Union veterans and the creation of disability, 1862-1910 PDF
Preview Union veterans and the creation of disability, 1862-1910
University of Iowa Iowa Research Online Theses and Dissertations Spring 2015 "The harder heroism of the hospital:" Union veterans and the creation of disability, 1862-1910 Brian Edward Donovan University of Iowa Copyright 2015 Brian Edward Donovan This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1588 Recommended Citation Donovan, Brian Edward. ""The harder heroism of the hospital:" Union veterans and the creation of disability, 1862-1910." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2015. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.unwdtw0s Follow this and additional works at:https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd Part of theHistory Commons “THE HARDER HEROISM OF THE HOSPITAL:” UNION VETERANS AND THE CREATION OF DISABILITY, 1862-1910 by Brian Edward Donovan A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in History in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa May 2015 Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Douglas C. Baynton Copyright by BRIAN EDWARD DONOVAN 2015 All Rights Reserved Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL PH.D. THESIS This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of Brian Edward Donovan has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in History at the May 205 graduation. Thesis Committee: Douglas C. Bayton, Thesis Supervisor Leslie Schwalm Omar Valerio-Jiménez Stephen Vlastos Ken Mobily To my parents, Joe and Karen Donovan ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to my family, my committee, and my friends, especially Eric Colvard and Matt Reardon. Thanks and love especially to my wife, Jen. iii ABSTRACT Hundreds of thousands of men were permanently disabled by the Civil War, mostly from the chronic effects of camp diseases like typhus and dysentery. This one fact created both endless problems and vast opportunities for politicians, activists, and disabled veterans themselves in the Gilded Age. The attempts to deal with the scope of the war’s human devastation are a crucial and heretofore under-studied part of American disability history. This dissertation highlights the role of disability in the expansion of the American state, and politics’ reciprocal role in expanding the “medical model” of disability which is the subject of so much pointed critique in the field. The medical model itself, however, and especially its proliferation are under- examined. This dissertation argues that it should more properly be termed the “political model” or even the “bureaucratic model,” as government action is the primary driver of this understanding of disability. The Union Army carried out a vast survey of its service- eligible population beginning with the 1862 Militia Act, sorting and rating bodies according to their presumed combat effectiveness. The 1862 Pension Act, which would become the basis of all future American military disability pensions, extended this evaluation process to those disabled in the service – with “lesser” conditions scaled by their proportion to total disability, the government effectively decreed itself not only the arbitrator of a body’s worth, but the precise dollar value each appendage contributed to the total. By 1890, the Pension Office was doling out more than 100 million taxpayer dollars per year, based on little more than a physician’s affidavit and a series of increasingly abstract guidelines handed down ad hoc by Congress. iv Veterans are also voters, and disability issues moved millions of votes in the Gilded Age. Republicans flogged the image of the country’s broken-down defenders languishing in poorhouses or even prisons for lack of government support, and the “soldier vote” can be plausibly credited with swinging both the 1888 and 1896 elections for the GOP. In the process, the public’s understanding of disability was shaped by campaign rhetoric, and more importantly by the sight of old soldiers living out their lives as wards of the state in state and federal soldiers’ homes. These homes, especially the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (NHDVS) were major tourist attractions throughout the Gilded Age, and they faced a similar problem to the Pension Office: As so many disabilities were the result of disease, and therefore not visible to the naked eye, how could the public tell a truly disabled man, honorably incapacitated in the service of his country, from a “bummer” or loafer or, worse, an addict who had brought it on himself? Neither party could afford to alienate the soldier vote, but the public would not stand for its tax dollars being wasted on idlers. For the GOP and its allies in the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the largest and most influential Union veterans’ organization, the solution was to sweep up socially problematic veterans and install them in soldiers’ homes, where strict army-style discipline – including Union uniforms-- would keep them in line. The uniform was a guarantee that its wearer was disabled in the state’s eyes, and therefore a member of the “deserving poor.” But these men were not merely objects of charity. As citizen-soldiers, they could -- and did – negotiate the terms of their disability, using their voice and their vote to gain benefits and avoid at least some of the depersonalizing effects of institutionalization. In the end, a veteran whose “disability claim” was validated by the state received a level of social support available to no other group in the Gilded Age – thus cementing the notion that the v state is responsible for (at least some of ) its citizens’ health, and consequently, empowered to define both ability and disability for the country as a whole. vi PUBLIC ABSTRACT The unprecedented size and scope of the American Civil War fundamentally redefined the relationship between state and citizen. Through its conscription laws, the Union government empowered itself to standardize and evaluate the bodies of its citizens; the concurrent General Law pension system extended this standardization into the realm of disability. The government served as both national physician and national accountant, distributing millions of dollars a year to men it deemed unable to earn up to their potential due to wounds and diseases contracted in the Union’s defense. Moreover, since so many disabilities were the result of disease – and therefore invisible to the naked eye – the state also asserted its power to certify to the taxpayers that these veterans were indeed among the “deserving poor,” not idlers or parasites. This became especially important as pension- related expenses ballooned to the second-largest line item on the budget, and the “veteran vote” became the most important single-issue bloc in American politics. Veterans were themselves voters, however, and could negotiate at least some of the terms of their disability through the political process. This established that disability is discursively constructed – it is a social position, not a permanent physical impairment. Veterans’ organizations might sweep socially problematic old soldiers up into Homes, but veterans always retained their influence at the ballot box. Thus, the same political process which enabled the state to seize unprecedented powers of surveillance also kept these new powers at least somewhat in check. vii
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