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“Great Injustice”: Social Status and the Distribution of Military Pensions after the Civil War1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2011
Abstract
In recent years, historians have paid increased attention to the Civil War pension system created for Union army soldiers and their families. It has come to be seen as a milestone in the evolution of U.S. social policy. Despite the overall appearance of generosity and of unbiased treatment for applicants, however, individuals actually experienced the system very differently based on the social status of the soldier involved. Looking at pension legislation, its implementation, and nearly one thousand pension claim files, this article argues that three types of status discrimination appeared in the distribution of pensions: Pension laws paid larger amounts to officers and their families, the Pension Bureau used ability to perform manual labor to determine the level of disability regardless of the applicants' true ability to earn a living, and claims based on the service of officers generally were decided more quickly and more favorably than those of enlisted men. Because military ranks reflected the soldiers' civilian social position—most manual laborers served as enlisted men, for example—these biases meant that individuals of higher social status received significantly better treatment than those of lower civilian status.
- Type
- Essays
- Information
- The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 137 - 160
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2011
Footnotes
1
The author wishes to thank William Blair and anonymous journal readers for their insights. The article is undoubtedly better as a result. Frank Towers, Theda Skocpol, and Patrick J. Kelly also read and commented on a very early version of this essay—so long ago that they have probably forgotten—and are gratefully acknowledged. Generous financial support for research in the Civil War pension files came from Bilkent University in Turkey and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
References
2 Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 2nd sess. (Jan. 17, 1887), 740.
3 Fourteen dollars in 1888 had the purchasing power of about $320 in 2009. John Kuntz pension, invalid app. 98019 cert. 376508, widow app. 536332 cert. 356604, National Archives, Records of the Veterans Administration, RG 15, Civil War and Later Pension Files (CWLPF). Pension files are stored at the National Archives by type (invalid, widow, minor child, dependent parent, other dependent) and by application (app.) and certificate (cert.) numbers. All pension claims were assigned an application number; a certificate number was assigned only to those whom the Bureau approved.
4 Skocpol, Theda, “America's First Social Security System: The Expansion of Benefits for Civil War Veterans,” Political Science Quarterly 108 (Spring 1993): 85–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotation 116; Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA, 1992)Google Scholar; Shaffer, Donald R., “‘I Do Not Suppose That Uncle Sam Looks at the Skin’: African Americans and the Civil War Pension System,” Civil War History 46 (June 2000): 132–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donald R. Shaffer, After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans (Lawrence, KS, 2004); Megan J. McClintock, “Civil War Pensions and the Reconstruction of Union Families,” Journal of American History 83 (Sept. 1996): 456–80; McClintock, Megan J., “The Impact of the Civil War on Nineteenth-Century Marriages” in Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments, eds. Cimbala, Paul A. and Miller, Randall M. (New York, 2002), 395–416Google Scholar.
5 Some African Americans did serve in (otherwise) “white” regiments, and some women disguised themselves as men to enlist in the army. Such instances potentially complicate the matter of identifying pensions by the race and gender of the applicant, but in either case the numbers are small.
6 Blanck used data from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Blanck, Peter, “Civil War Pensions and Disability,” Ohio State Law Journal 62 (2001): 110–241Google Scholar, esp. 166–69; for his data source, ICPSR, “Civil War Veterans Series,” http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/cocoon/ICPSR-SERIES/00192.xml (accessed Dec. 7, 2004).
7 The “dependency” provisions in pension legislation will be detailed more fully below.
8 The (future) soldiers in each city in 1860 were divided into two groups, those living in households headed by a parent or parents and those living independently. The occupational data used in this analysis come from the parent(s) in the former cases and the soldiers themselves in the latter.
9 The correlations described in the text are all statistically significant at the 0.01 level, using Pearson's correlation test. Two military rank categories were used, officers (lieutenants and higher) and enlisted men (privates through sergeant-majors). Similarly, two occupational categories were used, nonmanual (including professionals, proprietors, clerks, and other white collar jobs) and manual (skilled and unskilled workers and farmers).
10 The correlation between ranks and property ownership for Dubuque's soldiers was statistically significant at the 0.01 level; for Des Moines, significance tests failed, even at the 0.05 level. For this analysis, two simple categories of property ownership were used: those who owned property and those who did not. As with occupations, the property data come from parents if the soldiers were living in their parents' household and from the soldiers themselves for those living independently. However, if the soldiers' own property is used in every case, it yields a statistically significant correlation (at the 0.1 level) between ranks and property ownership among soldiers from both cities.
11 Iowa State Register, May 2, 1890.
12 Specifically, the pension files in this analysis are those related to soldiers of all ranks, races, and branches of service who originally enlisted from Des Moines or Dubuque and who could be found in either the 1860 or 1870 census for the cities, regardless of where the veterans or their dependents lived when they applied for their pensions.
13 If a soldier's widow wanted to add minor children (eligible up to age 16) to the claim, she had to provide testimony about each child's birth and about the soldier's acceptance of the child or children as his own. In addition to the Dubuque and Des Moines pension case files, sources used for this and the next paragraph include Glasson, William H., History of Military Pension Legislation in the United States (New York, 1900)Google Scholar, esp. 70–124; Glasson, Federal Military Pensions in the United States (New York, 1918), esp. 124–280; and Claudia Linares, “The Civil War Pension Law,” Center for Population Economics Working Paper No. 2001–6 (Dec. 2001), http://www.cpe.uchicago.edu/publication/lib/pension_cpe.pdf (accessed Jan. 13, 2005).
14 Executive Order No. 78 in 1904 authorized the Pension Bureau to pay disability pensions based solely on age, but actual codification into law did not occur until 1907. See Glasson, Federal Military Pensions, 258, for age plus length of service examples in text.
15 Historians especially seem to like the 1893 example. It appears in Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers, 128–29; McClintock, “Civil War Pensions,” 458; McConnell, Stuart, Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill, 1992), 153Google Scholar; and Vinovskis, Maris A., “Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War? Some Preliminary Demographic Speculations,” Journal of American History 76 (June 1989): 54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers, 133, 135–38, covers northern and western states as the primary beneficiaries of pension money. For attempts to gain federal pensions for Confederate service, which eventually succeeded—in 1958—see Vogel, Jeffrey E., “Redefining Reconciliation: Confederate Veterans and the Southern Responses to Federal Civil War Pensions,” Civil War History 51 (Mar. 2005): 67–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Under the pension laws, “enlisted men” comprised privates and non-commissioned officers (corporals, sergeants, and those of equivalent rank such as commissary sergeants). In the Revolutionary War, Congress added even more for the officers, voting them half-pay retirement pensions for life, regardless of disability. Glasson, Federal Military Pensions, 19–50. For text of the 1862 invalid law, Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2nd sess., app. 405–06.
18 Claire H. Liachowitz, Disability as a Social Construct: Legislative Roots (Philadelphia, 1988), 48, for social assistance versus social insurance; for World War I policies, see K. Walter Hickel, “Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare: The Politics of Disability Compensation for American Veterans of World War I” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, eds. Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky (New York, 2001), 236–67.
19 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2nd sess. (May 13, 1862), 2102–06 [quotations, in order, from 2106, 2102, 2102, 2105, 2104, 2105].
20 Ibid, 2104–05. For Biddle as a Union army officer, see his entry in the Congressional Biographical Dictionary, online at: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000439 (accessed Apr. 3, 2009).
21 No roll call vote was taken on the attempt to establish a uniform pension rate in 1862, but tellers reported a 70–28 margin against the idea; Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2nd sess. (May 13, 1862), 2106. For text of the vetoed 1887 bill, see “The New Pension Law,” Iowa State Register, Feb. 3, 1887; “The Dependent Pension Bill,” Army and Navy Journal, July 19, 1890, 884–85, provides the text of the 1890 law.
22 Glasson, Federal Military Pensions, 109–12 [1871 law], 116–18 [1887 Mexican War law]; George L. Kilmer, “Union Veterans and their Pensions,” Century Magazine, Aug. 1889, 636 [1888 numbers]; Addenda to Declaration for Restoration and Increase of an Invalid Pension, Mar. 6, 1891 in William K. Bird pension, invalid app. 16951 cert. 34559, CWLPF; Cleveland, Grover, “Veto of the Dependent Pension Bill” in The Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland, ed. Parker, George F. (1892; New York, 1970), 384–96Google Scholar, esp. 390–91. For minimum pension discussion leading to the 1887 Civil War bill, Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 1st sess. (May 17, 1886), 4578–86, (May 19, 1886), 4669–76.
23 Specifically, 43 of 68 rejections of disability claims under the 1890 law among Dubuque/Des Moines veterans cited no ratable disability. This refers only to cases where the soldier's first claim for a pension came under the 1890 law, excluding anyone who had previously applied for a pension under the 1862 law. For minimum pension in 1890, see Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess. (Feb. 28, 1890), 1800–02, (June 11, 1890), 5947, (June 12, 1890), 5968; and for one senator accurately predicting how the Pension Bureau would treat the minimum pension, Congressional Record, 50th Cong., 1st sess. (Feb. 27, 1888), 1502–03.
24 The correlations between 1870 occupations and military ranks were significant at the 0.01 level for both cities. The property correlation in Dubuque in 1870 was significant at the 0.05 level. As with the 1860 data presented earlier, the occupations and property ownership are the veterans' own if they lived independently in 1870 or their parents' if the veterans still lived with them.
25 The term “manual labor” entered the law in 1866, though discussion of it continued into the 1880s. Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2nd sess., app., 405–06 [1862 law text]; Iowa State Register, Feb. 3, 1887 [1887 bill text]; Report of the Commissioner of Pensions for 1874, quoted in Glasson, Federal Military Pensions, 131 [1866 adoption of “manual” standard]; Army and Navy Journal, July 19, 1890, 884–85 [1890 law text].
26 John H. Alexander pension, invalid app. 189906 cert. 173088, widow app. 1028327 cert. [none]; Ernst Pitschner pension, invalid app. 5094 cert. 10863, widow app. 819093 cert. 592260; David B. Henderson pension, invalid app. 19920 cert. 17408, widow app. 907331 cert. 667865—all CWLPF. For inability to earn a living standard see, e.g., discussions around the Dependent Pension legislation: Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 1st sess. (May 13, 1886), 4464–66, (May 18, 1886), 4629–31, (May 19, 1886), 4677–78; Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess. (June 11, 1890), 5946–47.
27 Eight dollars in 1888 had the purchasing power of approximately $183 in 2009. Kilmer, “Union Veterans,” 636 [1888 numbers]; Glasson, Federal Military Pensions, 130–36 [specific injury rates]; Ernst Pitschner pension, invalid app. 5094 cert. 10863, widow app. 819093 cert. 592260, CWLPF; National Labor Tribune, Jan. 1, 1887.
28 The “generous” interpretation of Civil War pensions is especially significant to Theda Skocpol's analysis of the system; see, e.g., Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers, 107, 131–35, 155–59; Skocpol, “America's First Social Security System,” 86, 92–95, 115. Iowa State Register, May 2, 1890 [“when they were strong”]; Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2nd sess. (May 13, 1862), 2103 [McKnight].
29 Richard Severo and Lewis Milford, The Wages of War: When America's Soldiers Came Home—From Valley Forge to Vietnam (New York, 1989), 135 [quotation from 1861 report]; U.S. Sanitary Commission, Document No. 67, Stephen H. Perkins, Report on the Pension Systems and Invalid Hospitals of France, Prussia, Austria, Russia and Italy (New York, 1863), 15, 18; for domestic imagery, Kelly, Patrick J., Creating a National Home: Building the Veterans' Welfare State, 1860–1900 (Cambridge, MA, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Army and Navy Journal, Jan. 28, 1865, 356; Harper's Weekly, Apr. 7, 1866, 211; Scientific American, Feb. 4, 1865, 86. For more on left-handed penmanship, see Army and Navy Journal, Mar. 17, 1866, 475; Harper's Weekly, July 29, 1865, 467; Frances Clarke, “‘Honorable Scars’: Northern Amputees and the Meaning of Civil War Injuries” in Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front, eds. Cimbala and Miller, 361–94.
31 Perkins, Report, 31; Scientific American, Feb. 4, 1865, 86. There is a large literature on late nineteenth-century poor relief; see e.g., Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poor House: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York, 1986) [quotation from 58]; also Trattner, Walter I., From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America, 4th ed. (New York, 1989)Google Scholar.
32 George Buehler pension, invalid app. 6852 cert. 17931; Henry Beadell pension, invalid app. 44852 cert. 35574; Asa J. Davis pension, invalid app. 180132 cert. 126900, widow app. 313117 cert. 242199; Frederick Hazelton pension, invalid app. 8295 cert. 23921, widow app. 304268 cert. 279097, minor app. 581820 cert. [none]; Robert McKinlay pension, invalid app. 105843 cert. 291094; Henry J.F. Small pension, invalid app. 377719 cert. 221315, widow app. 798519 cert. 598294; William Smith pension, invalid app. 80400 cert. 68549, widow app. 968259 cert. [none]; Thomas Stewart pension, invalid app. 400415 cert. 298082, widow app. 983930 cert. 742814; William Cumpton pension, invalid app. 550363 cert. 929494, widow app. 697642 cert. 489184; Ernst Pitschner pension, invalid app. 5094 cert. 10863, widow app. 819093 cert. 592260; Henry Fulmer pension, invalid app. 53950 cert. 97559, widow app. 920081 cert. 684228; John Kuntz pension, invalid app. 98019 cert. 376508, widow app. 536332 cert. 356604; Elijah W. Attmore pension, invalid app. 656805 cert. 427507; Vincent S. Martin pension, invalid app. 514761 cert. 337053, widow app. 855205 cert. 626485; John A. Fullerton pension, invalid app. 443918 cert. 227248, minor app. 755,543 cert. [none]; Solomon Stutsman pension, invalid app. 607526 cert. 390231, widow app. 1057896 cert. 876259; William H. Kessler pension, invalid app. 409287 cert. 266209; Frank R. Thurber pension, invalid app. 280969 cert. 270807; John S. Walker pension, invalid app. 551796 cert. 329441, widow app. 1119402 cert. 852332; Patrick Berrill pension, invalid app. 155661 cert. 282267, widow app. 501873 cert. [none]—all CWLPF.
33 Savannah Morning News and Springfield Republican quoted in Public Opinion, Feb. 12, 1887, 371, 372; Philadelphia Telegraph quoted in Public Opinion, Feb. 19, 1887, 395; “Our Standing Army of Pensioners,” Nation, Feb. 3, 1887, 92; Pittsburgh Times quoted in “Generosity that Maketh Poor,” National Labor Tribune, Feb. 19, 1887; Harper's Weekly, Mar. 5, 1887, 162.
34 Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2nd sess., app., 405; Thomas Mullins pension, widow app. 25059 cert. 163365, CWLPF; Joseph L. Carter pension, invalid app. 120906 cert. 101646, widow app. 501057 cert. [none], CWLPF.
35 A morals feature of pension law directed toward widows—namely that they could be dropped from the pension roll for “open and notorious adulterous cohabitation”—is omitted from the discussion here because it is not specifically work-ethic related. Army and Navy Journal, July 19, 1890, 884 [“vicious habits”]; Black, John C., U.S. Commissioner of Pensions, Laws of the United States Governing the Granting of Army and Navy Pensions (Washington, 1888)Google Scholar, 51 [“cohabitation”].
36 H. Clay Evans, U.S. Commissioner of Pensions, A Treatise on the Practice of the Pension Bureau Governing the Adjudication of Army and Navy Pensions (Washington, 1898), 98–99; Orson W. Bennett pension, invalid app. 228921 cert. 161540, widow app. 798487 cert. 575008, CWLPF [quote from Dr. W.B. Porter to J.A. Butler, May 12, 1879]; John Lambert pension, invalid app. 1161426 cert. 1018091, widow app. 760150 cert. 557240, CWLPF.
37 For a case that illustrates Pension Bureau evidence requirements, see, e.g., John Wyss pension, invalid app. 85489 cert. [none], CWLPF.
38 Reese Wilkins to Pension Bureau, June 20, 1879 in David M. Strain pension, invalid app. 227022 cert. 184072, widow app. 1599581 cert. [none] for quotation; see also Reese Wilkins to Pension Bureau, May 12, 1887 in John C. Taylor pension, invalid app. 38843 cert. 365555; Matthew F. King to Commissioner of Pensions, n.d. [1892] in Matthew F. King pension, invalid app. 515497 cert. 721775—all CWLPF.
39 William Hyde Clark pension, widow app. 212810 cert. 170120, CWLPF [quotations from General Affidavit by Dr. J.W. Sprague, Apr. 2, 1874, and Dr. William Watson to Commissioner of Pensions, Aug. 29, 1881].
40 Frederick Hazelton pension, invalid app. 8295 cert. 23921, widow app. 304268 cert. 279097, minor app. 581820 cert. [none], CWLPF [esp. Elizabeth Hazelton to Secretary of Interior, received Nov. 5, 1888, which presents the argument of Dr. Asa Horr].
41 John H. Looby pension, invalid app. 165601 cert. 116164, CWLPF.
42 It would also be possible to examine cases involving the children or other dependents of soldiers. Children were eligible up to age sixteen if there was no eligible widow (if she was dead, remarried, or otherwise disqualified). Other dependents also could attempt to claim a pension if the soldier had no surviving widow; these other dependents were usually elderly parents, although the sister of Dubuque soldier Richard Raw unsuccessfully tried for a pension in 1866. Due to limited numbers of cases and missing data, however, analysis of minor and other dependents' cases is omitted here. Richard Raw pension, sister app. 136191 cert. [none], CWLPF.
43 In this discussion, men who began their service as enlisted men but ended as officers (e.g., John Looby) are counted among the officers' cases; the same is true in the widows' cases described below.
44 Nation, Nov. 6, 1879, 308–09; Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 2nd sess. (Jan. 27, 1887), 1074; 51st Cong., 1st sess. (June 23, 1890), 6376–77, 6382 [opinions of Black and Tanner], and 6380 [for an example of blaming the applicants].
45 Although the 1890 law was called the Dependent Pension Act, the dependence provision for veterans was removed from the bill in the course of reconciling House and Senate versions of the legislation. The 1890 law left the measure of a widow's dependence vague, but a 1900 law fixed the eligibility cut-off at an income (or a potential income for property owners) of $250 per year or more beyond the woman's own labor. For widows and dependence, see “The Dependent Pension Bill,” Army and Navy Journal, July 19, 1890, 884 [quote in text]; Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess. (Feb. 28, 1890), 1804–05; Glasson, Federal Military Pensions, 232–33 [1890 law], 243–44 [1900 law], 251 [1908 law removing dependence condition].
46 Analysis of the gender difference in success rates is beyond the scope of this article, though part of the difference surely stems from pension rules that allowed a widow to pursue a pension claim on behalf of her deceased husband, whereas only minor children could continue a widow's claim after her death and then only while they were under age 16. Edwin Mitchell pension, widow app. 525979 cert. 922657, minor app. 562979 cert. [none], CWLPF.
47 Shaffer, “I Do Not Suppose,” 134 (table 1). Shaffer found African American applicants faring much worse than whites, with only 75 percent of veterans and 61 percent of widows eventually succeeding in their pension claims. The Dubuque and Des Moines pension data include a total of six claims—two (both successful) from disabled veterans and four (three successful) from widows or minor children—based on the service of four African American men. Because of the small number of claims, these were merged with the general data for the two cities in the analysis.
48 Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 2nd sess. (Jan. 17, 1887), 740.