Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War

Epilogue

Epilogue Around 180,000 black men went to war; something like 143,000 came home. More than 8,000 of those men received honorable discharge for disabilities , with the most important diagnoses being tuberculosis, chronic diarrhea, rheumatism, and hernias. Some 1,200 men were disabled by gunshot wounds or amputations. Many more went home weakened by infectious diseases and the sequelae of prolonged malnutrition and exposure . These factors no doubt had a negative impact on veterans’ postwar earnings. The war may have helped the men, however, exposing them to educational opportunities and broader geographic knowledge. For those men who lived to 1890, the pension program for Union Civil War veterans eased their retirement years and prolonged survival, although white soldiers fared better than their black comrades after the war, just as they had during it. The discharge of the colored units was often delayed to the end of 1865 and into 1866. When free of the service, many black men returned south, from whence they came, seeking family members and a new start. Not surprisingly, their presence rankled southern whites, especially those men who had fought as Rebels in the war. In Kentucky slavery persisted in the summer of 1865; not until the Thirteenth Amendment went into e¤ect later that year was slavery finally completed banned from the United States. The world these soldiers entered was tumultuous. Southerners needed black labor and sought to replace slavery with a near-bondage equivalent, while ex-slaves sought independence from white hegemony as well as opportunities for political voice, independent livelihoods, and protection from white backlash. The Freedman’s Bureau promised support , including hospitals for the sick, but by 1870 it had dissolved, never fulfilling the hopes that the African American community had for aid from it. The black men who had served as soldiers often carried physical disabilities because of the war but also sometimes accumulated pay that helped them buy land or purchase the accoutrements of a trade.1 Economic historian Chulhee Lee has examined whether wealth accumulation among white Union veterans was helped or hindered by their war experience. Lee studied a database of Union veterans whose occupational status in 1860 and in 1870 was available from census data. After controlling for various characteristics, he found that “combat exposure and wounds while in service had strong negative e¤ects on the total 1870 wealth.” Illness during the war, on the other hand, had no significant e¤ect. He further found that the impact of wealth loss caused by wounds was most severe for veterans who were unskilled workers at the time of enlistment. The e¤ect of leg and foot injuries was particularly strong, as one might expect. It is hard to dig ditches, load boxes, or work construction when unable to bear weight.2 In a sample of black veterans who survived long enough to enter the pension system, my colleagues and I found that 93 percent of the men were working at some form of manual labor, including farming and unskilled or semiskilled jobs.3 It is likely that the disabled black veteran was unable to find gainful employment, especially if damaged in a lower extremity. But he did have the additional income from a pension if he was savvy enough to know how to apply for one. The war may have expanded the black man’s range of choices in occupation and location. For the 140,000 recruited directly from slave plantations or contraband camps, this statement is almost laughable, as it contrasts slavery with freedom. But beyond this massive transition (true for the soldier as well as the nonsoldier), particular benefits accrued to some African American soldiers. Conscientious commanders demanded that education be part of the soldier’s day, with particular emphasis on reading and rudimentary arithmetic. It is hard to know how many soldiers benefitted from this exposure, but everyone who learned to read was that much more able on the job market when he left the army. Another factor in army life which o¤ered the soldier an advantage was his exposure to di¤erent parts of the country and contacts in those disparate areas. The slave who had known only his small region in Alabama, for example, commingled with black men from New York and Philadelphia and learned Epilogue 155 about opportunities in those cities. Economic historians Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn have found that men...