Lucius Barbour Gets a Pension

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 Coffeyville Weekly Journal, 28 April 1893, p. 5 –

  We are glad to observe that our friend and colleague, L.T. Barbour, has been granted a pension.

 

  When Lucius Taylor Barbour ended his service in the Union Army he’d been wounded twice. The second time he had a ball blown through his face, destroying his jaw, leaving him with a metal plate in his head and lifelong pain. He also suffered nine months as a prisoner of war, literally nearly starving to death. But he didn’t have any sort of pension until nearly 30 years after the war.

     Union Army pensions were for decades only granted to those who were so disabled that they were unable to work.

  Here are some amazing statistics:

  • Forty-one percent of all northern white men born between 1822 and 1845 served in the Union Army during the Civil War.

  • Sixty percent of those born between 1837 and 1845 served in the Union Army during the Civil War.

  • Eighty-one percent of those born in 1843 served in the Union Army during the Civil War. (Lucius was born in 1841.) 

  • Ninety-five percent of those who served were volunteers.

  Private pensions in the United States were exceedingly rare, and old age pensions had not yet been established. A Congressional act in June 1890 marked the beginning of a universal disability and old-age pension. One needed proof of at least 90 days of service, an honorable discharge and disability that affected manual labor. The disability did not need to have incurred in the line of service, though those who could prove their disability was caused during military service received a larger pension. It did not have to be completely incapacitating, as before. The Pension Bureau granted men 75 and older full disability based on age alone. More amazing statistics:

  • By 1900, 21 percent of all white males aged 55 or older were receiving a Union Army pension.

  • The program that consumed 3 percent of the federal budget in 1866 consumed almost 30 percent in 1900.

      In 1888 the G.A.R. -- Grand Army of the Republic – advocated a universal service pension that would make all Union Civil War veterans eligible for a pension. Republicans mobilized the G.A.R. in the 1888 presidential election, making promises about generous pensions and the high tariffs that were funding them. There was a political song capturing their sentiment:

 

Let Grover talk against the tariff, tariff, tariff,

And pensions too

We’ll give the workingman his due

And pension the boys who wore the blue.

 

  Republicans won the presidency and both houses of Congress, which was largely attributed to the “old soldiers vote.” By 1893 – the year Lucius finally got a pension -- the federal government was spending an incredible 41.5 percent of its budget on Civil War pensions. (Confederates were left out and had to turn to their state government for pensions.)

      Why did Lucius wait to apply? It may have been because he was out on his farm doing manual labor; the standard before 1890 was that one had to be unable to do any manual labor to qualify. Probably worsening health as he was aging, or financial needs, or his wife Alice pressing him to apply spurred his decision. From our modern eyes, it’s hard to see how anyone could think twice about granting a pension to someone who suffered through battle after battle for four years, was wounded twice and served nine months as a prisoner of war. His newspaper editor friend was glad to learn he got a pension.

     After Lucius’s death in 1903, Alice received a widow’s pension for nearly 30 years. 

     

Sources:


     Costa, Dora. The Evolution of Retirement : An American Economic History 1880-1990, University of Chicago Press, 1998, https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6116/c6116.pdf

     Costa, Dora. Union Army Pensions and Civil War Records, https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6116/c6116.pdf

     Skopcol, Theda. “America’s First Social Security System: The Expansion of Benefits for Civil War Benefits,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 108, No. 1 (Spring 1993), pp.85-116.


Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023

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