. And the same held true for Union veterans. They, too, espoused not only the righteousness of the Union cause—and in many instances, Emancipation—at GAR functions and monument dedications, but they readily held that the Confederate cause had been wrong and without moral worth.
Caption: Union veterans at the 1913 Gettysburg reunion. Contrary to many images of veterans shaking hands over the proverbial bloody chasm, many veterans elected to spend their time with their comrades, not their former enemies. Courtesy of the Gettysburg National Military Park (2693), Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.