Richard F. Miller

For His Wife, His Widow, and His Orphan
Massachusetts and Family Aid During the Civil War

IN JULY 1862, Mrs. Isabella A. Ruoff sent a heartfelt appeal to Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew. In January, her husband, John, had enlisted in the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry; since then, except for one letter, she had received neither word nor money from him. "dear Sir," she wrote Andrew in the semi-literate English often found in these letters,

be kind and answer this and let me know if I have not the wright to call on the State for sum help I have had none as yet I hav got three children & I have had no Money from my husband since January and sickness has prevented me from working please to inform if you can why I do not hear from him I do not think he is killed or wounded as I hav not seen his name amonge the list of killed and wounded in the latte battels.

Three days later, she wrote Andrew again and offered more detail:

I must get my ade from [the] State my children has all been sick with the cerlet [scarlet] fever and ade would be Thankfully receved I have had not tidings of my husband yet.¹

Gov. John A. Andrew (1818–1867). Line engraving by Frederick T. Stuart after a photograph by James W. Black, 1860s. Massachusetts Historical Society.

Mrs. Ruoff's letter typifies the appeals found among Governor Andrew's official correspondence. They all contained similar stories: husbands and sons had gone off to the war; letters were few and promises made–by the soldiers to send home some of their pay or by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and others to provide monthly benefits to families–were not kept. The widowed Mrs. Elizabeth A. Bumpus, whose husband, Benjamin, had been mortally wounded at the battle of Fredericksburg, symbolized many families at the precipice of disaster. She implored Governor Andrew in October 1864 to send the promised assistance: "I have got nothing now if you are not the one to write to please write me by return mail for I am suffering and needy."²

As heart-wrenching as any such letters may be, the pleadings of Mrs. Ruoff and Mrs. Bumpus are surprisingly rare given the 146,730 volunteers, conscripts, and substitutes credited to Massachusetts during the Civil War. No doubt, fumbling bureaucrats lost many letters appealing for help; others, for reasons unknown, never reached the proper office or never found a literate hand to craft them. Tens of thousands of the men who served in the military from Massachusetts were married, many with children. Many thousands more, although unmarried, supported siblings or their parents. In short, the potential for public support appeared great.³

Nevertheless, letters from women like Ruoff and Bumpus represented statistical rarities because of the combined efforts of government and private citizens to create a "safety net" for a large segment of the civilian population–the at-home dependents of soldiers in the field. The comprehensive effects of these programs are rarely given their due by historians, who typically differentiate and treat separately the purely private and governmental relief efforts. The private action that has received attention largely focused on the large-scale work of the Christian and Sanitary commissions. Historians find the larger organizations more attractive, not only because of their ubiquity during the war, but because their national significance makes them more consistent with the theme of "centralization" that informs much Civil War historiography. As a result, the many state and local efforts have not received the attention they deserve and a critically important development in the history of the home front in the North has been missed.

When historians have turned their attention to local private benevolence they usually limit themselves to the many soldiers' fairs and sewing and lint-wrapping circles of civilian women, black and white. In general, the efforts of state and local governments have gone largely unrecognized. Most historical attention has been directed away from wartime social welfare and toward the seemingly excessive bounties, bounty wars between towns competing for recruits, the corrupt state-government administration of conscription (the draft was not federalized until 1863), or the appointment of incompetent regimental officers by state governors. The history of the public/private partnerships that completed the webbing of the Civil War safety net has been assigned an even worse fate–rare mention.⁴

The omission of these support programs from standard Civil War narratives is especially puzzling because the federal government's ability to recruit and sustain its vast army and navy–the fact upon which all else depended, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln–would have been impossible without them. One can hardly overestimate the importance of family assistance during the war. Recent scholarship has established that a soldier's concern for his family's security became one of the most important factors in Southern desertion rates.⁵ Thus, we could reasonably infer that family support programs such as those adopted in Massachusetts played an important role in depressing rates of desertion and encouraging reenlistments. At the same time, we must acknowledge the considerable shortcomings in the Commonwealth's family assistance programs, particularly in their application to families of African American soldiers.

The importance of these programs to recruiting and morale, however, is amply illustrated in an exchange of letters between W. Raymond Lee, colonel of the Twentieth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, and Albert G. Browne, Jr., Governor Andrew's military secretary. Recruiting had slowed considerably during the summer of 1861, compelling Lee to consider any measure that might help fill his ranks. Feeling pressured, he wrote Browne on July 16 asking "if any allowance is made for the support of the families of soldiers in active service?" Brown replied the same day and forwarded a copy of Chapter 222, Massachusetts's first legislative attempt to provide direct aid to at-home dependents. This apparently satisfied Lee, but only for a time. One month later, as his regiment awaited orders to march south, Lee asked Browne to convey an ominous fact to Governor Andrew. "Let me impress on the Commander in chief," he warned, "the imperative necessity of money for the men; their families need it. I hear there is a determination among the men, not to march without money."⁶

Gov. John Andrew and military staff, 1865. Massachusetts Historical Society Photograph Collection.

An additional exchange of letters between Lee and Browne sheds light on a serious inequity in the aid program that injured the dependents of many soldiers enlisted in Massachusetts regiments. On August 19, 1861, Lee asked Browne "whether men, citizens of other states, enlisting in Mass. Regiments, are entitled to the benefit of State provision for families of soldiers[?]" Browne promptly responded with bad news. "The provisions of Chapter 222 of the General Statutes enacted at the last session of the Legislature," he replied in lawyer-like fashion, "apply to no families not resident in cities and towns of this Commonwealth." The law proved devastating to many of the 820 men who had joined the Twentieth Massachusetts in 1861. Precisely 543 were born in other states or in foreign countries; based on an examination of surviving letters, many of these men and their dependents could not receive assistance since they did not qualify as residents of Massachusetts.

The inequity of the law became even more blatant for another body of the state's soldiers recruited eighteen months after the Twentieth Massachusetts and who served in the three African American regiments fielded by the Commonwealth. The vast majority of these soldiers resided in other states or in Canada, and their family members either did not live in Massachusetts or still lived in bondage. The state's black troops not only endured galling discrimination from the federal government in the form of reduced pay–all black troops regardless of rank received roughly half the pay accorded to a white private–but could not receive any Massachusetts family aid whatsoever. Given the sentiments that Col. Lee expressed about his (all white) men not marching without money, it is an extra tribute to Massachusetts's black soldiers that they ever marched at all.⁷

Public and Private Family Aid: An Overview

Despite considerable short-comings in its programs, Massachusetts provided a model of Civil War family aid for other loyal states to emulate.⁸ Strictly public relief efforts–those originated by municipalities or the state–fell into three basic categories. The first consisted of direct cash assistance based on Chapter 222 of General Statutes of Massachusetts, "An Act in Aid of the Families of Volunteers." Under this law, the Commonwealth dispensed cash directly to soldiers' dependents in weekly installments. Additionally, other municipal, state, and federal laws authorized the payment of enlistment (or reenlistment) bounties, which also directly benefited family aid recipients. The second type of government assistance to families consisted of two administrative procedures. Pioneered by Chapter 62 of the General Statutes of Massachusetts, "An Act Concerning the Custody and Distribution of Funds of the Massachusetts Volunteers," the state allowed soldiers in the field to place on deposit (with interest) a percentage of their monthly pay. These monies the state held could then be drawn down by at-home dependents or simply saved for the soldier. Massachusetts also offered employment assistance for returning veterans. In 1865, the Commonwealth established an employment bureau with the sole function of matching veterans' job skills with available private–sector opportunities. The third category of benefits represented the most original use of government resources. This public/private enterprise offered direct government subsidies to private industrial associations, such as the Ladies Industrial Aid Association, to provide employment to female dependents of soldiers.

Organized private family aid efforts fell into two categories, roughly paralleling governmental programs. Some organizations made direct cash payments to soldiers' dependents, such as the Committee of One Hundred, composed of Massachusetts's leading lawyers, merchants, bankers, industrialists, and politicians, as well as the most prominent of the private groups. Significantly, while the Committee operated before the creation of the government's programs, its efforts continued throughout the war. Thus, families entitled to state aid theoretically could also receive private assistance. The second principal category of programs encompassed the industrial aid associations that received state subsidies to employ female members of soldiers' families.

The various family aid programs attempted to meet many critical wartime needs, but they formed a rather poorly stitched safety net. No bureaucrat, public or private, oversaw all relief efforts and the Commonwealth never created a master plan for the private and public spheres to coordinate benefits. However, the lack of coordination was mitigated by the fact that many of the same elite residents of the state led both public and private efforts, suggesting that these aid programs operated in practice as complementary, rather than in a haphazard or competitive fashion. Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that program administrators understood their activities to be complementary–and administrators of public and private bodies sometimes referred recipients to one another's programs. Whatever the level of informal coordination, systemic problems plagued assistance efforts. What modern public administrators might refer to as "delivery of services" proved woefully lacking. Typically, families possessed their best chance of obtaining private aid in the biggest cities where the large organized philanthropic groups operated. Whether the needy who resided in smaller towns could obtain any assistance, beyond ad hoc church and individual acts of charity, is an open question. Furthermore, accessing benefits (or even learning about them) must have required considerable motivation on the part of the recipient. The record reveals little "reaching out" by the Commonwealth to identify eligible recipients. Perhaps diminishing the effects of the state's failure to disseminate benefit information, local newspapers sometimes carried stories about aid programs and would typically describe the benefits available, eligibility requirements, and the location of the office where applications could be made. Presumably, word of mouth would accomplish the rest.⁹

But the biggest inequity in the system resulted from the conflict between the Civil War recruiting system itself and Massachusetts's requirement that limited state aid to "inhabitants" of the Commonwealth. With the outbreak of war, men with families that resided in another state or foreign country began enlisting in Massachusetts regiments. Thousands of men, immigrants from Canada, Ireland, Great Britain, or Germany, had wives, children, or other dependents still abroad. Many others from Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire, who had moved to the Bay State before the war, attracted by its industry or maritime economy, also enlisted in Massachusetts regiments. For various reasons, they did not bring their families with them, thus rendering them ineligible for assistance. The soldiers of the state's three black regiments, most of whom did not live in the Bay State, could not receive benefits for their out-of-state dependents, worsening the effects of federal pay discrimination. For these reasons, it is important to note that while Massachusetts expended a huge sum of money for state aid, the impact on each family was relatively small. Moreover, the system's shortcomings fell hardest on blacks, immigrants, and internal migrants, those probably from rural parts of New England, who could least afford the sacrifices that state and federal officials asked of them.

Although halting and uneven, state, local, and private aid nevertheless proved a lifesaver for many families. When the full range of benefits is calculated–especially the oft-criticized but badly misunderstood system of Civil War bounties–families could, at least hypothetically, garner a subsistence income. The importance of this heretofore underappreciated Civil War safety net in inducing men to serve and most importantly, keeping them in the field, is enormous. Considering the impact of the Confederacy's failure to develop such a comprehensive system on its ability to wage war, one would have to count family aid as an important contribution to the Union's victory.

The War Begins: Local Aid to Dependents

Massachusetts family aid programs began with the start of the war. News of the bombardment of Fort Sumter reached Boston on April 13; two days later, Massachusetts senator Henry Wilson telegraphed Governor Andrew requesting him immediately to send twenty Bay State companies to defend Washington, D.C. In response, Andrew issued General Order 14, mobilizing the Third and Fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiments (comprising approximately two thousand men) for the defense of the federal capital. Within three days, both regiments began their march south.¹⁰ Exactly one day later, on April 19, the city of Boston appropriated $100,000 for "the good care and comfort of the soldiers who may be in Boston."¹¹ The city's next action proved of greater significance to the families of Boston soldiers. On April 22, it adopted a resolution providing that "any officer of the city who should enter the military service" would have "his place ... kept and his pay continued while absent." While this measure applied to every municipal employee who volunteered, it seems likely that it afforded extra reassurance to those recruits with at-home dependents.¹²

Cities and towns throughout the Commonwealth followed Boston in providing for their military volunteers. Indeed, Chelsea, the next largest town in Suffolk County, had acted earlier than Boston and with a far broader mandate. Its city council met on April 18, voting $3,000 for support of the Chelsea Light Infantry (the local militia) and "to provide for the families of the men who shall be mustered in to said service." Just one day earlier, the city of Cambridge met and voted $5,000 "for support of the families of volunteers, to be expended under the direction of a joint-committee consisting of the mayor, two aldermen, and three members of the common council."

For a host of reasons, these efforts did not always mandate the expenditure of strictly "public" funds. Typically, town financing procedures required longer leadtimes than the exigencies of war would allow. On April 19, Concord met in "a popular citizens' meeting" and voted $5,000 by private subscription "in aid of the [local militia] company and their families." At the town's first official meeting called to consider family support of its soldiers (June 13), Concord pledged to appropriate public revenue to match the private donations. However funded, these local family initiatives became the standard. By April 20, Charlestown, Pittsfield, Salem, Dorchester, and many other communities followed suit. The larger point these town actions made clear is that the Commonwealth maintained the conviction throughout the war that the soldier's well-being was inseparable from the welfare of his family.¹³

These efforts, impulsive, generous, and well intended, soon proved unsustainable. As uncoordinated, purely local programs, they quickly proved rife with inefficiencies and inequities. The experiences of three Norfolk County towns illustrate the need for greater coordination. On May 6, 1861, the town of Dorchester authorized the treasurer, with the consent of the selectmen, to borrow up to $15,000 "for the payment of twenty dollars a month for three months to each volunteer" who was married and "fifteen [dollars] to each who is single, while in active service." At the same time, Dedham, located only a few miles away, voted to provide ten dollars per month apparently without regard to the marital status of the soldier. Nearby Milton split the difference; it offered to pay ten dollars to bachelors and fifteen dollars to married volunteers. The lack of a uniform statewide benefit system not only resulted in unequal distribution of benefits but threatened an evil that the "dark side" of the bounty system would later deliver–reporting multiple or false residencies compounded by "double dipping."¹⁴

The prolonged nature of the conflict and the war's insatiable demand for men finally ended these local programs. The April 1861 volunteers served for only ninety days, thus entailing a relatively brief commitment on the part of towns to provide family aid to a handful of militia members–certainly well within the financial capacities of most Bay State towns. But as April became May and then June, the Lincoln administration's demand for troops grew relentlessly and expectations for a long, rather than a short, war became general. New regiments formed in subsequent months bore little resemblance to the first militia units, many of which dated from the eighteenth century. The new volunteer regiments would serve for three years and consisted of men with little or no military experience. Most of these new recruits sacrificed full-time jobs, and many had large numbers of dependents. Recruitment figures for 1861 tell the story, and point to the inevitable demise of local ad hoc public family aid efforts and the need for a uniform statewide program. By December 31, 1861, Massachusetts already had provided 33,636 men to the army. Subtracting the number of "three months' men" whose terms already had expired (and thus, were no longer eligible for family aid), leaves a balance of 29,900 men, most, including some reenlistees from the earlier short-term units, pledged to serve three years. Adding about 11,000 naval enlistments, the total of Massachusetts's men under arms as of January 1, 1862, numbered some 40,900.¹⁵

The situation in Boston reveals the potential magnitude of family aid costs. By December 31, 1861, the city had 10,971 men in either three-year (8,943) or nine-month regiments (2,028). For these men, the City Relief Committee reported that for the month of November 1861, it had paid $14,000 to the families of 1,467 service men; in October, the city had paid over $11,000, indicating the growing trend. By annualizing November's payout, the city would be committing itself to some $168,000 in support payments to soldiers' families. Since the city could count on about $2,500,000 in annual tax revenue, the potential cost burden to the city is apparent. Additionally, by the middle of 1861 most leaders understood that the number of troops in the field would only rise.¹⁶

The State Steps In: Chapter 222

The war was only five weeks old when on May 23, 1861, Governor Andrew signed Chapter 222, "An Act in Aid of the Families of Volunteers, and for Other Purposes" into law.¹⁷ Consisting of seven brief sections, this statute provided for state reimbursement to towns for aid given to families of those "mustered into or enlisted in the service of the United States." One historian considers this act among the most important laws passed by Massachusetts during the entire war, "for it illustrated markedly the disposition everywhere manifested to so far as possible rob war of its horrors." Noting the overwhelming support in the General Court for this measure, another historian declared that "Party and denominational lines disappeared before the strong tide of patriotic benevolence flowing from the people." Chapter 222 intended to relieve the financial burden that towns and cities began to assume during the first weeks of the war. The statute's general scheme authorized municipalities to raise money by taxation to distribute to the families of volunteers. If the towns complied with certain conditions, the Commonwealth would later reimburse them. In this critical piece of social legislation, the state took a major step toward increasing its responsibility for individual welfare.¹⁸

Chapter 222 imposed conditions designed to prevent abuse and impose fiscal constraint, mirroring countless government-to-government reimbursement schemes adopted since that time. Although the state left distribution in the hands of local officials, it required towns to submit detailed rolls of recipients as well as to establish benefit ceilings. The act also required beneficiaries to be inhabitants of the town, but it mandated no test for residency, likewise leaving its determination to local administrators. Chapter 222 defined beneficiaries as soldiers' wives and their children under age sixteen, and took a laudably expansive view of dependency by further providing for "each parent, brother, sister, or child, who, at the time of [the soldier's] enlistment, was dependent on him for support." In all probability, inclusion of these additional dependents increased the numbers of men contemplating enlistment and significantly lessened the anxieties of those in the field. Section 5 of Chapter 222 contained benefit ceiling provisions which specified the limits of the Commonwealth's generosity. It authorized the state treasurer to reimburse "a sum not exceeding one dollar per week for the wife and one dollar per week for each child or parent" of the soldier so long as the total amount distributed each month to any one family does "not exceed twelve dollars per month for all persons" eligible under the Act. In sum, the Act could provide an annual maximum of $144.¹⁹

Any discussion of the Civil War safety net must be understood in the context of prevailing wages. The Federal Census of 1860 found that in Massachusetts the average daily wage of a "day laborer without board" was $1.18. The average daily wage of a carpenter (the Census presumably sought to differentiate wage rates between unskilled and skilled labor) "without board" was $1.70. Assuming a six-day work week and subtracting ten days for holidays, illness, and so forth, this produced a working class annual average pay range of between $357.54 and $515.10. Taken alone, family aid would have replaced only about one-third of average working-class income.²⁰ Needless to say, even this meager allowance shrank in value as inflation depreciated northern currency during the war.

The system also made obtaining assistance difficult. For example, dependents residing in Boston first would have to visit the State House and obtain a certificate proving military service of the sponsoring soldier. Then the applicant would have to find the Relief Office located in Court Square, several city blocks distant, and fill out an application. From there, candidates for relief "are sent to the Ward Committee, and, if approved, their application is signed by the Alderman of the ward; it is then returned to the Relief Officer, and the draft is received for the money." While this process appeared knotted with red tape, authorities estimated that the existence of state aid had increased enlistments in the City of Boston by one-third.²¹ State Adjutant-General William Schouler would later emphasize how the law imposed fiscal controls on smaller towns, claiming that it prevented "towns from too much extravagance in providing for the dependence of the soldiers." He also conceded that the state's actions intended to "incite to action towns which might not, otherwise, make suitable provision for dependents."²²

Facing page: Broadside, 1862. Printed by J. E. Farwell & Co. Massachusetts Historical Society.

Whatever the state's recollected motives, men who left families behind saw things quite differently, and the politicians knew it. No one in the largely Irish Ninth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, for example, could have misunderstood Governor Andrew when, on presenting the unit with its state colors, he urged them to "Take this as a pledge of affectionate care from the State of your kindred and homes."²³ Likewise, when the Fifteenth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment formed, one of its members recalled that the "most liberal appropriations were unanimously made. The comfortable support of the families of volunteers was guaranteed. Thus with one feeling and one purpose, the citizens of Worcester County prepared to take their part in maintaining the integrity of the Union. Such were the conditions under which the Fifteenth Regiment was born."²⁴

Helping Those Who Help Themselves: Massachusetts and the Allotment System

Fortunately for dependents, direct aid to families did not represent Massachusetts's only answer to the problem of dependent support. Another scheme, long favored by Governor Andrew, established procedures for allowing soldiers to direct all or some of their monthly pay to their at-home dependents. In July 1861, the Federal Congress, at the behest of the United States Sanitary Commission, enacted the "United States Allotment System," which allowed soldiers "to forgo a portion of their monthly pay in favor of their families and friends." Under the law, President Lincoln appointed three allotment commissioners for each state. Among the three from Massachusetts was Frank B. Fay, mayor of Chelsea and a sponsor of the Committee of One Hundred. But state officials soon determined that the Federal bureaucracy, obsessed with expense control, could not implement the law. The paymaster general refused to bear the increased clerical cost of administering the program and the War Department shared this reluctance. The government reacted coolly to suggestions that the Adams Express, a private company, should be paid to administer the details.²⁵

The tens of thousands of troops that Massachusetts already fielded did not permit Governor Andrew the luxury of waiting for more effective administration from the federal government. Thus, he acted with his customary dispatch and ordered his allotment commissioners (even before their appointments were confirmed) to visit every Massachusetts regiment and explain the system, encourage participation, and appoint sub-agents (usually a regimental officer) to collect and forward the money. Andrew's orders must have been zealously and effectively implemented, for by October 1861 the rank and file of at least three Massachusetts regiments had sent between $16,000 and $20,000 each back home, much of it intended for distribution to dependents. Further experience with federal authorities to assure centralized administration of the allotment system failed to satisfy the governor and accordingly, in March 1862, he secured passage from the General Court of Chapter 62, "An Act Concerning the Custody and Distribution of Funds of the Massachusetts Volunteers."²⁶

The general scheme of Chapter 62 leaves little doubt that the allotment system intended to supplement direct family aid. Section 1 authorized the state's treasurer to receive pay soldiers remitted "for the use of any person in this commonwealth"–thus limiting draws to inhabitants of Massachusetts. The state made the special status of these monies clear by exempting them from any legal attachment–thus ensuring that only the soldier or his designated dependents could draw funds. Later in the war, the legislature further protected the status of these assets by prohibiting, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, any town treasurer from deducting "any charge, commission, or claim for compensation" from monies intended for at-home dependents. This provision sought to curb the abuse of so-called claim agents, who, for a fee, would "help" dependents process claims. Section 2 guaranteed that once the state received funds it would notify the town treasurer where the soldier or his designated dependents resided, stating the amount received and the name of any beneficiary. The town then would be authorized to make payouts and receive reimbursements from the state. Section 3 allowed that funds not drawn down by any beneficiary within thirty days would begin earning interest at 5 percent. If no beneficiary could be found or if none had been designated, remitted funds would be deposited in the soldier's account and earn 5 percent interest immediately.²⁷

The forwarding of monies directly to towns was the closest Massachusetts came to a modern "delivery of services" concept of family aid and represented a wise and important means of distribution. In effect, the state had authorized a soldier's hometown to make the distributions, thereby eliminating the prospect of checks lost or delayed in the mail; expensive, vexing, and time-consuming travel to Boston; and the unhappy prospect of dealing with unknown bureaucrats. Likewise, the state's offer of 5 percent interest on aid accounts represented an important subsidy–encouraging soldiers to use the allotment program while simultaneously encouraging families to tap other resources while their money earned interest guaranteed by the Commonwealth.

Adjutant-General Schouler would later boast of the social policies that lay behind the allotment system. "It secured to many men and to their families much money which would otherwise have been wasted; and it induced and encouraged a habit of saving, the effect of which may have a material, beneficial influence upon those who practised it. It also lessened the taxes which would otherwise have been imposed upon the Commonwealth." In short, without allotments, the state would have been forced to increase family aid and the taxes to pay for it. Some idea of how much tax was avoided and the program's general success may be gauged by the level of participation. Altogether, forty-one Massachusetts units sent back over $3,000,000 under the allotment system.²⁸

The desirable economic effects of the allotment system need to be considered alongside the benefits of direct family aid. If a soldier allotted 100 percent of his monthly pay (thirteen dollars per month for a private) this, combined with the maximum of family aid (twelve dollars per month) could raise a dependent family's income to at least twenty-five dollars per month or $300 per year. Obviously, just as few soldiers allotted 100 percent of their monthly pay, many families probably did not qualify for the maximum family aid distribution. Considering the aid available to eligible dependents of Massachusetts soldiers and the helpful allotment program, the Commonwealth had gone far toward erecting an admittedly makeshift but nonetheless near revolutionary social safety net for its citizens who sacrificed so much for it and the Union cause.²⁹

Enlistment Bounties

Few Civil War policies have received as much bad press from commentators as the payment of enlistment bounties. The dean of American Civil War historians, James M. McPherson, concludes in Battle Cry of Freedom that "in the end, bounty-stimulated volunteering came to seem an even greater evil than the draft." While admitting that the system raised 750,000 men, he nevertheless asserted that "Relatively few of the bounty men ... actually became cannon fodder, however, for many deserted before they ever got into action."³⁰ Adjutant-General Schouler also believed in a connection between large bounties and desertions. "It is a fact, considered without explanation," he declared bitterly after the war, "not creditable to our people."³¹ Clearly, both historians and contemporaries preferred that an epic, ideologically driven conflict such as the Civil War should have been waged by patriot volunteers, not Hessians. Unfortunately, wartime realities conflicted with civic fantasies.

Most criticisms of the enlistment bounties omit discussion of the system's chief inducement: providing financial assistance to military dependents. The need for the bounty system becomes especially clear when one compares the pay scales of commissioned officers (who were ineligible for bounties) with those of enlisted men. For most of the war, the soldier with the rank of private received thirteen dollars per month and a small allowance for uniforms, equipment, and rations. Second lieutenants received forty-five dollars per month with a four dollar allowance for rations. Captains received sixty dollars per month, with a four dollar allowance for rations and the right to have one servant. Putting aside the various subsidies given for officers' servants (they were paid, at government expense, thirteen dollars plus allowances for clothing and rations), the pay differential between an infantry captain and a private amounted to $768 versus $156. In short, captains received nearly 500 percent more pay than enlisted men.³² Clearly, even by prevailing economic standards, the army willingly paid a "living wage" to at least some of its employees.

Pay scales with this kind of imbalance reflects a profound class bias, as well as a woeful ignorance of volunteer demographics. Two assumptions appear to have informed those who devised the pay scale: first, that officers, as gentlemen, somehow possessed greater financial requirements; perhaps officials believed that the older men who became officers were more likely to have families. Second, the government perhaps believed that it had to compete in the market place for the desired skills of older, more experienced men recruited for the officer corps. Of course, a pay differential is justified given the managerial responsibilities of officers. A brief look at regimental record books indicates that officers devoted substantial time to filling out countless forms for recruiting, orders and requisitions, reports of various duties, attendance, passes, and so forth. And of course, officers would have to bear the sheer weight of responsibility for managing men in combat.

As for the abysmally low wages paid to enlisted men, officials may have assumed that younger men possessed smaller families or, perhaps, had few if any family responsibilities. As younger men with limited experience, their labor could not command as large a salary in the civilian job market as those who became officers. But judging from the profile of one fairly typical three- years' Massachusetts unit, these assumptions could not have been more wrong. The average ages for officers, enlisted men, and non-commissioned officers for 1861 were virtually identical: 27.56 percent, 27.17 percent, and 27.25 percent, respectively. Regarding employment, 50.70 percent of enlisted men were either skilled artisans or skilled industrial workers. Only 38.86 percent claimed jobs that could fairly be labeled entry level or unskilled labor (day workers, farmers, and maritime). The balance of men in the unit consisted of skilled service workers and those with a professional background (5.46 percent). In short, while some pay differential based on greater responsibility could be fully justified, the prevailing differential represented a gross inequity and wholly failed to account for the basic family needs of the soldiers. Besides direct and indirect state aid, the much maligned enlistment bounties eventually filled this yawning gap.³³

Bounties, which grew in proportion to manpower requirements, constituted the "third leg" of the public sector benefit scheme for military dependents of Massachusetts volunteers.³⁴ While the practice's very mention conjures up images of crooked bounty jumpers or drunken recruits on rowdy spending sprees, the legislators responsible for authorizing these payouts saw matters quite differently. In November 1863, the Massachusetts House of Representatives debated the issue of whether to pay large bounties at the time of enlistment, or in installments over the term of the volunteers' service. Rep. Joshua N. Marshall of Lowell declared that, "he knew that two-thirds of the Lowell volunteers had left their bounties with their families." Rep. Jonathan A. Lane of Boston argued for a large, immediate, bounty payment, because it "would secure the greater number of enlistments." He went on to explain that, "Sober, sensible men desired the whole sum to invest for the benefit of their families; and those who would squander money were only a minority." Rep. George J. George of Newburyport agreed, declaring that "two hundred soldiers of returned regiments [were] in his city, and they were unanimous in saying that if they re-enlisted they wanted the whole bounty down to leave with their families if they saw fit." Clearly, not everyone was convinced that the abuses of the system outweighed its benefits.³⁵

The economic significance of the 1863 bounty to Massachusetts families is apparent from a proclamation Governor Andrew issued the day after the legislative debate concluded. Consistent with the new law, Andrew offered recruits a choice between one "up-front" payment of $325 or a potentially larger amount by electing to accept installments. Choosing installments would aggregate some five dollars more over the term of service than taking the lump-sum payment. The installment plan would provide the soldier with fifty dollars at the time of recruitment and then twenty dollars per month for fourteen months ($330). Whichever plan the recruit selected, the state's interest was the same–to induce otherwise favorably disposed citizens to volunteer knowing that their families would be somewhat more financially secure during his absence. "[T]he purpose of the State," the governor declared, "is to provide for the comfort and protection of the soldier's household, so that the highest duties of patriotism may be found consistent with those of domestic affection."³⁶

Averaged over a three-year term, the 1863 bounty could contribute an additional $9.16 per month to a family's income. When a recruit accepted the entire amount at once, deposited at 5 percent interest (the guaranteed rate at the "state bank") and withdrawn in equal installments, the bounty could yield approximately $25 to $30 dollars more over the term of service. In rare cases where dependents qualified for maximum direct family aid, the soldier allotted 100 percent of his pay, and a bounty was taken as a lump sum and drawn down with interest, an aggregate replacement income might amount to as much as $34.16, or $409.92 per annum. Such a recipient would then be receiving an amount just short of the average of high and low working class wages according to the 1860 Census estimates. However, cases of maximum payouts on all three programs were probably unusual (because of the many variables that would have to coincide: family size, remittance of 100 percent of pay, and enlistment availability at a time of high bounty payouts). Factoring in the destructive effects of wartime price inflation, at best the average amounts realized from these programs might have placed dependents in circumstances little better than subsistence. Nevertheless, the combined effect of government programs probably kept the wolf from the door of many Bay State households. Well-documented abuses of the bounty system were commonplace; but it seems equally true that in far more cases the enlistment bounty worked as intended.³⁷

Private Aid

The war also gave birth to several unprecedented private and mixed public/private programs that, like their government counterparts, supported at-home dependents of Massachusetts soldiers. Three of these–the Committee of One Hundred, the Boston Soldiers' Fund Association, and the Ladies Industrial Aid Association–merit close study. The largest organizations of their kind in the Commonwealth, they represent prototypes of countless private and public/private partnerships created since the Civil War. Government might have possessed the authority to act, but only the private sector had the necessary resources, especially the talents of a commercial class that had propelled Massachusetts to become the sixth wealthiest state in the Union.³⁸

Additionally, the Committee of One Hundred resembled a vastly expanded version of earlier New England style reforms. Clifford S. Griffin, writing in The Ferment of Reform, 1830–1860, concluded that the "reformers who sought to preserve the Union did so in the name of all the principles in whose behalf reformers had claimed to act during the preceding three decades (before the war]." Yet a quick glance at the list of Committee organizers reveals that not all of the most prominent promoters of family aid programs were reformers. Indeed, Committee membership reflected the full spectrum of social opinion, ranging from abolitionists like "Secret Six" member Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe to Robert C. Winthrop, a conservative, unreconstructed Whig and hardened opponent of reform. But as Griffin stated, the humanitarian impulses behind social reform were not the exclusive province of abolitionists, temperance advocates, or those who sought better treatment for the blind or insane. The "outpouring [was] not only humanitarianism, or Christian love, or a desire to realize fully the principles of American democracy. Reform also represented an outpouring of all the peculiar aspects of human nature in antebellum America." Some or all of these motives accounted for the private sector's vigorous efforts to assist the families of military volunteers. Robert C. Winthrop might have been an archenemy of abolition and reform generally, but that did not prevent him from serving as a long-time chairman of the Boston Board of Overseers of the Poor or as a vice president of the Franklin Medal Society (which awarded medals and scholarships to deserving high school students).³⁹

The Committee of One Hundred

The first and most prominent private aid effort to organize on behalf of soldier dependents, the Committee of One Hundred came into being shortly after the attack on Fort Sumter. A meeting of the powerful Boston Board of Trade convened at its headquarters in the imposing Merchants Exchange building on State Street. Those in attendance considered "the propriety of an organization to receive and to take care of contributions for the soldiers and the families of soldiers of the Commonwealth now in service and to be called into service hereafter." Acknowledging "the liberal contributions" already made on behalf of soldiers and their families, the Committee wished to bring some order to the chaos of private contributions that had suddenly flooded the State House. Moving forward, they looked ahead and determined that the money raised thus far would soon be exhausted. "[The] enlistment of the larger portion of the troops," the Committee's statement declared,

is for a short term, and the greater part of such funds [already raised] will probably be expended within the present year. New troops may be called into service; the contest may be prolonged, and the generosity, whose indulgence is its own great reward, may find itself unable to give further aid.

The Committee immediately established a Soldiers' Fund which would be used for a number of purposes, the most important being for aid to soldiers' dependents. For this purpose, it established a funding arm, called the Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund (MSF).⁴⁰

No one who viewed the sparkling roll of prominent Committee sponsors would have failed to note the implied declaration of statewide unity for the cause of aid to soldiers' dependents. Virtually the entire membership of the Boston Board of Trade joined as well as almost every other segment of State Street: men such as textile tycoons A. A. Lawrence and William Gray, insurance magnate J. Ingersoll Bowditch, industrialist John Murray Forbes, real estate developer David Sears, countinghouse king Thatcher Magoun, shipping merchant William Ropes, and dry goods moguls Charles G. Nazro and James M. Beebe. Prominent lawyers such as Ebenezer R. Hoar, George Hillard, and Dred Scott dissenter Benjamin R. Curtis appeared on the list, together with Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, Nantucket banker William Mitchell, and the former presidential candidate, Harvard president, and ubiquitous statesman Edward Everett.

The sense of unity also could be found in the Committee's geographic and political diversity. Although concentrated in eastern Massachusetts, sponsors also hailed from the larger towns of the central and western part of the state. Besides Winthrop and Howe, other unlikely ideological bedfellows appeared on the list of sponsors: Charles G. Green, editor of the conservative newspaper Boston Post, and the abolitionist wool merchant George W. Bond; the 1860 Constitutional Union Party candidate for governor A. A. Lawrence and his opponent, abolitionist John A. Andrew; George B. Hillard, the arch-Democrat and soon-to-be editor of the reactionary newspaper Boston Courier, and John Murray Forbes, arch-Republican, abolitionist, and industrial magnate. Beside Governor Andrew, the Committee also included eight former governors, the sitting chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, Democratic mayor of Boston Joseph M. Wightman, and the serving mayors of Cambridge, Charlestown, Chelsea, Fall River, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, New Bedford, Newburyport, Roxbury, Salem, Springfield, and Worcester–after Boston, the thirteen largest towns in the Commonwealth. The involvement of these urban politicians would facilitate referrals between public and private sources of aid for especially hard cases. Indeed, scribbled at the bottom of Mrs. Ruoff's pleas for aid is a note in Governor Andrew's handwriting directing his secretary to "Make a copy of this letter–send to Mayor of Worcester, asking him if some aid cannot be sent to Mrs. Ruoff." Mrs. Ruoff had been living in Worcester when her husband enlisted and Isaac Davis, Worcester's mayor, was a Committee sponsor.⁴¹ There is more than anecdotal evidence to suggest that the Soldiers' Fund saw its mission as a complement to the larger state effort. Speaking to a rally held in Cambridge shortly after launching of the Fund, former governor (and then Harvard Law School professor) Emory Washburn declared that even with the family aid bill (signed into law two days later) many families remained ineligible for state aid, especially the foreign-born. Fund leadership understood the depth of the need.⁴²

Organized at two levels, Committee leadership included Governor Andrew as president with each of the ex-governors serving as vice presidents. Day-to-day administration rested with an executive committee composed almost exclusively of businessmen. These included Gray, Dr. Bowditch, Beebe, commission merchant Alpheus Hardy, and whiskey distiller John T. Heard. Action soon followed declaration. By late May, following a meeting chaired by Josiah Quincy, Jr. (son of the early nineteenth-century mayor and himself a former mayor of Boston), the Committee established a permanent office in Boston's Union Hall, "to be opened daily between the hours of 3 1/2 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon, where applicants for relief could make their wants known." A "Relief Committee" investigated applications before making disbursements and George W. Bond became the Fund's agent "to visit the headquarters of [the] volunteer companies now in this city, and receive the names and residences of those who have families in this city."⁴³ Seeking to disseminate word of its activities to the needy more widely, the MSF also sent circulars announcing its aid programs and eligibility rules to every clergyman and to every president, cashier, and treasurer of all the savings banks in the Commonwealth as well as to regimental commanders in the field.⁴⁴

Although widely marketed, the Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund served a narrow constituency. Unlike the state aid program, which only required military service for eligibility, the MSF limited beneficiaries "to sick and wounded soldiers and their families, and to the families of soldiers who die in battle or of disease."⁴⁵ In short, it targeted especially hard cases, the dependents of soldier-breadwinners who died in service or received a discharge because of physical disability and received no pay or allotment, or whose families lost eligibility for state aid because of death of discharge. The MSF operated in part like a private pension fund and in part like disability insurance, depending upon whether the soldier whose family received aid had died, become disabled, or temporarily incapacitated because of wounds or disease. While dependents could receive the balances due on bounties after a soldier's death, state aid ceased completely. Clearly, in providing benefits to the dependents of soldiers who had died in service or who had received honorable discharges because of wounds or disease, the MSF filled an important gap in the state program.

Given its limited mandate, the MSF's first disbursements helped relatively few families. Through September 1862, the Fund had distributed $10,497.50 to 269 people; 61 of these returned to the fund for additional help, 20 came back a third time, and 3 for a fourth time. Of the total number who received benefits, 60 were the families of soldiers, wounded soldiers, or those ill on furlough; 88 were wounded, disabled, or discharged soldiers or their families; and 83 were the widows of soldiers who died in the service. Four hundred ninety-two children benefited from these distributions (Children were not considered direct beneficiaries and were not so listed; however, the fund wished to demonstrate the ripple effect of benefits and the 492 figure represented the children of the 269 direct beneficiaries). Overwhelmingly, the majority of recipients came from the eastern, urbanized part of the state. In October 1862, the number of gifts was listed by the town in which the recipient lived: of 353 cash gifts made, 248 went to recipients in Boston, 19 to Roxbury, 15 to Lawrence, 11 to Chelsea, 10 to Charlestown, 5 to West Roxbury, and 45 others "in various parts of the State." However, in typical Yankee fashion, the Fund never distributed money in lump sums or large amounts. Once it approved a distribution, the MSF deposited money into an interest-bearing account at the Franklin Savings Bank "with the unusual stipulation that one, two, or three dollars shall be drawn weekly." Clearly, the MSF acted with great prudence, intent on protecting its resources. The Fund's officers felt compelled to act so parsimoniously, believing that the "number of applicants constantly increases; and our report at the next quarterly meeting of the Committee of One Hundred will probably show a large expenditure."⁴⁶

As the war generated an ever-escalating number of qualified recipients, disbursements increased. In 1864, the MSF assisted 612 persons, including 228 widows or mothers whose breadwinner sons were killed in combat. Fund leaders believed that these families included 1,070 children. Once again, the bulk of beneficiaries resided in eastern Massachusetts. Given the membership of the Committee of One Hundred, some level of informal coordination with the state family aid program likely took place. By naming Governor Andrew as president of the Committee and the mayors of Massachusetts's largest municipalities as vice presidents, the MSF, through its connection with many local officials, could keep a watchful eye on families in the greatest need. Nevertheless, we have to judge the overall efforts by the MSF as disappointing. During its existence, it distributed only $85,766, a small sum relative to the size of state aid programs. The actual number of cases that received assistance is only slightly less disappointing at 5,015.⁴⁷

The Boston Soldiers' Fund Association

A more complete picture of wartime private aid organizations must include the Boston Soldiers' Fund Association (BSFA). Established in November 1862, the BSFA began its services in a year that witnessed horrific fighting in the Peninsula Campaign, at Second Manassas, and at Antietam. While the Boston Fund cooperated closely with the Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund, it differed in one critical respect–the BSFA primarily served the city's poor, and chiefly those within one ward–the seventh, home to a large number of Boston's Irish residents. One look at the leadership of the BSFA reveals that it was little more than the city Ward Seven Committee renamed. Thus, it bore the stamp of the city's Irish and carried with it traces of festering ethnic resentment at social inequities aggravated by the war.

Members of the BSFA, chaired by the outspoken and indefatigable editor of the Boston Pilot, Patrick Donahoe, believed that the war's burdens fell disproportionally upon some Boston neighborhoods. Even the Brahmin Daily Advertiser believed that Ward Seven had sent, "in all probability, more men in proportion to its population, to the army than any other [ward], there reside within this ward comparatively few individuals of wealth." The newspaper further suggested that as "nearly all the wards have contributed [to their own funds] very liberally, it would seem just that all of them, which are to participate in its benefits, should do something towards increasing this fund." The language might seem somewhat vague, but contemporaries could not mistake its meaning, especially after Boston's recently concluded and anxiety-ridden experience with conscription. The Irish Seventh Ward had contributed more men than any other, thus reducing the draft calls on wealthier sections of the city. Thus, in the BSFA's view, the city's other wards had a duty to support the Seventh's soldier families. Otherwise, the war effort might become, in the southern phrase, "A rich man's war but a poor man's fight."

Given the economic disparities between the Irish Seventh Ward and the Brahmin Sixth Ward (posh Beacon Hill), few would have doubted the Advertiser's assessment. As the paper reminded its readers, there "are cases of daily occurrence where soldiers, wounded or disabled, or their families, require relief not sufficiently provided by their pay, bounty, or State Aid."⁴⁸ But this statement also suggests another truth–that aside from its unique ethnic stamp, the BSFA shared with other aid efforts the understanding that its activities complemented the state's relief programs. State leaders saw benefit programs to at-home dependents in the aggregate and, along with other associations, the BSFA sought to fill the gaps.

Boston Soldiers' Fund broadside. Massachusetts Historical Society.

The practical administration of the BSFA differed significantly from that of the Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund. The latter had placed politicians as nominal officers, while leaving control of the executive committee with State Street, but the BSFA reversed this arrangement. Its nominal offices were held by private sector figures–President Edward S. Tobey, a prominent merchant, Treasurer Samuel H. Walley, president of the Revere Bank, and secretary Martin Brimmer, a Brahmin lawyer and philanthropist. A majority of its executive committee, however, were past or present city politicians; four of the committee's seven members had served as city alderman. Clearly, in identifying needy cases, these men had the closest ties to the neighborhood and would have had an "ear" for those families in greatest need. This may explain why the BSFA contributed assistance to so many families.⁴⁹ Between October 1, 1863, and September 15, 1864, it expended a total of $10,235, assisting 1,042 persons across all twelve wards of the city. Beginning in December 1862, it contributed $19,189 to all its cases. For the comparable period, the Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund helped only about 900 dependents.⁵⁰ Moreover, the BSFA proved more successful in reaching those most in need. Of the total distributions for the four quarters ending on September 15, 1864, over 58 percent reached dependents living in wards seven, two, and twelve, although these areas of the city accounted for barely over 24 percent of the personal estate valuations for the prior year.⁵¹

Boston Soldiers' Fund Association. List of contributors from Ward 12, 1861–1865. Ms. Sbd-115, Massachusetts Historical Society.

The differences between the numbers of dependents assisted may be also explained by a high degree of coordination between the two groups, even to the point of sharing some of the same leadership. Martin Brimmer served as secretary for the Massachusetts and Boston organizations and Benjamin H. Greene, a professional reformer who had worked at the Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute, served as the office manager for both bodies. "Thus both the Boston and Massachusetts Associations," the Daily Advertiser assured the public, "cooperate for the nearly similar objects for which they were organized."⁵²

A Public/Private Mix: The Ladies Industrial Aid Association

Wartime Boston hosted another aid organization dedicated to assisting soldiers' families–the Ladies Industrial Aid Association (LIAA). In many respects, the LIAA was the most "modern" of the family aid programs. Directed exclusively at the wives and widows of soldiers, it provided employment rather than emergency handouts or cash assistance. But in an innovative move, it performed its function with direct subsidies from the Commonwealth. In short, the LIAA resembled the public-private work programs that emerged a century later as a part of the Great Society reforms of the 1960s.

The Ladies Industrial Aid Association developed out of an 1861 experiment funded by an anonymous donor, probably connected with the Boston Board of Trade. Early records are sketchy–the initial organization was probably headed by its first president, the textbook author and educator, forty-two-year-old Anna Cabot (Jackson) Lowell, wife of Charles Russell Lowell, Sr., brother of the poet James Russell Lowell. Her son, Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., would soon command the Second Massachusetts Cavalry.⁵³ It was intended to run on a trial basis for one month. Seamstresses who were also military dependents were recruited and assigned a government contract to make shirts at the piece rate of ten cents per garment. Thanks to subsidies from the Commonwealth, probably arranged by Governor Andrew, the effort proved, if not an economic success, then certainly a social benefit. The state contract required the group to cut and sew 8,000 shirts at ten cents a piece. Volunteers performed about half the work, presumably women not needing income, while the dependents finished the sewing at the rate of twenty cents per shirt. By the end of the first month, the group's weekly payroll had ballooned to 687 women.

The experiment, however innovative, proved difficult to implement. One contemporary analysis found that coordinating the two groups of over 600 women–volunteer and paid labor–nearly sank the project. If one woman could sew two shirts per week, the cutting and preparation for sewing of those two shirts would have to be accomplished by the volunteers, most of whom worked in churches scattered throughout the Boston area. As one modern analyst observed, to "give two shirts each week to six hundred ladies required the preparation of 2,400 shirts, since the number being paid for was matched by an equal number being prepared gratuitously. It meant that four hundred shirts had to be prepared each day of the six working days of the week." While the program was not self-sufficient from the standpoint of income, it employed enough women to justify its continuance as a charitable endeavor.⁵⁴

Accordingly, in July 1861, under the supervision of Anna Lowell, the organization was put on a permanent footing and named the Ladies Industrial Aid Association. It followed the formula of other successful philanthropic enterprises which, in order to enhance credibility with the donating public, were often managed by wealthy and socially prominent individuals. For example, LIAA president Lowell was a descendent of the Jacksons who had made their fortune in the textile mills of Waltham and Lowell. A thirteen-person board of directors was established; unfortunately, no records survive to identify the members.⁵⁵

The editors of the Massachusetts Register for 1862 were impressed with the Association as it met the requirements for self-help and industrial discipline often favored by Victorians. They rhapsodized:

We cannot give too much praise to the ladies who have carried forward this truly useful enterprise. It has received their constant attention, and that with an immense amount of vexatious and fatiguing labor. The object is good; it is to furnish labor to the unemployed wives and families of the volunteers, and teach them how to labor. The ladies hope to make it a self-sustaining institution; and, if they succeed, they will have accomplished a noble work.⁵⁶

The Association provided an important source of income to Boston-area female dependents and on a large scale. In the six months between July 1861 and January 1862, seven hundred needlewomen made 32,817 shirts (fabric not identified), 7,323 flannel shirts and drawers, cotton drawers, blouses, and jackets, 419 sheets and pillow cases for the army, and 383 shirts and drawers for private industry. During these months, the LIAA distributed $5,705.94 to needy women. Annualized, these disbursements would have amounted to some $11,400, or just over $16 per year for each of the seven hundred workers. Put another way, a woman sewing for the Association might earn $1.35 a month; it was paltry but at least remained entirely under the woman's control. Unfortunately, because the work was performed on a piece-rate basis there is no information about the hours required to earn even this small sum.⁵⁷

The few surviving accounts indicate that the Association hired only the neediest women. In part, this can be inferred from one estimate that two-thirds of the women served by the LIAA were foreign-born. In all likelihood, this meant mostly Irish and perhaps a few German-born women–both groups generally resided in the city's poorest neighborhoods.⁵⁸ Unfortunately, these women as individuals are largely lost to the historical record. The only surviving correspondence that sheds any "unscripted light" on their conditions is an anonymous letter addressed to the State House, written in November 1861:

The low price paid our poor needle women, for making shirts and drawers 50 cents per doz 20 cents per pair for pants I fear will bring retribution upon us, is there no remedy [?] One that feels it is a great wrong that those dependent for their daily bread upon the needle should get such a pittance the great evil must be my apology for writing my wisdom thus according to your day & do all that can be for the rights of our volunteers.⁵⁹

Aside from government contracts, the Association also received direct cash subsidies from the city of Boston: $500 in 1863 and $1,000 in 1864.⁶⁰ The amount of available public funds never met the need and the LIAA sought additional support from private sources. In a January 1864 letter published in the Daily Advertiser, "H.N.L." described her efforts to find work for "an industrious, worthy seamstress, a soldier's widow–skillful at her needle as a vest-maker or tailoress-averse to asking charity, and [who] supports an aged mother and one child." Unable to find work anywhere, she presented herself at the Summer Street offices of the LIAA, and "procures the making of soldiers' drawers at 10 cents the pair," the writer adding that, "two pair cannot be made properly in a day." The writer does the math: "Less than $1.40 for fuel, food and clothing of a whole week." H.N.L then issued a plea: "Since the Industrial Society is already organized and exerting an extensive influence, would it not be well to obtain subscriptions to enable them to pay a more adequate sum for their work until March next?" Closing, the author injected a sense of urgency by noting that, "Two new applications have been made at the door of the writer by poor and suffering sewing-women while preparing this very article."⁶¹

For all programs, the subsidies were substantial. Schouler calculated that the state distributed a total of $8,348,880 in family aid. Combined with estimated allotments, the state supervised total distributions of over $11,348,000, an enormous sum. The LIAA should be considered simply as a part of this larger subsidy. It was never an economically self-sufficient program nor was it ever intended as such. No doubt, fund raising for an organization that promised gainful employment probably loosened the purse strings of some on State Street as well as filled some empty spaces in the lives of women who were suddenly alone. Given the experience of Southern women, whose famine, bread riots, and destitution quickly spread across the home front below the Mason-Dixon Line, the Massachusetts programs avoided the worst effects of war on a civilian population. The motives were a mixture of charity and self-interest. A patriotic population felt some need to provide for soldier dependents while the government sought to induce enlistments, suppress desertion rates, and keep unpopular taxes low. However, by avoiding the morale problems that contributed to crippling the Southern war effort, the state programs were a significant, if unheralded, contribution to victory.

Failures of Family Aid

In June 1862, Albert D. Hager, a publisher from Proctorville, Vermont, appealed to Governor Andrew on behalf of a neighbor, Mrs. Joseph Locke. Her husband, a private in Co. E of the Twentieth Massachusetts Regiment, lived in the Bay State at the time of his enlistment, although his family still resided in his native Vermont. "He has a wife a[nd] four children here," Hager wrote, "dependent upon the charities of the people in a great measure for their support–Mr. Locke being a poor man and has sent home but little of his wages." Hager then told Andrew an uncomfortable truth: had Locke "enlisted into a Vermont company he would draw from our State Treasury Seven dollars per. mo. For the support of his family–but as it is his family get nothing." Now she was desperate and ashamed. "Could she have even one dollar a week it would greatly relieve her," Hager pleaded, because "it savors less of begging and is more acceptable to the recipients and less burdensome to those living near the destitution of those who are abroad fighting our battles for us."⁶²

Albert D. Hager's letter sheds light on the biggest failure of Chapter 222, Massachusetts' direct family aid program: its refusal to provide benefits to soldiers' dependents living outside the state. While both public and private family aid programs had many flaws–sparse benefits, abuses in the bounty system, lack of coordination and scope, poor delivery of services–the most egregious shortcoming was the Bay State's unwillingess to provide cash support to out-of-state dependents of its servicemen. Although this failure affected whites and blacks, its greatest force fell upon the families of African American soldiers. The situation proved especially unfair given the benefits these men conferred on Massachusetts and the pay discrimination they suffered at the hands of the Lincoln administration. The men of the Bay State's three black regiments provided critical numbers towards the state's draft quota after conscription began in mid 1862 and spared many Massachusetts residents from the prospect of forcible conscription.

State officials were aware of the issue of support for out-of-state dependents from the outset of the war. In the autumn of 1861, for instance, Frank Howe, Governor Andrew's agent in New York City, made inquiries about enlisting New York residents for Bay State units. A contact replied (the letter was forwarded to Andrew) that "a man on enlisting inquires what provision there is made for his family" and added his hope that the "assistance which Mass gives the families in her own State" would be paid to prospective New York recruits. Yet the Massachusetts legislature never made provisions for such families during the war.⁶³

The result could be a "Catch 22" for out-of-state dependents of Massachusetts soldiers. The family of James O. Clark, a private in the Twentieth Massachusetts must have regretted his Bay State enlistment. "Since leaving his home in New York City his Father has died leaving his Mother with a family of eight children in a very dependent condition," a family representative wrote to Governor Andrew. "His Mother has tried to obtain relief but finds she is not entitled to receive it from this 'New York' State on account of his being in the force of another." In other words, by residing in New York and enlisting in Massachusetts, Clark's family was ineligible to receive aid from either state.⁶⁴

The situation grew materially worse for the enlisted men of the three black regiments recruited for the Commonwealth. The Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry Regiments and the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry initially required about 3,000 African American volunteers to fill their ranks. But according to Census Bureau figures for 1863 (the year when recruiting for these units began), only 1,973 black men of military age lived in the whole of Massachusetts. Based on the number of white men who volunteered as a percentage of the eligible pool, Andrew might have expected to enlist some 394 blacks for the first of these units to be filled, the Fifty-fourth Infantry. In fact, when actual recruiting commenced, the enlistments fell far below this estimate-a mere 133 recruits, or approximately 13 percent of the required manpower volunteered for the regiment. While the numbers of Massachusetts African American volunteers would increase as the fame of the Fifty-fourth spread, they would always remain a minority in a regiment composed mostly of out-of-state men. The same held true for the other two black units formed after the Fifty-fourth.⁶⁵

Despite the promise of "state aid," the Commonwealth would not provide assistance to families of black soldiers not residents of Massachusetts. Broadside, 1863. Massachusetts Historical Society.

As a result, Massachusetts authorities, greatly assisted by private citizens, aggressively recruited African Americans from both free and slave states. But from the beginning, the absence of state aid for these men represented a serious obstacle to enlistment. Robert Gould Shaw, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts's first commander, twice wrote his father on the matter. "The want of State aid for the men's families will be a great drawback to the enlistment in other States," he observed, noting several days later that the state's shortsighted refusal to provide benefits affected not only the quantity but the quality of recruits. "[If] it weren't for the want of state aid we should be able to get a much better set from the other states," he added.⁶⁶

For many family dependents of African American soldiers, the controversy over unequal pay, coupled with the Commonwealth's refusal to pay family aid, proved disastrous. Stories of hardship are anecdotal but widespread. Some families faced destitution, some lost homes, and in some cases the economic deprivation compelled families to "bound out" their children, place them in foster care for support. Morale plummeted and both desertions and executions for desertion or dissent increased. One African American serving in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment summed up the situation: "No chances for promotion, no money for our families, and we are little better than an armed band of laborers with rusty muskets and bright spades." While sympathetic whites and local aid organizations ameliorated a few cases, final relief did not arrive until Congress rectified the pay disparity in July 1864. But, the majority of the state's black soldiers, as residents of other states, never gained the full benefits accorded to their fellow Massachusetts troops.⁶⁷

Public and private aid to families was as crucial to the war effort as munitions production. Moreover, if we broaden the definition of aid to include the benefit programs for soldiers and for the families or dependents of Civil War soldiers, the number and types of such public and private efforts would grow very long indeed. This list would include not only the state bureau that sought to find employment for veterans, but also the homes established for discharged soldiers, public campaigns to encourage employers to pay soldier-employees while on duty, the free hospital care soldiers received after their discharge for disability, and last (but not least), the extensive efforts of Massachusetts agents in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington. These agents tirelessly looked after the welfare of Massachusetts's soldiers in army hospitals, helped arrange transportation home, and in New York City, offered soldiers a night's respite in Massachusetts-rented rooms.

That Massachusetts would distinguish itself in providing this level of assistance is not surprising. From the first hours of the war, the political support for these programs never wavered. Debates swirled around basic issues such as the propriety of emancipation, the choice of McClellan or Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election, or the relative merits of Northern generals, but never about aid to the families of soldiers. Such programs, while imperfect, demonstrated that under the right circumstances, the electorate would accept the idea of a "safety net" and willingly pay for it through higher taxes. Propelled by a vigorous humanitarian reform tradition heightened by the Second Great Awakening and wartime circumstances, Massachusetts helped set a new pattern that would only grow in subsequent years. Americans long had been accustomed to the federal pension system for veterans, but the Civil War established the idea that at some level and for some people the government bore responsibility for public welfare.

RICHARD F. MILLER is a Civil War historian and a fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He graduated from Harvard College and Case Western Reserve Law School. He has completed two books that will be published in 2005, A Carrier at War: On Board the USS Kitty Hawk in the Iraq War and Harvard's Civil War: The History of the 20th Massachusetts Infantry.

NOTES

^1. Isabella A. Ruoff to John A. Andrew, Jul. 7, 1862, Jul. 10, 1862, Executive Department Letters, vol. 46, nos. 105 and 107. Executive Department Letters, Massachusetts State Archives. Hereafter, EDL.

^2. Elizabeth Bumpus to John A. Andrew, Oct. 11, 1864, vol. 91, no. 16, EDL.

^3. William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War 1861–1865, (1889; reprint Dayton, Ohio, 1985), 532.

^4. One such treatment is Robert L. Reynolds, "Benevolence on the Home Front in Massachusetts During the Civil War," (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1970). A broader treatment which is national in scope is Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (Cambridge, Mass., 1992). Of interest is also Robert H. Bremner, The Public Good: Philanthropy & Welfare in the Civil War Era, (New York, 1980). Few studies seem to have taken account of the relationship between state aid, bounties, and the motivation to enlist.

^5. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, (New York, 1988), 613. McPherson and other historians have taken special note of the close connection between Confederate desertion rates and family security. In fairness, few Union soldiers ever faced (for very long, at any rate) the prospect of enemy occupation of their homes. However, it is highly significant that few Southern states provided family aid programs to at-home dependents. Those that did, notably the incorrigible administration of Georgia's Gov. Joseph E. Brown, understood exactly why these efforts were necessary. "Let our soldiers know," Brown said of his state's welfare programs, "that their loved ones at home are provided for." Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still, Jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, Ga., 1986), 233, quoted.

^6. Col. William Raymond Lee to Albert G. Browne, Jr., Jul. 16, 1861, vol. 46, no. 7, EDL; Col. William Raymond Lee to Albert G. Browne, Jr., Aug. 19, 1861, vol. 46, no. 16, EDL; Albert G. Browne, Jr., to Col. William Raymond Lee, Jul. 16, 1861, vol. 3, no. 365, Letters Official, Massachusetts State Archives. Hereafter referred to as LO.

^7. Col. William Raymond Lee to Albert G. Browne, Jr., Aug. 19, 1861, vol. 46, no. 19, EDL; Albert G. Browne, Jr., to Col. William Raymond Lee, Aug. 19, 1861, vol. 4, no. 295, LO. The calculations are based on the regimental records at the National Archives and Records Administration, "Descriptive Book of the 20th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers." The Descriptive Book is complete for each 1861 recruit and lists the nativity, height, hair and eye color, current residence, occupation, place of recruitment and the name of the recruiting officer. For black troops and the pay issue, see: Donald Yacovone, "The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, the Pay Crisis, and the 'Lincoln Despotism,'" in Martin H. Blatt, Thomas J. Brown, and Donald Yacovone, eds., Hope & Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment (Amherst, 2001), 35–51.

^8. P. C. Headley, Massachusetts in the Rebellion, (Boston, 1866), 571. Headley states that the Massachusetts family aid program was "doubtless the earliest legislation in the charitable department of service for the country in the war."

^9. William A. Richardson and George P. Sanger, ed., Supplement to General Statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, (Boston, 1867), 87–88, 101. Hereafter referred to as Supplement.

^10. William Schouler, History of Massachusetts in the Civil War (Boston, 1868). For Schouler's account of the war's first days see: 1:49–108.

^11. Schouler, History of Massachusetts, 2:584.

^12. Schouler, History of Massachusetts, 2:584.

^13. The actions of individual towns can be found on the following pages in vol. 2 of Schouler, History of Massachusetts: Chelsea, 592; Cambridge, 385; Concord, 401; Charlestown, 393; Pittsfield, 97; Salem, 236; Dorchester, 498. Indeed, many local resolutions combine both objectives in the same sentence; that of Easthampton is typical: "Resolved, That the town appropriate five thousand dollars for the purpose of equipping such volunteers as may be called into our service, and for the relief of families and relatives dependent upon them for support," 337.

^14. Schouler, History of Massachusetts, 2: Dorchester, 498; Dedham, 494; Milton, 512.

^15. Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the Year Ending December 31,1862 (Boston, 1863), 4.

^16. Annual Report of the Adjutant General, 42, provides Boston enlistment data. October and November 1861 distributions of the City Relief Committee may be found in the Boston Daily Advertiser of Oct. 31, 1861, and Dec. 17, 1861, respectively. Figures relating to tax collection were found in the lead editorial of the Boston Daily Advertiser, Dec. 2, 1862.

^17. Supplement, 87–88.

^18. James L. Bowen, Massachusetts in the War, 1861–1865 (Springfield, Mass., 1889), 14; Headley, Massachusetts in the Rebellion, 571.

^19. Headley, Massachusetts in the Rebellion, 571.

^20. Statistics of the United States, in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns and being the Final Exhibit of The Eighth Census (Washington, D.C., 1866), 512; "Pauperism, Crime and Wages, 1860," hereafter referred to as "1860 Federal Census." Thomas O'Connor has made a similar calculation, finding that prewar, a skilled mechanic's annual wage averaged $450. He also notes the reduction in the average worker's standard of living resulting from wartime inflation. Thomas O'Connor, Civil War Boston, (Boston, 1997), 166.

^21. "Boston City Aid to the Families of Volunteers," The Massachusetts Register 1862, (Boston, 1862), 153.

^22. Schouler, Massachusetts in the Civil War, 2:12.

^23. As quoted in Daniel George Macnamara, The History of the Ninth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, June, 1861–June, 1864 (Boston, 1899), 23.

^24. Andrew E. Ford, The Story of the Fifteenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War, (Clinton, Mass., 1898), 15.

^25. Henry Lee, Jr., to John A. Andrew, Nov. 2, 1861, John A. Andrew Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

^26. The story of Andrew and the allotment system will be found in Henry G. Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew (Boston, 1904), 1:247, n.1. The complete text of Chapter 62 may be found in Supplement.

^27. Supplement, 101.

^28. Schouler, Massachusetts in the Civil War, 1:316–17, 2:12. During the war, the state distributed a total of $8,348,880.63 in family aid. Bowen, Massachusetts in the War, 38. Combining Bowen's estimate with Schouler's, a total of over $11,348,000 was distributed in allotments or direct family aid, an enormous sum.

^29. All calculations were performed by the author.

^30. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 605–606.

^31. Schouler, Massachusetts in the Civil War, 474–475.

^32. George Patten, Patten's Army Manual, (New York, 1861), 131–132. See Revised Regulations for the Army of the United States, (Philadelphia, 1861), 169–172.

^33. National Archive and Records Administration, "Descriptive Book of the 20th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers." Calculations performed by the author. The ages of soldiers in the Twentieth Massachusetts were slightly older than the average, which Benjamin Apthorp Gould calculated at 25.8083 years. Benjamin Apthorp Gould, Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers, (1869; reprint New York, 1979), 35.

^34. Virtually no general narrative of the Civil War is complete without a discussion of bounties. For examples, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 605–606; Bruce Catton, Glory Road, (New York, 1952), 12–14.

^35. "Massachusetts House," Boston Daily Advertiser, Nov. 16, 1863.

^36. Governor Andrew's proclamation appears in the Boston Daily Advertiser, Nov. 19, 1863.

^37. All calculations were performed by the author.

^38. "Table No. 3, Valuation of Estate, Real and Personal, Recapitulation," Statistics of the United States, in 1860 (Washington, D.C., 1860), 319.

^39. Clifford S. Griffin, The Ferment of Reform, 1830–1860, (New York, 1967), 79, 88; James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York, 1888), 6:576.

^40. "Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund," Boston Daily Advertiser, Apr. 25, 1861.

^41. "Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund," Boston Daily Advertiser, Apr. 25, 1861; Isabella A. Ruoff to John A. Andrew, Jul. 10, 1862, EDL, vol. 46, no. 107 [Note at bottom of letter].

^42. Reynolds, "Benevolence," 222.

^43. Boston Daily Advertiser, May 21, 1861.

^44. Boston Daily Advertiser, May 21, 1861; "Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund Society," Register, 149–150; Reynolds, "Benevolence," 225.

^45. Boston Daily Advertiser, Oct. 10, 1862.

^46. Boston Daily Advertiser, Oct. 10, 1862.

^47. The actual figures for 1864 are probably higher, as several of the quarterly reports did not provide detailed breakdowns. For 1864, these reports can be found in the following numbers of the Boston Daily Advertiser, Apr. 15, 1864; Jul. 15, 1864; Oct. 14, 1864; and Jan. 12, 1865.

For His Wife, His Widow, and His OrphanMassachusetts and Family Aid During the Civil War

RICHARD F. MILLER