Black Soldiers & their Families in the Civil War

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode. And please, tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. This week, in honor of Memorial Day, we're going to discuss freeborn northern Black soldiers who fought in the Civil War, and the effects of their service on their families. The 1860 census, the final census taken before the Civil War erupted, recorded 476,748 free Black people living in the United States, a little over half of them in the south, compared to 3,950,546 enslaved Black people in the United States, nearly all of whom were in the South. As we've discussed on this podcast before, free Black Americans in the north, had been vocal abolitionists early in the 19th century, before William Lloyd Garrison famously launched "The Liberator" in 1831. Two years earlier, in 1829, David Walker, whose father was enslaved, published the radical "Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World," in which he called for the enslaved to revolt against their enslavers. Between the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln on November 6, 1860, and his inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven states seceded from the Union: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. On February 8, 1861, those seven states formed the Confederate States of America. The Civil War formally began in the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, when Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, forcing the Union forces to surrender a day later. Immediately, free Black men rushed to fight for the Union. Although Black soldiers had fought in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, there was on the books a 1792 law banning Black men from bearing arms for the army, so these volunteers were turned away. President Lincoln worried that either emancipating slaves, or enlisting Black men in the army would encourage more southern states to secede. Finally, though, the need for troops was pressing enough that the United States government took steps toward allowing Black soldiers to enlist. On July 17, 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation and Militia Act, which freed anyone enslaved by a member of the Confederate army. It furthermore authorized Lincoln, "to employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of this rebellion in such manner as he may judge best for the public welfare."  Black men began to form their own infantry units in 1862, and after the January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, those unofficial units were officially mustered into the army. In February, 1863, the Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew called for Black men to join the the army. The more than 1000 men who responded, formed the now famous 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the first Black regiment in the north, and the subject of the 1989 film, "Glory," starring Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Matthew Broderick, which won three Academy Awards. In April,1863, the formerly enslaved abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, wrote an article in his monthly newsletter, outlining nine reasons that Black men should enlist in the army. Among the reasons he included, "You are a member of a long enslaved and despised race. Men have set down your submission to slavery and insult to a lack of manly courage. They point to this fact as demonstrating your fitness only to be a servile class. You should enlist, and disprove the slander,and wipe out the reproach. When you shall be seen nobly defending the liberties of your own country, against rebels and traitors, brass itself will blush to use such arguments imputing cowardice against you." State governors also hired recruiters. You may recall, in our episode on Mary Ann Shadd Cary, that she was employed by the state of Indiana as a recruiting officer to enlist,  "colored volunteers in any county, under the call for 500,000 men issued July 17, 1864." In Pennsylvania, the Union League of Philadelphia worked to fill multiple regiments of United States Colored Troops, USCT,  raising $35,000 towards recruitment efforts. 185 Philadelphian born African American men joined the third United States Colored Infantry, USCI, the sixth USCI, or the eighth USCI. Pennsylvania was also home to Camp William Penn, the largest training ground specifically for Black soldiers, which opened near Philadelphia in 1863, on land leased to the federal government by the family of abolitionist Lucretia Mott. In the end, around 179,000 Black men served in the US Army, making up 10% of the Union Army, with another 19,000 serving in the Navy. Of those, around 45,000 were free Black men from the north. During the war, 40,000 Black soldiers died, most from illness and infection. Black women could not officially join the army, but many, like Susie King Taylor,worked as nurses, and others as spies or washer  women. The Black women on the homefront also played a vital role in the war effort, raising funds for USCT regimental flags, recruiting their male family members to join the army, and helping out at the training camps. The families of the Black soldiers keenly felt the effects of the war, struggling to make ends meet while the men were at war, earning a paltry sum for their service. The Civil War officially ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to United States General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. But not all soldiers were released to return home immediately.

Once the war and their service came to an end, the soldiers' families continued to feel the effects of the war, caring for the physical and emotional scars of the men who returned home, and feeling the hole in their families left by the men who did not return. Joining me now, to help us learn more about Black soldiers and their families in the Civil War is Dr. Holly Pinheiro, Jr, assistant professor of African American History at Furman University, and author of, "The Families' Civil War: Black Soldiers and the Fight for Racial Justice."

Hi, Holly, thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  11:29  
Thank you. And thank you to your audience for taking the time to listen to this conversation.

Kelly Therese Pollock  11:33  
Yeah, so I want to hear a little bit about your inspiration for doing this research for writing this book.

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  11:40  
So I think first and foremost, like my inspiration comes from a personal place of being the child of a woman who served for over 20 years in the United States military, particularly the United States Navy. This work is very personal. And I say that because I've seen, whether it was my mother serving in direct combat, being deployed in and outside of the United States and her children, you know, tagging along throughout that whole process. But even in her mustering out, issues with a lack of medical care for mental health, unemployment, you name it, it's for me, it's been that I'm frustrated. And it's not just academics, I want to be clear when society seems to only want to talk about those who have served as labels as veterans or as service members and not as human beings. So for me, that was very important. And then there's no question that my affinity for the film, "Glory" in 1989, and it's phenomenal cast that included Denzel Washington and others, that was a film that was played every, every year, I felt like in social studies. Those undoubtedly, influenced my decisions, and really my family's commitment when I was a young child to know Black history, because I can remember one of my uncle's saying, "You need to learn the history that's not being taught in schools." And he was right.

Kelly Therese Pollock  13:14  
So a lot of history that's written is written about people who've left a lot of written record, right. So we get lots of history of, you know, presidents or whatever, because there's tons of written records about them. And you're specifically looking at people who didn't leave their own written record in a lot of cases. So can you talk a little bit about how how you find those ways to look at their stories, the kind of sources that you're looking at to get more about these people?

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  13:40  
I mean, that's a great question. And I, you actually hit the nail on the head that I think academics, society, I mean, you know, museums, films, whatever. We have hyper focused ourselves on those who had the times the means and the resources to sit down and catalogue various events, how they experienced it, what it meant to them. And not, I don't want to say universally, but in a number of those instances, those are people that come from privilege. And unfortunately, they tend to their voices dominate the historical narrative. And that to me, and other scholars that I've talked to recognize this as well, it does a disservice to those who were working class, working poor, enslaved, newly arrived to a new country that didn't speak the language. You know, there's so many different reasons why we have certain historical experiences, unfortunately, minimized. And you're also right, that for the most part, the people that I'm studying, these freeborn Northern African Americans, particularly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, they did not have the time or the resources, or the energies, or maybe priorities to catalogue their lives in such great detail. At the same time, it is feasible to find their lives and others like them because their experiences were documented in federal government documents, in Black newspapers, sometimes in white newspapers. So not always, but like their voices are being filtered through others taking down their information. And I would say this to the audience is that part of the skill that we as scholars learn is how to read their voices through the biases, usually of those taking down information, whether that's a census enumerator with the state or federal census, a federal government representative through federal government documents, such as a pension. So their voices are there. It's just how are how are we doing the difficult but also important work to find them because, as Dr. Hilary Green at Davidson College notes, "We can find Black people's voices, especially Black women's voices at this time. It's just it's hard work. But it's some of the most gratifying work, to be honest, because once you do find them, and you can confirm and let their voices speak for themselves, it's so empowering."

Kelly Therese Pollock  13:42  
So I want to hear a little bit about your method. You mentioned a little bit about the sources that you're looking at, here's things like census records and pension documents. And you're looking at a huge number of people, because you're studying the families as well, and you're studying a fairly long time span. So, you know, I'm trying to imagine keeping track of all this. Did you have like a spreadsheet, a database? Like what did you actually do to keep track of everything you were trying to do?

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  16:34  
I mean, yeah, so for the audience, the book looks at 185 soldiers that served in either the third, the sixth, or the eighth United States Colored Infantry, that mobilized and trained in Pennsylvania, but for clarity, every Black regiment in the Civil War never solely represented its location of mustering and actually are like a conglomeration of men in and outside of the United States, as Richard Reid showed with his book, "Afro Canadians in Blue," for example, that we had Black Canadians coming into the US to serve in the Civil War. And really, the book looks at nearly 1000, multi generational families of Philadelphia from 1850 to the 1930s. So even just that was dramatically different from my dissertation. My dissertation, I was like, I am not going past 1880, because anything after that, for me as an academic, is very scary. I feel very at home in the 19th century, up until post reconstruction. So this book forced me to evolve as a scholar, and to really engage with I'll just say, newspapers or everything, particularly because Black soldiers in their communities were writing in them. The census is really how I was able to find the the lived experiences, and especially who were their parents of what would became future United States Colored Troops soldiers? Who were their children, their grandchildren? What happened to these men, when they were older? Where were they living? That's how I was able to find that through the census. I could honestly spend years trying to unpack the complexities of the Civil War pensions, and the simplest version I could give is,  they're extremely difficult sources to read, because one, it's literally a crapshoot. One record could be one page, the next one could be 2000 pages. And they could span from one year to 50 decades or more. For context, I think the last known Civil War pensioner died two or three years ago, so they were still with us today, to be clear. And you don't know what the pensions are going to say. That's the fun and frustration, like you have no clue. I never anticipated finding a letter from the desk of the First Lady of the United States during the height of the Great Depression, in a Civil War pension record. I never thought that I would find a letter from a widow talking basically doing a murder mystery to figure out what happened to her husband who died at sea as a veteran in the 1880s. So these are the kinds of things you will find in these records, including marriage certificates. What happened to the children? They're providing testimony on neighbors and former employers. I'll be honest, like even as you asked me the question about how did I sift through the material and make sense with the spreadsheets, I probably had, at minimum 20 different spreadsheets. Just one for census, one for who are the witnesses in pension files?  What were their occupations? Who was on the family trees? Who were their employers? I mean, it was, if you know, if I were starting from scratch, and you had told me this is what it's going to look like. It'd be so overwhelming. But I think for me having the spreadsheets and I say this for those of you not even just academics, if you're doing a genealogical study of your family, or a community or historical figure on their own, having those visuals is very helpful for someone like me, because I can't remember  all the nuts and bolts of where these people went to school, what was the job their mother had in 1860, what was the name of their stepfather? You know, at this point in time in their life who was their first child? So it's, it helps to make the writing process more, I felt like, manageable. The hardest part was making sense of all the material to be honest.

Kelly Therese Pollock  20:23  
I love it. As a spreadsheet lover, I was like, "Oh, this is an amazing."

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  20:28  
No, it's I mean, like, I'll be honest, though, like, I'm sure you as a spreadsheet lover could help me organize that a lot better. And, like, I'm starting my next book project. And I can already be like, "Oh, my gosh, I don't know what I'm doing right now." And that's okay. But it's, I mean, to those out there who might be in the midst or process or about to, organization is very important. And I mean, even when you're writing down things like so with the pensions, they don't actually have, they're not paginated, right. So each pension file that I had, I had to write down the person's name, all their information, and what page it was on each sheet of paper, because I learned the hard way that if I didn't do that, I wouldn't remember where something was. So when I'm going through and cataloging on page 12, "So Kelly says this point," but if I don't remember that, now I have to go sift through this massive document to find that one phrase I want to use in the in the project. So organizational skills, for your audience, is so important for your sanity.

Kelly Therese Pollock  21:35  
I think that's true in all phases of life, really.

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  21:40  
Well, as someone with a newborn child, like that is a fantasy, having an organization.

Kelly Therese Pollock  21:44  
So you document how difficult their service in the war was not just, of course, to the soldiers, but to their families back home. So what do we know about why these men joined the army? Why? Why were they fighting? You know, I think you make it pretty clear. It's not for money. So you know, what, what's going on here?

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  22:06  
Right? I think I mean, that's a great question. And, you know, if I were to take a step back in the project, to me, it's why were they doing this, knowing the normalization of anti-Blackness in the United States, the discrimination that women of all races, classes experienced, right, like, and how in a state like Pennsylvania, which eventually will have its final, gradual emancipation, I think, in 1848, how life was still difficult being a free Black person, because, and this is just my critique of the way we talk about slavery, and a caveat to your audience. This is not saying that we need to move on from slavery. As someone who had family members enslaved in the Carolinas and Florida, for example, this is, a history of slavery is very important and personal. But it's what I think gets lost is that we are so focused on bondage, that we don't want to take the time to talk about racism in free locations. And that's really important because their experiences as children, as I point out in the book, they and their families and communities in Philadelphia, are normalized to large scale race massacres, just for context, there's one in 1834, 1838, 1842, 1844, 1847. So they don't need the Civil War to fight for equality. They're fighting, just trying to walk the streets, go to school, to maintain a job, to not be murdered. Because the one that happened in 1838, Pennsylvania Hall Burning, and the very short version of what led to that was Black and white men who were abolitionists, walking arm in arm to protest slavery, and in the aftermath of that event, anti- abolitionists in Philadelphia burned that institution, then burned Black churches, homes, schools, businesses. So it's to me it's like they're at war for survival before they were ever put into the uniform. The thing for me that I was hoping, and I hope your audience takes with this is that the Civil War provides a new space to demand racial and gender equality, in and outside of the United States. And, but that doesn't mean that when  Frederick Douglass is making that call, right, that, "You're only a man if you wear the uniform of the United States Army," that dismisses that those people were men and women every second of their lives before. And he's also taking an ableist perspective of understanding military service, because there were so many non able bodied individuals who couldn't serve if they wanted to, or that the Black women in these people's lives were fighting for equality before, during and even after these soldiers were dead. In fact, what's the book I hope makes clear is the reason we're able to know so much about Black history as it relates to this and other aspects, is Black women. They're doing the work. They're  the stewards of history. And, and the soldiers as veterans, they acknowledged that, but we don't. And we can both figure out why and what that says about our society. The same with going to war in the training process is that it was a community, family, personal experience. Soldiers never trained in isolation. They never made that decision alone. They, they were always desiring to be connected to their communities and families. And that plays out in terms of soldiers that I studied for the first book. They're paid $6 less than a white soldier of the same rank. We often talk about the $3 deduction, but it was actually six. So their lives are literally cheapened, and that reverberates into the homes. So their families are being told that your male kin is literally worth less than a white man, because they're Black, period. And then on top of that, the soldiers don't get paid for nine months. As I tell my students at Furman, "If Furman don't pay me on the first of the month, and you think I'm coming into work, you must be out of your mind." And if we understand that perspective, it makes a more inclusive, I believe framing of that these families are experiencing a war for economic and literal survival, as their male kin are being thrust into the battle lines of a civil war.

Kelly Therese Pollock  26:33  
So you mentioned the economic disparity in terms of the pay is less for the Black soldiers. But that's not the only form of racism, of course that they're experiencing during the war. Could you talk a little bit about that, the ways that they despite the fact that they have signed up in the same way and have trained in the same way are being used in different ways than the white soldiers?

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  26:55  
I mean, the training and I'm just gonna throw out some names of other academics in case the audience is interested in. So I'm not the first person to be clear, but people like Joseph Glatthaar, Kelly Mezurek, Chandra Manning, Tera Hunter, and others have noted that unfortunately, race defined, and gender but particularly as it relates to militarization, race defined how one was going to experience  the Civil War. And unfortunately for Black men, not just African Americans, Black men in general, they are automatically being viewed by the United States War Department, and most but not all commanding officers, as "inferior to," and I'm putting quotes around that, intellectually, but they're supposedly superior physically. So due to pseudo racial science, basically, the United States military, in a weird and unsurprising way, will actually reify race, racial science, about slavery on free Black bodies, to say that they're conditioned to live in harsh weather climates, and to engage in doing physical labor, which was the exact argument used for enslaved people as rationale to put Black soldiers into doing the most physical and arguably dangerous work in terms of what's known as fatigue duty. Right. So digging ditches, clearing, clearing, dead bodies, from the military spaces, clearing the roads, putting in deconstructing military camps, like all this very physical work. And as anyone who knows anything about the military is you could argue it's the most important work, because they're doing the things that make the military operate function at an efficient rate. But unfortunately, doing that work in places where there is mosquitoes that are transmitting diseases and illnesses, that's where Black soldiers are going to die. They're not going to die from a bullet from the Confederacy, which is what Doug Frederick Douglass and others are promoting to the Black community. If you die in service, they'll allude to, at least you will die in their opinion as a man in gunfire. But the soldiers that I studied, and others have studied, the soldiers are dying from dysentery, chronic diarrhea, starvation, you know, they're having lumbago issues. They're having issues that will remain for the rest of their lives. And it's, it's horrific. And this isn't even getting into those who get a physical disability, because psychological and emotional didn't register to them at that time. You, as a Black person, are not going to get equal treatment in the medical experiences, because some surgeons and nurses were openly hostile towards Black patients and refused them treatment. And these are people within the same army. So it's, I mean, there's so many, and I say this in a very sad way, instances of what Black soldiers are experiencing, and I'll just close with this, 1.)That doesn't get enough attention, while 2.) It's really the racial privileges of surrender. I'll say that David Silkenat, a phenomenal scholar has highlighted this is that prior to Blacks' military service in the Civil War, there was a what's called the Dix-Hill Cartel agreement between both armies, that they would have this surrender and trade, of prisoners of war. That officially goes out the window once Black soldiers come in, because the Confederacy issue that they call the Black Flag Policy, where they just said, "There is no surrender and no quarter for a Black person. So you will either be killed or put into slavery, where we will kill you." So just that is even showing, If you are going to sacrifice your life, you will not get the privilege of surrendering. And even after the war is over, and we talk about Juneteenth, and it's a very important historical day. The only reason that Juneteenth happens is because of racism. And I mean racism, particularly from the United States military, and the assumption that Black soldiers hadn't earned the right to go home, even though they had been told, "Your objective is to defeat the Confederacy, and Robert E. Lee." That happened on April 9. And just for the audience, Black soldiers were a part of Robert E. Lee's surrender. They were directly responsible for chasing his forces to Appomattox. They were at Appomattox, there's multiple forms of evidence to prove that, but that's written out of history. And after that, they're stationed in Texas to stop I suppose it French invasion of Napoleon III through Mexico. That all happened because the white commanding officers believed that Black soldiers hadn't earned the right to go home. And that's where they'll get those disabilities that carry over for the rest of their lives, because they're fighting their commanding officers for clean water. And food. So when we talk about Juneteenth, we need to talk about the uncivil war that Black soldiers and their white officers are experiencing as they're fighting each other to drink water. That's part of the story, too. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  31:57  
Yeah. So when they do finally go home, the ones who are able to make it home, you know, there had been this, this thought this assumption happens again, in World War I and World War II that like, "We're going to join the army, we're going to finally be seen, you know, as equal to white men after the war." And of course, that is not what happened. So what happens when they get back to Philadelphia? What is the the aftermath for the soldiers, for their families, for their community?

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  32:27  
Actually, I just want to say that what you started with is a very important point, one that I would like to write at least an essay on is that we need to talk about what I see as consistent themes and tones in the propaganda to get Black men to serve in the 19th and early 20th century. Right, because you're right, that the rhetoric that Black soldiers in the Civil War, are being told fight for this, you'll gain these, we hope, right, these things such as protection of your civil rights, you will be seen as an equal member of society, in your manhood. And they're saying that during the Spanish American Cuban Filipino war, they're saying that during World War I, and they're saying that during World War II, and for me, what does that say? That the people saying it may have changed, but the rhetoric hasn't, which to me shows our society hasn't fully accepted Black people, even though Black people have fought and died for this country, over and over and over again. And I think that's a really important point that you brought up. For those who did go back to Philadelphia, that were able to survive even, that's part of the battle, too, is just because you were mustered out, you still have to make it home. And some people don't make it. They're going to experience a wide array of post war stories, including some who are physically unable to resume their civil civilian work. So they will unfortunately, and it ranges they'll apply for pensions, some get, actually most don't get them. Some will start new lives, they'll marry, they'll have children, or they'll reconnect with family. And that was extremely important, not just to them, to Black people. Many scholars have written about this, like, we need to talk about the reconstruction of Black families in reconstruction. North, south, east west, right. It's not just one location. It's not just one subset of people. At least, if I recall, three of my soldiers become Buffalo Soldiers. But that's not the norm. A lot of them are going to really struggle in terms of their identities, in terms of their economics, in terms of truthfully, feeling like they've been forgotten from the national discourse, from the, from their, not from their local communities, like for the Black community, but from their larger local communities. Right, because you had what was known as the Union League Club of Philadelphia, for example, one of the most prominent organizations and it still exists, by the way, and for a fun fact if your audience cares, "Trading Places," the film with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, actually filmed a number of scenes in that space. Because I'm just a dork, I know that kind of stuff. Their African Americans of Philadelphia are going to realize, unfortunately, that not a lot has changed for them on a day to day, macro level. And so there's still racism in terms of limited access to education. In I think 1877, there is a large scale race massacre that will lead to the murder of one of the most prominent abolitionists in the area, who was a USCT recruiter and went to school with a number of those USCT soldiers. So for me, it's just like, racial violence is still normal. Racial discrimination and gender discrimination, still normal. The only the biggest thing that I would see changing is that the war in terms of being remembered from the federal government and larger society, that's where their focus becomes, because they understand we have to keep telling our stories, even the hard stuff, because if we don't, it will be forgotten. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  36:11  
Yeah, so, let's talk some about the pensions, then, because that's one of the it's a material thing, but it's also a remembering their service. So that the rules around the pensions you mentioned, they don't all get them, the rules are complicated. It takes some effort to get a pension, even when you are eligible for one, and then the rules keep changing, depending on who's president. So what what is going on here? Talk to me about these pensions.

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  36:46  
I chuckle at you even saying what's going out here is me trying to make sense of it myself. And I can imagine many of the people that we're talking about. So to, to give the very simple, and it's not gonna be satisfactory to the audience. The pension says, firstly, there were different kinds, there's what's known as an invalid, or that one's for a veteran, then there are dependent pensions that range. And again, it's I don't want to get into the weeds because they take too long, but there's mothers, fathers, widows, and minors up until the age of 16. And to qualify as a dependent was very difficult and very complicated. And by the time of 1890, actually late 19th century, but right up about 1890. In the United States presidential elections, one of the most, and you could argue about that point, the most important campaign debate topic was Civil War pensions, whether to make them more accessible, expand them, or to limit them because by the late 19th century, they made up the majority of the United States budget. That's how important they were. And yeah, presidential campaigns and elections were hinging on that. And by 1890, thankfully, there was an expansion of the pensions, and it was called 1890 Pension Law. Basically, that stipulated that if someone's served honorably for 90 days, then they could be eligible for pension and their dependents, usually marital marital home life and some blood related could get one. So you see this massive explosion in the pensions, and people far and wide, did them. I'll say that Dr. Brandi Brimmer, whose book is, "Claiming  Union Widowhood," talks a lot and Noralee Frankel, and the late Megan McClintock talked a lot about the the ways in which Black women used Civil War pensions as direct challenges for United States citizenship, but also to demand inclusion in Civil War public memory. So expanding on their points, for all the problems, and I'll talk about that in a second, of the pensions, we need to look at these federal government documents as directly refuting the lost cause, or as Adam Domby calls it, "the false cause," because they are there, and they are the firsthand accounts from multiple people, including commanding officers, even former employers, people that they've known since childhood, who talk about these people's lives, in some very detailed ways, including the various aspects of military service that don't just limit itself to the men. It's what did the service mean to the father? What did the service mean to the mother? What did the service mean to the girlfriend who later became the widow because they got married and he died in service? What did that service mean to the child who never got to see their father? What did that service mean to the grandchild who's only heard rumors of their relatives? Right? And so it's like that's important because as Hilary Green points out those people were living monuments, we need to remember them. The book's title actually, partly comes from the battles over civil war pensions and the federal government's obsession with questioning the legitimacy of Black families. And pensions are horrible in this sense: they're extremely invasive. If you apply for a pension, even if you get rejected, you have now opened your entire private life in every possible way to the oversight and scrutiny of the federal government. And that doesn't just stop with you. Then they get what they consider carte blanche investigations into your family, into your friends, until they get a satisfactory answer into the case. So what that meant for some of the widows, and I say this, still this, I can't even begin to fathom what these people experienced, widows having to go into graphic detail about their first sexual encounter with a gentleman to a group of five men at a committee for the Pension Bureau, that they want a satisfactory answer in their view, if they're gonna give her money. Others will have to provide their only document of proof that they got married to someone, which turned out to be the marriage certificate. And widows would ask the government to return them because this is all they have of their partner and their husband, the federal government would say, "No, this is now historical record, and you will never get this back. And your case has been rejected." Another widow, unfortunately, she will successfully get a pension. That's not the hard part. The unfortunate part is that some of her white neighbors were very jealous about the fact that she got that money, which, for context, the pension paid out an individual, every month. And so it wasn't, it did not imply that you're making enough money for these to live an actual life. It was just supposed to supplement your income for an individual. Her neighbors basically will admit that they don't like her, they're very jealous. So they will spread a rumor that she's a sex worker, because they've seen individuals, including men going in and out of her house. Pension Bureau will do an examination over multiple years into her life. Pension agent will later admit, yeah, this is probably all a lie. I don't care if we need to cut the numbers. Because it turns out, one of the people that had been going in and out of that house that was men was her brother, and they didn't care. And the people going in and out of the home was because she was a laundress. And that was how she made money to survive. But to the federal government, how dare you because what pensions, and these were federal laws, and if you violated them, you would do federal time. To be clear, they have laws that stipulated if a widow was became a pensioner, then legally, she could never be intimate with another man, again, for the rest of her natural life. And if that was proven, or suspected that she had violated those terms, under the perception of federal government, not only would they say horrific things about her personal and private life in federal government records, she could do jail time. And on top of that, like she would be removed from the pensions. So these people are at war with the federal government, over their private lives, over public memory, over their family sacrifices, and over the definitions of what is a legitimate family structure. And these are things that we don't talk about free Black people.

Kelly Therese Pollock  43:41  
So let's talk a little bit then about kind of stepping back, about the importance of including stories like these, lots more stories that have yet to be told in our larger memory of the Civil War.

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  43:55  
I think, and now when I started this project in grad school, here's why this project, and stories like it matter. And I'm happy to share this with you and your audience. A couple months ago, almost a year ago, I got an email from someone who heard me do a presentation. Long story short, this individual is a descendant of one of the family members. So if you read the book and it for your audience does do turn to the back, it has the list of all the men's names, who are soldiers date of enlistment, their civilian occupation at the time and their age, right. So hopefully you can find them if this is somebody that you're interested in learning more about. So it turns out one of those family members reached out to me and she read the book. Glad I'm not on camera, so I have to like be seen. I'm a crier, so. Every time I read email, it makes me cry because it just hits so hard for me. She's like, "so grateful that you have you have not hyper focused on Alfred." That was his name: Alfred Rothwell. "It's Alfred and stories like his matter. But you've done the women in my family justice. You've talked about Elizabeth, I know the way she wanted to be seen. And you understand she is important. And her kids are important. And my family is important." And I've had the privilege to interview her. And I've asked her questions, what would you say to historians, to museums that talk about Frederick Douglass to understand Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and history and Civil War? Why don't we talk about your family? Why is someone like your family, someone that we need to value as being key contributors to making the United States what it is today? And I mean, I say that in a positive way, and that the realities of different aspects of life. And so for me, it's like that these communities, these people are calling that are still here today are saying, "What about us?" And so next week, I'm doing a presentation. She's invited me to talk with a bunch of different African Americans who are doing genealogical studies of their families and their communities. And this is why I do this project. I don't do this for a book award. I don't care if it ever wins a prize. I care about being told by a community member, "You see us. You see our day to day, and that that's important. And we don't need to just focus on a leader to understand my life." So I say to your audience, like, as you're doing this work, even not to say you don't need to talk about a Douglass or a Lincoln. But anytime you can provide an intervention of people on the ground level, because Lincoln wasn't doing the battles. Douglass wasn't doing the battles, not like that. They were doing different battles. Very important ones. But Black Philadelphian life needs to be told to the people there every second of the day trying to survive, and whose families are still fighting.

Kelly Therese Pollock  45:02  
Yeah, that's beautiful. So please tell the audience how they can get a copy of your book. 

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  47:08  
Ah, yes, thank you. So firstly, I just want to say to the audience, this means more to me than you'll ever know. Because when I started this project years ago, I was told that this isn't legitimate history. This isn't legitimate Civil War history. Talking about women, talking about African Americans who weren't enslaved to understand the civil wars, some people don't value. So for me to be able to have this moment, and for Kelly to provide it, means more than you'll ever know. If you are interested in the book, I would say you can either get it through the University of Georgia Press, or I've seen it on Amazon, I've seen it on eBay. I will say this to your audience. I recognize that not everyone has the financial means to buy books. And I'll just say like, if paperback is all you can afford, or the ebook, I will be grateful. And that relative will be grateful. But if that's not possible, it's not unheard of, for if you have a library card to go to your local library, or your institution of higher or whatever, and ask them to purchase a book because I want this book accessible. When I look at where this book is, I take more pride in knowing that it's at the Dallas County Public Library, or the Chicago Public Library or the New York Public Library than anywhere else, because that means all we need is a library card. And that you can read this, and then let someone else know. So I would just say, ask your local libraries to purchase a copy. Because that I'm telling you, that would mean the world to me and to these communities.

Kelly Therese Pollock  48:41  
Is there anything else that you wanted to make sure we talked about? 

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  48:43  
So I'll just say firstly, I am working on my next book, which is going to look at all Black Pennsylvanians who served in Camp William Penn. That book's not going to be out for a long time. I'm very excited for that. And also just, if you do end up reading the book, and you want to drop even a comment on Amazon and says, like, "Hey, good book," because for some people that matters, seeing that, or posting, as I tell, sometimes just post a picture of the book on social media, and just say, "Read it. Tell your library to get it." I think making it aware that there's scholarship like this and others is important because I think we get lost in, "Let's focus on the books that have won all the prizes," but what about the books that are getting the approval of the communities that they're studying?

Kelly Therese Pollock  49:30  
Holly, thank you so much. This was a great read. I really enjoyed the book and it's just been fantastic to talk to you.

Dr. Holly A Pinheiro  49:37  
Thank you so much. And again, thank you for your audience.

Teddy  50:05  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain, or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History, or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

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