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As a reminder, here are links to previous pension ephemera posts:
#1 - Horse Thieves and Deserters (here)
#2 - Red Tape (here)#3 - Pennsylvanian Inquires After His Dead Son (here)
#4 - Ohio Military Home (here)
#5 - Squirrel Hunters (here)
#6 - "The Buddy System" (here)
And now on to the latest installment of Civil War pension items in my collection...
Before the Civil War, military pension benefits in the United States did not include mothers, fathers, or orphaned siblings.
As pointed out in other posts, the Pension Bureau - rightly or wrongly - served as a gatekeeper to minimize fraud and abuse in the system, and - to be sure - there was fraud and abuse.
However, imagine the poor mother addressed in the letter below...even today, with improved electronic record-keeping, people would be hard-pressed to produce the documents that were required. It appears that she had at one time secured the expertise of a pension attorney, but he may have dropped the case due to (understandable?) frustration at her inability to produce the required information for her claim or - (and just as likely?) - because he had dropped her case and correspondence in favor of multiple easier cases.
It is unclear what unit the soldier was attached to. Once again, though, it proves what a treasure trove a pension file might be if such supporting documentation is included.
Department of the Interior
Pension Office
Washington, D.C.
June 10, 1872
Dear Madam: In your claim No. 99,226 as mother of William A. Cook, proof is required of the support rendered by the soldier and of your dependence. The highest value reached by your property since the soldier began his contributions should be shown by the testimony of the assessors. It should be shown by the testimony of parties who can state dates and amounts to what extent and in what manner the soldier contributed to your support.
If he supported you by labor on the farm, that fact should be proved and it should also be shown whether he had assistance in carrying on the land.
If he labored away from home and used his earnings for your support, that fact should be proved by the testimony of his employers.
If he sent you money from the army, the letters in which it was sent should be filed, with testimony from persons who saw it sent and received.
Your attorney has been repeatedly called on for the above evidence and no reply has been received.
Please notify this office whether the claim is to be completed or abandoned, returning this letter with your reply.
Very Respectfully,
C. W. Seaton
Acting Commissioner
Mrs. Sarah CookWestfield
Hamilton Co.
Ind.
"We learn that John deYoung and --- Bilderbach, of Galveston, and ---Asher of this county, who have been under arrest for some time past on the charge of having uttered treasonable language towards our Government, have been tried and convicted, and sent to the State penitentiary for a residence till the end of the war." - Galveston Weekly News, August 20, 1862
The new book project concerns Galveston Island and the Civil War, with an emphasis on the civilian experience, including free and enslaved African-Americans, and I have begun the in-depth research and writing in earnest.
As I proceed, I will provide updates here on the blog. I especially look forward to giving reports of my visits to various archival collections in the Lone Star State.
One aspect of the Civil War (hinted at in the newspaper abstract above) that was only somewhat familiar to me is the treatment of Union sympathizers and dissenters in the South during the war, the larger subject of civil liberties in the Confederate States of America, and how these aspects affected Galveston civilians.
I've been doing some background reading and research published by esteemed historians, including Mark E. Neely, Jr.'s Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism (University of Virginia Press, 1999), James Marten's Texas Divided: Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State, 1856-1874 (University Press of Kentucky, 1990; softcover, 2009), and Brian R. Dirck's "Posterity’s Blush: Civil Liberties, Property Rights, and Property Confiscation in the Confederacy" (Civil War History, 2002).
There are also some excellent online resources, such as:
1) Andy Hall's "Dead Confederates" blog has quickly become my favorite...if you are not reading it, you should be (!) He has some excellent posts on the treatment of dissenters in Texas and Galveston here and here.
2) The Texas State Library and Archives Commission has an excellent "The Civil War in Texas" online exhibit, including a page (here) dedicated to Texan dissenters, with an emphasis onthe Nueces Massacre and the Gainesville Hangings.
The heart of my discussion in the book will be based on the transcripts of the trial of the men noted above...extensive witness statements against the men can be found in the "Confederate Citizens Files" (NARA M346) via my footnote subscription, and are quite interesting with Galvestonians testifying against fellow Galvestonians:
"Henry Journsay is a resident of Galveston...knows the prisoner fifteen years...Mr. DeYoung says he is a Union man...expected to die one...he showed me an abolitionist letter and wished me to read it...it was written by a young lady from the north..."
The point of this research is not to demonstrate that the CSA trampled on civil liberties while the federal government did not.
However, as Dr. Neely's book title intimates and as Dr. Dr. Dirck's excellent article explains, when Jefferson Davis - in his Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government - complained of a United States government:
"That presided over the ballot-box, held the keys of the prisons, arrested all citizens at its pleasure, suspended or suppressed newspapers, and did whatever it pleased under the declaration that the public welfare required it."
...or when Southern newspapers (such as the Galveston Weekly News, April 29, 1863) happily reported resolutions of Northern state (e.g., Connecticut) Democratic conventions that complained of the government's
"...establishment of a system of espionage by a secret police to invade, the sacred privacy of unsuspecting citizens..."
They perhaps forgot that they did the same and employed Galvestonians as "secret police" as well:
As the old bromide goes: "People (and governments) are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts."
I will provide updates as I learn more about the testimony against Galveston's (few) Union dissenters.
Even though it was posted only little over a month ago, my column on anesthesia in the Civil War (here) is already one of the all-time popular posts on this blog...for those of you who are curious, according to Blogger's stats, the run-down is:#2 - Medical Department #18 - Lee's Health at Gettysburg - June 2008
#3- Medical Department #7 - Quinine Substitutes in the Confederacy - Sept 2007
#4- Medical Department #4 - Civil War Pharmacy - Jun 2007
#5 - Medical Department #38 - Civil War Anesthesia - March 2011
Well, you know what they say: what's better than ONE post on Civil War anesthesia? TWO posts!
Below is an extended excerpt from my first book, Lincoln's Labels: America's Best Known Brands and the Civil War (Edinborough Press, 2008)...it explains the VERY important role that Dr. Edward R. Squibb played in perfecting the safe manufacture of effective ether and chloroform just before the Civil War. It includes some images and links not included in the book.
Enjoy!
When Charles Darwin was asked his opinion on the most important discovery of the nineteenth century, he answered, “painless surgery.” Although physicians and dentists had privately used ether with patients in the early 1840s, it was October 1846 before its value in surgery was made public in a well-attended demonstration hosted by Dr. William T. G. Morton at Massachusetts General Hospital. Still, surgeons hesitated to use ether (as well as chloroform, introduced at about the same time) because the preparations then available varied so much in quality, and their action was so uncertain that they proved more of a risk than a benefit. In addition, ether’s manufacture was very dangerous as the volatile and highly inflammable liquid was prepared in crude stills over an open fire.(1)
Edward R. Squibb did not invent anesthesia, but he is justly remembered for his production of safe, standard, and effective anesthetics by equally safe and effective manufacture. Ether was the foundation of Squibb’s business and he established a standard for quality that stood well after his passing. It is largely to Squibb’s credit that the Union Army had a ready and reliable supply of ether and chloroform for its surgeons to use (and perhaps Confederate surgeons, also; one historian claimed that “Abraham Lincoln himself chose to overlook the smuggling of Squibb ether to the South”).(2)
Squibb was certainly aware of the Jefferson Medical College faculty’s first uses of ether in 1846 and 1847. In 1851 — on leave from the Navy — he took three months of refresher courses at Jefferson (“rubbing up,” it was called) with an eye towards promotion and a raise. While there, he filled his journal with careful notes about the chemistry and preparation of ether and his impressions of its use, including an operation on a fifty-year old man whose swollen leg required amputation:
“The patient was not easily etherized, but was finally brought under the full effect and kept so during the entire operation. . . . The double-flap operation was performed just above the knee, the bone being sawed through at about its middle. . . . At the end, just before the dressing, the patient was asked if he felt the operation and replied that he did not know it was done . . . The operation was very well and prettily and quickly done. . . . A large audience and one case of fainting.”(3)
Squibb’s experiences during the “rubbing up” at Jefferson had also shown him that the effect of ether was quite variable, even on patients of similar age and stature. Now at his laboratory at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, he had an opportunity to discover why this was so. Squibb bought six samples of ether on the market and after putting them to careful tests of purity, color, density, and clarity, found them to be widely variable. He published his results and conclusion — that the doubtful reliability of ether in surgery was due to its careless manufacture from ingredients of dubious quality — and worried that the poor ether being used brought to surgery “an uncertainty which does not belong to it”; rather, the discredit “justly belong[ed] to the preparation which [the surgeon] employs.”(4)
Squibb then set his mind to discovering a method of safely manufacturing ether of standard strength and purity in a safe manner. After well over a year of experiments, and nearly two dozen attempts at labyrinths of pipes, flasks, and boilers, he developed a process using steam (rather than an open fire) as a heat source that resulted in very pure ether and a much less dangerous procedure. Unwilling to capitalize on his discovery personally (Morton, who had received a patent in 1846, claimed a 10% royalty on each use of ether for anesthesia), Squibb published in 1856 a full account of his process with drawings, directions, formulas, and costs.
After his success with ether, Squibb then turned to perfecting the manufacture of chloroform, and published his results of equal success a year later. His ether and chloroform were put to good use in the Navy; Squibb wrote that of the nearly 200 pounds he had manufactured for the Navy, most of it had been used and “as yet without a single reported case of bad results.” Others thought as highly when Squibb made the anesthetics for profit. Dr. Valentine Mott, a well-respected surgeon of the era, wrote that in his practice, “I have been in the habit of using the Scotch Chloroform of Duncan, Flockhart, & Co., of Edinburgh, but have also employed that of Dr. Squibb, of Brooklyn, and with pleasure commend the latter for its purity and reliability.”(5)
Ether and chloroform were used to great effect in the Civil War and Union authorities purchased many tons of each. Official records from the war suggest that anesthesia was employed in no fewer than 80,000 cases. As impressive as the widespread use of ether and chloroform during the war is their safety record; fewer than fifty deaths were attributed to anesthesia in the tens of thousands of cases in which it was used.
Morton — whose demonstration in 1846 was the genesis of the widespread use of anesthesia — did not make a fortune from royalties. Squibb — who never sought royalties — prospered nonetheless by selling reliable and safe products. There is no evidence that Squibb ever begrudged Morton his legal right to a fortune; he carried on a correspondence with Morton when he was still at the Navy laboratory. There is no doubt that both men’s inventions did great good during the Civil War. In 1862, Morton joined the Union Army as a volunteer surgeon and performed valuable service as an anesthesiologist (almost certainly using Squibb’s products). Of his experience at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, which produced more than 30,000 casualties on the Union side alone, Morton gave witness to Darwin’s declaration that “painless surgery” was the great discovery of the nineteenth century, “How little did I think . . . when originally experimenting with the properties of sulfuric ether on my own person, that I should ever successfully administer it to hundreds iin one day, and thus prevent an amount of agony fearful to contemplate.”(6)
NOTES:
(1) Stearns, F. P., Cambridge Sketches. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1905), p. 309.
(2) Wickware, F. S., The House of Squibb. (New York: E. R. Squibb & Sons, 1945), p. 12.
(3) Blochman, L. G,. Doctor Squibb: The Life and Times of a Rugged Idealist. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958), p. 43.
(4) Squibb, E. R. and K. Florey (ed.) The Collected Papers of Edward Robinson Squibb, M.D., 1819-1900, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Squibb Corp., 1988), p. 304.
(5) “as yet without . . . ” in Squibb, Papers, p. 110; “I have been in . . . ” in Mott, V. Pain and Anæsthetics: An Essay Introductory to a Series of Surgical and Medical Monographs. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1862),p. 15.
(6), Albin, M. S. “The Use of Anesthetics During the Civil War, 1861-1865.” Pharmacy in History, Vol. 42. Nos. 3 and 4, 2000, 99-114.
You can read MUCH MORE about Dr. Squibb and the Civil War in Lincoln's Labels!
It is impossible to completely separate military and civilian medical experiences during the Civil War. War—especially civil war—necessarily disrupts local populations through battles, disease, loss of income, the wounding and death of family and friends, and other impact.
During the Civil War, people on the homefront—especially women—participated in charitable “war work” which supplemented the activities of the government and the military medical establishment. Sustaining medical care at home, especially in rural areas, sometimes required the kindness of aid societies and the continued reliance on domestic medicine.
Where there was disease and poor diet, access to professional medical care was limited as increasing number of physicians gave their attention to the armies in the field. Even where doctors were available, some families—bereft of the support and income of husbands and fathers—had to rely on charitable organizations, especially to subsidize the cost of medical care. A number of local and state relief societies were organized to provide the funding.Still, relief was not assured: recipients often had to provide proof of marriage and their husbands’ service and that the locality received “credit” for the enlistment; others societies required that beneficiaries swear that they had no alternative means of support. Recently, historian Dr. Judith Giesberg - in her excellent book An Army at Home - has written about another important string attached to relief: conforming to standards of respectability; she includes evidence that some women were denied aid for “not acting as a virtuous wife should.” Below is a receipt in my collection for medical attention given to families of volunteers in Owen County, Indiana, by Dr. Benjamin A. Allison. Allison probably did not charge these families but instead tendered a bill to the local relief committee which approved his invoice and reimbursed him for the care.You can learn more about Dr. Allison at a findagrave.com profile here.
Department of the Interior
