benefit increase

Group of veteran soldiers, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, near Fort Monroe, Va., Capt. P.T. Woodfin, Governor (Philadelphia, Pa. : E.H. Hart, Copying, Landscape and Stereoscopic Photographer, 911 Arch Street, [between 1870 and 1880]; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2015649047/)

“National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, near Fort Monroe, Va.” (1870s Library of Congress)

Reportedly, 150 years ago the United States Congress decided Uncle Sam was going to be more generous with war widows and disabled veterans. From a Seneca County, New York Newspaper in August 1866:

EXTRA BOUNTY AND PENSIONS.- Attention is called to the Bounty and claim advertisement of Chas. A. Hawley, Esq., in another column. By the acts of June 6th and July 23d, 1866 the Pension Laws have been somewhat changed. Widows will now receive two dollars per month for each child under sixteen years, in addition to the eight dollars. Disabled soldiers’ pensions are increased to fifteen, twenty and twenty five dollars per month. New applications are necessary in every case, and in order to draw the increased pension o the 4th of September next, it should be attended to at once. By the act of July 28th, additional bounties are also given to the soldiers of 1861 – 2 & 3.

Mr. Hawley has had much experience in the Bounty, Claim and Pension business, and all matters entrusted to his care will be promptly and correctly attended to. read his advertisement elsewhere in today’s paper.

Confederate widows and veterans never participated in the federal pension system; eventually individual southern states established their own pension laws.

The Social Security Administration points out that over time the Civil War pension system was criticized for possible corruption. There were concerns that the program “was rife with fraud, waste and abuse. Whether these concerns were valid, is hard to say.” The Social security page shows a business card for a Pension & Claim attorney out in Iowa and a different satirical Punch cartoon than the one I’ve got here.

As of March 2016 there was only one surviving Civil War pensioner. Her father began the war as a Confederate but later joined a Federal unit.

Our national dime museum / Keppler. ( Illus. from Puck, v. 42, no. 1087, (1898 January 5), cover; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2012647590/)

(Punch January 5, 1898)

Images from the Library of Congress: National Home, Puck
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