Seizing Citizenship: African American Women and the Struggle for Rights and Inclusion

In 1866, the Military Pension Bureau recognized the sacrifice of formerly enslaved African-American Union soldiers by creating policies that extended financial support to their families.  When newly freed African American women filed petitions for Civil War Widows’ pensions, they lay claim to new legal rights despite the social, economic, and political barriers they confronted at the local and state levels. By making what they understood to be legitimate claims on the government through the Military Pension Bureau, freedwomen articulated their own understanding of widowhood and by extension citizenship rights.
This paper examines how African American Civil War widows constructed themselves as rights bearing citizens in their negotiations with representatives from the Military Pension Bureau during special examinations.   Late nineteenth century institutional reform of the Bureau transformed the act of petitioning the federal government into a localized process involving individual claimants, claims agents, and bureau representatives.  Special examiners conducted these examinations with much of the formality one would expect in a court trial.  For African American Civil War widows, special examinations meant both surveillance and a growing discontent with the government’s unprecedented reach into their private lives.  At the same time, however, special examinations also opened up a new space for these women to shape the outcome of their claims.  Through an analysis of the pension files of African American Civil War widows from eastern North Carolina, this paper examines the implementation of special examinations in the region.  I argue that African American Civil War widows used these examinations to articulate their own distinct vision of womanhood and Civil War widowhood within the Military Pension Bureau. In doing so, I contend, African American Civil War widows shaped the outcome of their claims, their identities as Civil War widows, and the definition of citizenship in late nineteenth century America.