Over two million soldiers enlisted in the Union Army during the U.S. Civil War. When it ended, the United States had many more veterans and surviving dependents than it had ever had before. In the decades that followed, military pensions became a major part of the federal budget, accounting for of the budget by 1894.
Despite the enormous growth in payments to veterans and their relatives after the Civil War, securing compensation could be an that required significant time and resources. The legacy of slavery made that process especially challenging for Black women applying for benefits.
Marriages of Enslaved Couples Initially Not Recognized
Widows of Civil War soldiers could begin applying to the Bureau of Pensions during the war, and one of the first major obstacles for Black women who had survived slavery was the bureau's marriage requirement. Women needed to prove they had been married to their deceased husbands to receive survivor benefits. However, because enslaved men and women hadn鈥檛 been legally able to marry, the Bureau of Pensions didn鈥檛 initially recognize their unions.
In 1864, the government began retroactively recognizing these marriages, but there were still other factors that made it difficult to start the process. Some veterans and families didn鈥檛 know they were eligible for pensions or benefits in the first place. Pensioners were required to , from military service documents to marriage certificates to medical exams. Access to attorneys who could help applicants navigate the complex system was a barrier for many formerly enslaved families, as was literacy, since antebellum laws had punished enslaved people for learning to read or write.
鈥淚n addition to the sort of application obstacles, [Black women were] also facing ideas about what constitutes a worthy widow,鈥 says , a professor of African, African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of .
鈥淭here鈥檚 almost an immediate suspicion that formerly enslaved people鈥檚 families are not legitimate, they are not nuclear, that women are鈥laiming benefits for children that were not the soldiers',鈥 she says.
Benefits Could Be Revoked
Even if Black women did succeed in receiving benefits, Brimmer says 鈥渋t was equally difficult to maintain their standing on the roll.鈥 The Bureau of Pensions could and did remove women鈥檚 benefits if they earned paid wages outside of the home, if they remarried or if the bureau suspected them of engaging in behavior it viewed as inappropriate.
This was the case with , whose husband, George K. Buck, suffered a severe head injury during the war that contributed to his death in 1871. Patience Buck first applied for benefits in 1879, and had to apply multiple times before the bureau approved her application in 1890 (the bureau had argued that her husband鈥檚 death was unrelated to his war injury). However, the bureau later her benefits based on rumors that she was a prostitute. These rumors were false, but were enough to deprive her of her benefits.
In addition to critiquing an applicant's own actions, the Bureau of Pensions might hold her husband鈥檚 actions against her if it learned that her husband had had an affair, says , a history professor at Furman University and author of forthcoming book The Families鈥 Civil War: Black Soldiers and the Fight for Racial Justice.
鈥淭he federal government, through the Pension Bureau, is basically going to war with Black families to make them prove that they鈥檙e legitimate, that they鈥檙e worthy of a pension,鈥 he says.
Many of the Black women who applied to the Bureau of Pensions asked for benefits based on their husband or father鈥檚 service; but Black women also performed military service during the Civil War, and could make claims for pensions of their own. One of these women was Harriet Tubman, who applied for a pension based on her wartime service as a nurse, cook, spy, scout and first woman in U.S. history to lead a military raid.
Tubman spent decades appealing to the government to compensate her for her military service and pay her a pension. After the death of her second husband, veteran Nelson Davis, in 1888, she also applied for survivor benefits based on his service, and began receiving $8 a month in 1892.
In 1899, increasing the bureau鈥檚 payments to Tubman to $20 in consideration of her contributions as a nurse鈥攖hough not, Congress made clear, for her service as a spy, scout and military raid leader. It was a partial recognition of her service, 34 years after the fact.
