The Impact of the Civil War on Philanthropy and Social Welfare

THE IMPACT OF THE CIVIL WAR ON PHILANTHROPY AND SOCIAL WELFARE Robert H. Bremner "Phüanthropy, in its broadest sense, has always found its widest sphere of activity in war time." Linus P. Brockett Many authors who come late and ill-prepared to the study of the Civil War confess to having thought of it as something that happened between the first and second parts of the American history survey course. Of course, they had often heard the war described as the central drama of American history; but to many it seemed more like the half-time ceremonies of an athletic contest, an intermission during which the real teams temporarily surrendered the field to symbolic performers—bandsmen, drum majors, and pom-pom girls. The present writer, after having agreed to write a book about the impact of the Civil War on philanthropy and social welfare, came to Uve with the war and, not surprisingly, began to regard it, at least within the contexts here considered, as a link rather than a break in American social development. As opposed to what Walt Whitman called the real war, the war of the combatants, attention here has been fastened on the response of the civilian population to the demands of war and on efforts to maintain and advance civilian welfare during wartime. If not the "real war," these sideline skirmishes among noncombatants were part of the larger struggle. Because the larger struggle was a civil war, its impact on social welfare and reform in both the Union and the Confederacy must be considered. To say the least, that makes generalization difficult. One generalization that can be made is that despite, or because of, sectional animosity, partisan rivalry, social tension, and religious and ethnic prejudice, the ten or twelve years just before the Civil War was a period of lively activity in humanitarian reform. In every section of the country states built or enlarged institutions for the 293 294civil war history insane, deaf, and blind. Public agencies and voluntary associations shared a concern for youth and often collaborated in providing for orphaned, homeless, or wayward children. The epidemics, disasters, and economic vicissitudes of the 1850's gave Americans frequent opportunities to display and develop their talent for organizing emergency relief campaigns. Meanwhile, the mission, tract, Bible, and Sunday school societies, plus a variety of reform organizations, developed systematic methods of tapping the benevolent resources of the country. These large-scale operations, combined with local, regional , and national disaster-relief programs, led to considerable refinements in the arts of fund raising. Practically every charitable fund-raising device later employed in the Civil War was already in use in the 1850's. Well before the war, however, Americans had grown accustomed to giving service as well as money to charitable work. Women took active, sometimes leading roles in prewar benevolent and civic enterprises. Thus, while the male-dominated Washington Monument Society floundered in discord, the Mount Vernon Ladies Association succeeded in purchasing Washington's home and tomb as a national shrine. Children, too, engaged in philanthropy, contributing pennies and dimes to such causes as the building of packet ships to serve mission stations in the South Seas. It would be a mistake, however, to paint the prewar charitable scene in too rosy colors. The rancor and extremism, no less than the vigor and expansiveness of the times, left their marks on efforts to do good. The main problem was that while Americans of the 1850's lived in an age of high aspiration and rising expectation, they also lived, as their forefathers had lived, in an economy of scarcity. When almost any goal seemed attainable, good causes proliferated, some of a highly specialized nature—a nursery for children of wet-nurses, for example. Yet in the best of times the scant surplus available for philanthropic purposes was insufficient to meet all demands on public and private bounty. Competition among rival charitable, benevolent, and reform organizations was therefore intense. Some agencies regularly directed their appeals to sentiment, impulse, particularism, and prejudice. Countering them were other societies and reformers who, for a generation before 1860, had denounced "thoughtless liberality" and "careless relief," and attempted to make philanthropy an...