Struggle for Recognition: Civil War Soldiers Fighting for Disability into the 20th Century

As stated in the previous blog post, the historian continues to examine his dissertation topic, Combat Trauma in the Civil War, while completing other coursework. As the current class focuses on economic history, a study of pensions for Civil War veterans seemed most appropriate for the dissertation.

For this week’s post, the historian examined the pension cases of Civil War veterans on the Union side that survived into the early 20th century, specifically focusing on three soldier’s experiences with invisible disabilities, including mental health issues and wounds not readily visible. As Stephen G. Perkins, president of the United States Sanitary Commission, wrote in 1862, a veteran’s right to benefits “should not rest exclusively on visible wounds.”[1] Yet, they did not heed his words, as the examples discussed today show.

As discussed by the historian recently in this video, one Union veteran provides a good example of this struggle, specifically for this post as a soldier that lived into the 20th century while receiving benefits. His name was Joseph Chamberlain, most well-known as the commander of the 20th Maine Infantry at Gettysburg. The war left him with six wounds, the last being the one that eventually killed him in 1914.[2]

For most of the 50 years following the war, Chamberlain suffered from extreme pain, infection, and discomfort from that wound, one so bad that a report in 1893 testified to the painful immobility he endured from damage to his genitalia.[3] Chamberlain carried a certain bit of stardom in his life, however even he struggled for recognition of his wounds and proper compensation.

Those that lacked his fame struggled more so, particularly in the 1890’s United States that viewed pensions akin to handouts by politicians to buy the veteran vote.[4] One need look no further than Puck magazine’s regular attacks on veterans receiving aid from the government, characterizing the men as raiders on the generosity of the American people.[5]

As another example, John A. Cundiff served with the 99th Indiana Infantry and, during the war, was detailed to shoot a Confederate prisoner. That act haunted him for the rest of his life, plagued by fears of relatives of the dead prisoner coming to exact revenge.

This drove him to hide in the woods randomly or sleep with a weapon nearby, sometimes hiding from neighbors he believed were spies. Sworn affidavits taken in 1893-1894 attested to his behavior, demonstrating how just the memories of his actions plagued his mind and hindered his lifestyle.[6]

This resembles the story of John Jefferson Anderson, a man who spent 30 years after the war living in a confined room behind bars to keep him safe. His family tended him, helping change his clothes and bathe him.

He went through multiple examinations to establish his mental capacity and whether he should receive disability pay, with some exams not occurring until 1876 and 1879. He received a pension of over $70 a month, something his family almost would have lost had Congress not changed the law to allow beneficiaries to receive the pension after a veteran died.[7]

These are just a few examples among thousands. The struggle for pensions proved to be a long conflict, a never-ending struggle to prove incapacity to an American population that steadily grew more skeptical and less generous as the Gilded Age of American history ended. Cultural factors from the different regions, as well as strongly religious views on mental capacity, male roles, and laziness, contributed to further stigmatization and ostracization of both veterans and their families.

Many cared for their veterans in private to avoid such isolation from the community, as with John Jefferson Anderson, placing a heavy burden on the family and leading, eventually, to tragedy. In the end, the result was the same: prolonged suffering for a generation of veterans at the hands of a nation now fighting as heatedly over helping them as they had fought to preserve it.

[1] Henry Bellow to Stephen G. Perkins, August 15, 1862, doc 49, in United States Sanitary Commission, Documents of the Sanitary Commission (New York, 1866), 514, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Documents/jTNEAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1.

[2] Sarah Handley-Cousins. “‘Wrestling at the Gates of Death’: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Nonvisible Disability in the Post–Civil War North.” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 2 (2016): 221. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26070404.

[3] Frederick W. Reckling and Charles K. McAllister. “The Career and Orthopaedic Injuries of Joshua L. Chamberlain: The Hero of Little Roundtop.” Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research® 374, no. May (May), 2000: 107. https://journals.lww.com/clinorthop/Fulltext/2000/05000/The_Career_and_Orthopaedic_Injuries_of_
Joshua_L_.9.aspx

[4] Theda Skocpol. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992, 118; Murray N. Rothbard. "Beginning The Welfare State: Civil War Veterans' Pensions." The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 22, no. 1 (2019): 79. Gale Business: Insights (accessed April 1, 2023). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A594832526/GBIB?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-GBIB&xid=33f5fefb; Rabia Belt. “Ballots for Bullets?: Disabled Veterans and the Right to Vote.” Stanford Law Review 69, no. 2 (02, 2017): 437, https://go.openathens.net/redirector/liberty.edu?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ballots-bullets-disabled-veterans-right-vote/docview/1874996138/se-2.

[5] James Alan Marten. Sing Not War the Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011, 215.

[6] Eric T. Dean. Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, 408.

 [7] Brian S. Bradshaw. “‘Peace Had Its Defeats’: Researching Civil War Veterans, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Insanity.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 113, no. 3–4 (2020): 67–69. https://doi.org/10.5406/jillistathistsoc.113.3-4.0067.

Bibliography

Belt, Rabia. “Ballots for Bullets?: Disabled Veterans and the Right to Vote.” Stanford Law Review 69, no. 2 (02, 2017): 435-90, https://go.openathens.net/redirector/liberty.edu?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ballots-bullets-disabled-veterans-right-vote/docview/1874996138/se-2.

Bradshaw, Brian S. “‘Peace Had Its Defeats’: Researching Civil War Veterans, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Insanity.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 113, no. 3–4 (2020): 67–93. https://doi.org/10.5406/jillistathistsoc.113.3-4.0067.

Dean, Eric T. Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Handley-Cousins, Sarah. “‘Wrestling at the Gates of Death’: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Nonvisible Disability in the Post–Civil War North.” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 2 (2016): 220–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26070404.

Henry Bellow to Stephen G. Perkins, August 15, 1862, doc 49, in United States Sanitary Commission, Documents of the Sanitary Commission (New York, 1866), 514, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Documents/jTNEAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1.

Johnson, Russell L. ““Great Injustice”: Social Status and the Distribution of Military Pensions after the Civil War.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 10, no. 2 (2011): 137-60. doi:10.1017/S1537781410000186.

Marten, James Alan. Sing Not War the Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Reckling, Frederick W., and Charles K. McAllister. “The Career and Orthopaedic Injuries of Joshua L. Chamberlain: The Hero of Little Roundtop.” Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research® 374, no. May (May), 2000: 107. https://journals.lww.com/clinorthop/Fulltext/2000/05000/The_Career_and_Orthopaedic_Injuries_of_Joshua_L_.9.aspx.

Rothbard, Murray N. "Beginning The Welfare State: Civil War Veterans' Pensions." The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 22, no. 1 (2019): 68+. Gale Business: Insights (accessed April 1, 2023). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A594832526/GBIB?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-GBIB&xid=33f5fefb.

Skocpol, Theda. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.

Surgeon’s Certificate, 1893, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain Military Pension Records, certificate 96, 956, National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives Building, Washington D.C.