Union veterans and the creation of disability, 1862-1910

283 Pages·2017·1.56 MB·English

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

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my family, my committee, and my friends, especially Eric
Colvard and Matt Reardon. Thanks and love especially to my wife, Jen.
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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.
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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
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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.

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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.
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