Today promised to be a big day. Wednesday is the first day of the week I can put in twenty pull requests instead of sixteen. And this Wednesday I was going to finish Mary E. Walker's microfilm, and look at the rest of the 51st Congress Senate Private Acts and move on to the 52nd. The cherry: legislation pulled 51A-H10.1, the Committee on Invalid Pension's file on the Army Nurses Pension Act. All kinds of good things lined up.
And it didn't disappoint. Walker is finished and I'm in the midst of transcribing the documents; the 51st and 52nd Congress Private Acts are done, and I have a couple extra nurses who weren't on my list. And 51A-H10.1 is photographed. I feel virtuous.
51A wasn't what I expected though. I was hoping for correspondance between committee members and members of the WRC arguing for support, letters between committee members debating the merits of the bill, or discussing who they needed to persuade and how to go about it. I didn't get much of that, though. There were two identical letters, sent to George Seney and D.B. Henderson by Kate B. Sherwood, the Chairman of the National Pension and Relief Committee for the WRC, presenting the Army Nurses Bill and asking for support. There's no indication of whether or not either Congressman gave the bill their support.
There were also more of the petitions I'd found earlier--apparently Indiana sent theirs in late. Their late arrival necessitated a letter from Armilla Cheney, the WRC treasurer explaining the situation, and a letter from Clara Barton to Mr. Cogswell forwarding them on to him.
I don't remember if I mentioned this in previous posts, but Barton was an active member of the WRC. She served on the WRC Pension Committee until the bill finally passed, and also served as National Chaplain for a number of years. She was so often in D.C. that the Pension Committee effectively made her their agent in the capitol. What exactly being that agent entaled I didn't know until I read this letter, which reveals a little of what Barton was up to. Apparently, the petitions I looked at earlier were sent to Barton, and she in turn sent them to Senator Blaire, the head of the Committee on Invalid Pensions and a strong advocate for the Nurses Pension Act. When these stragglers arrived, Barton sent them on to Mr. Cogswell to add to the petition; as Barton put it, "from the size of that 'cart wheel' roll one would judge that it needed no further accessories--but vast as the sea is, the drops still fall in it and the little brooks flow to it, so I suppose it's all right."
I also found an intriguing little pamphlet tucked in the folder: Joint Resolution No. 3. from the General Assembly and Governor of Iowa, "asking Congress to enact a law providing for pensioning certain women enrolled as Army Nurses."
Any ideas why Iowa of all states is endorsing the Nurses Pension Act?
Showing posts with label Pension Committee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pension Committee. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Monday, June 18, 2012
A Very Large Petition
Today was one of those days where almost everything seemed to go right.
Negatives: it rained, and they pulled two soldiers instead of my nurses--apparently they had the same file numbers...
Positives: My people in legislation came through for me again. Apparently, while pulling my nurses' files, he found two boxes on the Army Nurses Pension Act. What was in them, you ask?
Something that made me grin like a maniac when I opened up the folder.
Petitions. Hundreds of individual petitions sent out by the WRC to all its Corps to be signed, returned, and sent to Congress to demonstrate just how many people supported the Army Nurses Pension Act. The names are those of WRC members, GAR members, and "friends of the soldiers." So far, the vast majority of petitions are from Massachusetts, which, as a native, makes me extremely happy. There was even one from the West Acton WRC Corps--West Acton is essentially Boxborough, my hometown. There are also petitions from New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Kansas-there's a second box I haven't even touched so the list will grow. I found a reference to the petition in a letter written by a WRC officer: there are over 160,000 signatures on the petition. 160,000! Put this together with the 100,000 members of the WRC...I'm just going to let Sarah Fuller tell you. She's the genius that put all this together, anyway.
Negatives: it rained, and they pulled two soldiers instead of my nurses--apparently they had the same file numbers...
Positives: My people in legislation came through for me again. Apparently, while pulling my nurses' files, he found two boxes on the Army Nurses Pension Act. What was in them, you ask?
Something that made me grin like a maniac when I opened up the folder.
Petitions. Hundreds of individual petitions sent out by the WRC to all its Corps to be signed, returned, and sent to Congress to demonstrate just how many people supported the Army Nurses Pension Act. The names are those of WRC members, GAR members, and "friends of the soldiers." So far, the vast majority of petitions are from Massachusetts, which, as a native, makes me extremely happy. There was even one from the West Acton WRC Corps--West Acton is essentially Boxborough, my hometown. There are also petitions from New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Kansas-there's a second box I haven't even touched so the list will grow. I found a reference to the petition in a letter written by a WRC officer: there are over 160,000 signatures on the petition. 160,000! Put this together with the 100,000 members of the WRC...I'm just going to let Sarah Fuller tell you. She's the genius that put all this together, anyway.
"Our petition, 31,000 feet long, had the bonna fide signatures of 160,000 men and women of the different States, and the W.R.C. now numbers about 100,000 members, this with the endorsement of the National Pension Committee of the G.A.R. authorizing us to speak for the 500,000 comrades, gave us a backing of nearly 800,000 people. Will our legislators disregard that force?"Now, here's the thing. Several other letters I've found suggest that the G.A.R. withdrew its support at one point because the WRC was asking for $25 pensions, and the G.A.R. supported $12 pensions. The G.A.R was also rather hesitant to push for a pension for Mary Bickerdyke several years earier. So, what exactly is the role of the G.A.R in getting this act passed, and why do they seem so hesitant at times to give it their support?
Monday, June 11, 2012
Cushman Kellogg Davis
If today wasn't quite a banner day, it came close. There were no rejection slips waiting for me in the Research Room. There were some interesting tidbits hiding in the files. And the researchers at Legislation came through for me. There are legislative files on my Special Acts somewhere in the depths of the Archives! Now I just need to pull them. And, since they're not pensions, I can put in requests for as many as I please. The staff is going to hate me.
Legislation also gave me a rather large interesting tidbit: the transcripts of the Senate debate on the Army Nurses Pension Act.
The Pension Act was submitted previously in 1890 and passed the Senate before getting hung up in the House. In July, 1892, the House finally passed its own amended version and sent it to the Senate for consideration. This is where the transcript begins.
Our leading men:
Senator Cushman Kellogg Davis: the chairman of the Pensions Committee and the man responsible for putting the bill forward, Davis was its strongest defender in the Senate. Prior to his election as the Republican Senator from Minnesota (I wonder if he knew Mrs. Blaisdell...) he was a lieutenant in the 28th Wisconsin during the 'War of the Rebellion', and served one term as governor.
Senator James Henderson Berry: one of two men heading the opposition. A Democrat from Arkansas and a former Confederate soldier (he served in the 16th Arkansas as a 2nd Lieut.).
Senator Francis Marion Cockrell: a Democratic senator from Missouri and the other major source of opposition to the bill, Cockrell was also a brigadier in the Confederate army.
Berry and Cockrell, along with Senator Gray (D-De), had several issues with the bill. Berry summed it up in two short sentances: "It seems to me...that there can be no justice in placing persons upon the pension roll who were not soldiers, but were simply nurses during the late war. I cannot see by what rule of justice or equity a claimant can be put upon the pension roll and continued there to increase the enormous pension list whcih we already have." Army nurses, he argued, had not, as a body, exposed themselves to danger any more than nurses did in modern hospitals. They were not "actual soldiers" and therefore not entitled to be on the pension roll. "Service pensions," and the dangerous precedents they set for future legislation, were an evil to be avoided at all costs. Berry et co. also worried about the strain on the national budget. The Act would cover far more than the two or three hundred that Mr. Davis insisted it would cover: 6284 women, according to Mr. Cockrell's numbers (personally, I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Cockrell on this point--the numbers, not the strain). As a bit of background, pensions were already costing the government $150,000,000 a year. Now, pensioning 6000 old women was not the financial drain these men were worried about--the precedent the bill set, however, for more and more pensions, was.
Here is the cherry on top. Cockrell mentions the Special Acts. Apparently, Cockrell was instrumental in establishing a rule fixing pensions for nurses at $12 a month--previous pensions were as high as $20 and $25. He was also influential in hedging the bill. Originally the Act allowed any woman who served as an army nurse to apply for a pension, provided she served at least six months. Courtesy of Cockrell and his supporters, the bill was amended so only women "employed by the Surgeon General of the Army...under contract or otherwise...or who were emploted as nurses during such period by authority which is recognized by the War Department" could receive a pension. Hedge the bill, the less damage it can do, and the fewer expensive Special Acts will go through the Pension Committee.
And, despite all they'd done to hedge the bill, they still fought for its dismissal. Luckily for the nurses, their objections were overruled. The House and the Senate created a committee to settle the disagreement over the amendment (the House's bill didn't have Cockrell's changes), and the bill was signed, as amended, by the Senate on August 1, 1892. The Army Nurses Pension Act officially became law four days later.
So, the transcript's not a goldmine of information, but it makes a fantastic starting point. It looks like there's a divide along party lines--not surprising--but a list of who voted for and against the bill is now on my list of things to look out for. Also, I now have the names of the major players. If I can get my hands on some personal papers, I might be able to sound out what their not-so-obvious views on the Pension Act were, and what was going on behind the scenes. I can backtrack to when the first Special Acts started coming through--those oh so evil Special Acts that Cockrell and Berry dislike so much--and see what their reaction is. Davis also mentions in the debates that he spoke with Clara Barton the morning the bill went before the Senate. His papers could have more tidbits about who's talking about the Pension Act, who's lobbying for it, etc.
This may take longer than five weeks...
Legislation also gave me a rather large interesting tidbit: the transcripts of the Senate debate on the Army Nurses Pension Act.
The Pension Act was submitted previously in 1890 and passed the Senate before getting hung up in the House. In July, 1892, the House finally passed its own amended version and sent it to the Senate for consideration. This is where the transcript begins.
Our leading men:
 |
| Senator Davis |
Senator James Henderson Berry: one of two men heading the opposition. A Democrat from Arkansas and a former Confederate soldier (he served in the 16th Arkansas as a 2nd Lieut.).
Senator Francis Marion Cockrell: a Democratic senator from Missouri and the other major source of opposition to the bill, Cockrell was also a brigadier in the Confederate army.
Berry and Cockrell, along with Senator Gray (D-De), had several issues with the bill. Berry summed it up in two short sentances: "It seems to me...that there can be no justice in placing persons upon the pension roll who were not soldiers, but were simply nurses during the late war. I cannot see by what rule of justice or equity a claimant can be put upon the pension roll and continued there to increase the enormous pension list whcih we already have." Army nurses, he argued, had not, as a body, exposed themselves to danger any more than nurses did in modern hospitals. They were not "actual soldiers" and therefore not entitled to be on the pension roll. "Service pensions," and the dangerous precedents they set for future legislation, were an evil to be avoided at all costs. Berry et co. also worried about the strain on the national budget. The Act would cover far more than the two or three hundred that Mr. Davis insisted it would cover: 6284 women, according to Mr. Cockrell's numbers (personally, I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Cockrell on this point--the numbers, not the strain). As a bit of background, pensions were already costing the government $150,000,000 a year. Now, pensioning 6000 old women was not the financial drain these men were worried about--the precedent the bill set, however, for more and more pensions, was.
 |
| Senator Cockrell |
And, despite all they'd done to hedge the bill, they still fought for its dismissal. Luckily for the nurses, their objections were overruled. The House and the Senate created a committee to settle the disagreement over the amendment (the House's bill didn't have Cockrell's changes), and the bill was signed, as amended, by the Senate on August 1, 1892. The Army Nurses Pension Act officially became law four days later.
So, the transcript's not a goldmine of information, but it makes a fantastic starting point. It looks like there's a divide along party lines--not surprising--but a list of who voted for and against the bill is now on my list of things to look out for. Also, I now have the names of the major players. If I can get my hands on some personal papers, I might be able to sound out what their not-so-obvious views on the Pension Act were, and what was going on behind the scenes. I can backtrack to when the first Special Acts started coming through--those oh so evil Special Acts that Cockrell and Berry dislike so much--and see what their reaction is. Davis also mentions in the debates that he spoke with Clara Barton the morning the bill went before the Senate. His papers could have more tidbits about who's talking about the Pension Act, who's lobbying for it, etc.
This may take longer than five weeks...
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