Revolutionary War Veterans

[cityimrov]

During the Revolutionary War (yes, the one during 1775â€"1783), how were veterans of that war treated?  After the speeches and parades were over and the war ended, did the states provide any type of things like "VA" benefits we know today?   For the benefits they provided, were they willfully given or did they have to fight "tooth and nail" to receive them?

[NotNow]

http://www.answers.com/topic/veterans-revolutionary-war


In 1818, responding to the public's growing esteem for the Revolutionary veteran, the U.S. Congress for the first time offered pensions to any veteran of the Continental army who had demonstrated financial need and had served for at least nine months. This differed from previous pensions offered only to officers and also to those soldiers permanently injured in battle. In 1832, Congress further liberalized these requirements and granted pensions to all living veterans, including militia members, regardless of financial need, if they had served for six months. This pension system set important precedents for the relationship of the veteran and the federal government. Subsequently, after every major war, veterans often received pensions and other benefits by virtue of their wartime service.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/veterans-revolutionary-war#ixzz18hQNhDMy

[cityimrov]

http://www.answers.com/topic/veterans-revolutionary-war


In 1818, responding to the public's growing esteem for the Revolutionary veteran, the U.S. Congress for the first time offered pensions to any veteran of the Continental army who had demonstrated financial need and had served for at least nine months. This differed from previous pensions offered only to officers and also to those soldiers permanently injured in battle. In 1832, Congress further liberalized these requirements and granted pensions to all living veterans, including militia members, regardless of financial need, if they had served for six months. This pension system set important precedents for the relationship of the veteran and the federal government. Subsequently, after every major war, veterans often received pensions and other benefits by virtue of their wartime service.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/veterans-revolutionary-war#ixzz18hQNhDMy

1818?  That's about 35 years after the war ended!  1832?  That's 49 years!  Most those guys were probably dead by then.  

I'm also reading something about Shays' Rebellion in 1787 which involved something about unpaid soldiers rebelling with the state ordering another group of even more unpaid, unfed, and unarmed(?) soldiers trying to stop them.  In a way, it looked like the state politicans was trying to make them work for free?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion

[NotNow]

Here is the complete citation:

Because inadequate records were kept, the exact number of Americans who fought in the Continental army and in state militia units during the Revolutionary War (1775â€"83) is unknown. Most former members of the Continental army officer corps became ardent nationalists as a result of their military service and pressed to replace the Articles of Confederation with a new constitution. President George Washington placed a number of his former Continental army officers in executive positions in the new federal government.

Continental officers created the Society of the Cincinnati for themselves, but no national veterans' organizations emerged for the common soldiers. Many veterans of the Revolution continued to serve in the militia after 1783, and for numerous Americans the militia embodied the republican ideals of the citizen‐soldier. The heightened nationalism that emerged after the War of 1812 helped turn the aging and shrinking ranks of Revolutionary War veterans into symbols of civic virtue in the eyes of politicians and the public. In communities across the country, these gray‐haired ex‐soldiers often received honored places at the head of Fourth of July parades and other rituals honoring the Revolution and the Republic.

In 1818, responding to the public's growing esteem for the Revolutionary veteran, the U.S. Congress for the first time offered pensions to any veteran of the Continental army who had demonstrated financial need and had served for at least nine months. This differed from previous pensions offered only to officers and also to those soldiers permanently injured in battle. In 1832, Congress further liberalized these requirements and granted pensions to all living veterans, including militia members, regardless of financial need, if they had served for six months. This pension system set important precedents for the relationship of the veteran and the federal government. Subsequently, after every major war, veterans often received pensions and other benefits by virtue of their wartime service.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/veterans-revolutionary-war#ixzz18hzQAzqr

[cityimrov]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/veterans-revolutionary-war#ixzz18hzQAzqr

Interesting.  That citation has a reference to this article: http://www.answers.com/topic/revolutionary-war-1775-83-postwar-impact  Here's the middle part.  

The U.S. Army itself was divided at war's end between an officer class that had sought and won promises of a postwar pension, and men in the ranks who had been paid in depreciated government script and vague promises. When, after the war, the officers organized the Society of Cincinnati to promote their right to a commutation, or lump‐sum payment in lieu of pensions, many Americans, including rank‐and‐file veterans, complained about the emergence of aristocracy in American society. The war had created other tensions not easily dissipated: wartime shortages of provisions, inflation caused by the printing of paper money, and fears about the manipulation of prices by hoarders and forestallers pitted rural against urban dwellers and farmers against merchants. After the war, a short‐lived burst of consumer spending fueled by loose credit arrangements set the stage for bitter social resentments when merchants suddenly contracted credit and called for payment of debts. Many states saw violent demonstrations against debtor courts in 1785â€"86; Massachusetts faced armed rebellion.

What has been called Shays's Rebellion, an armed protest by farmer‐regulators in western Massachusetts in the fall and winter of 1786â€"87, was in reality only the most visible sign of a widespread discontent. Forced court closures were common throughout New England; in New Hampshire, protestors for a short time held the legislature hostage; and throughout Massachusetts, farmers complained to the legislature about tax laws, the shortage of money, and the greed of merchants. But only 2,000 or so actually took up arms in the Connecticut River Valley towns of western Massachusetts, and were forcibly suppressed by a hastily recruited government force of about 5,000 under Benjamin Lincoln. Capt. Daniel Shays, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and other leaders of the uprising, managed to escape into neighboring Vermont, and the rest of the rebels were dispersed. The Massachusetts government eventually provided reprieves or pardons for all, but the experience left Americans divided.

It is too simple to equate the divisions of Shays' Rebellion with Federalistâ€"Anti‐Federalist divisions over the Constitution of 1787, but a good many Americans at the time did so; both sides used divisive rhetoric and identified antagonistic interests. Federalists claimed to be merchants, creditors, and commercial farmers, all sound money people who sought order and stability both in the economy and in the larger society, and portrayed their opponents as poor farmers, debtors, or localists who failed to understand the needs of a nation. Anti‐Federalists saw themselves as honest husbandmen who were up against rapacious merchants and monied holders of public securities. America's urban‐rural split curiously lumped a good many commercial farmers on the urban side of the divide, but also united urban artisans with merchants in the Federalist effort to strengthen the American economy through a revitalized national policy. Even if the divisions were not as precise as contemporaries suggested, the debate over the Constitution shows that there were divisions in American society created or perhaps sharpened by the American Revolution, and in particular by the war. Writing in the famous Federalist Papers, James Madison was to argue that the new Constitution made sense in such a society: it was designed to steer conflicting interests into reasoned debate and compromise.

In practice, not even the new federal Constitution could resolve all of the questions the Revolution had opened. It did, however, provide a democratic framework for resolving such issues in the future, and as Madison envisaged it, it provided a forum for the enormous diversity of condition and opinion that already existed in the United States and was to continue. George Washington's first administration and the statesmen of the First Congress strengthened popular acceptance of the new Constitution, convincing Americans that their diverse views were fairly represented in government and that their rights were adequately protected. The Revolution, however, had also left a legacy of healthy skepticism about government. Americans argued variously that evangelical religion held better answers, that families must protect values, that women had a special role in nurturing “virtuous” citizens, that both public and private education must be expanded, or that the complexities of modern life required an informed citizenry well served by a free press. There was paradox in the new American culture; there was also vibrancy and excitement and enormous optimism.

Funny, the bold part sounds like parts of what Western Europe is facing.  We might be facing something similar soon. 

Though from what this article is saying and the dates from the previous article, for the most part, most of the vets barely got anything.  Yes, there was a parade and pats in the back but parades don't pay for food, housing, doctors, medical equipment, or even daily expenses.  This is a depressing read.  

[Dog Walker]

Most of them were self-sufficient farmers and tradesmen and didn't need food, housing assistance and they avoided doctors at all costs since the medical knowledge of the day was deadly.  I am sure they were very proud of having a part in the forming of a new nation.

Almost nobody got anything from the government in those days.

[cityimrov]

Most of them were self-sufficient farmers and tradesmen and didn't need food, housing assistance and they avoided doctors at all costs since the medical knowledge of the day was deadly.  I am sure they were very proud of having a part in the forming of a new nation.

How about the disabled & injured ones?

[Dog Walker]

There weren't very many.  Very few soldiers survived being wounded in those days.  There only treatment was to amputate whatever part of you was wounded.

Those who did survive, but were disabled were usually cared for by the extended families that were the norm at the time.

Many more Revolutionary war soldiers died of disease than of combat, especially those who came from farms not the cities.

[Old Jim]

Most, if not all of the states offered land grants to the soldiers. Some got as many as 4,000 acres. Many black soldiers got land grants. Some blacks in North Carolina got 1,000 acres, each. Georgia was one of the last to help the vets by not allowing land bounties until 1820, after most were too old to use the land.

[Ocklawaha]

Susposedly named for his home in Fort Nolin Scotland... which has NO IDEA where it was!

CORRECTION y'all, those that provided services to the young country were often granted land in the newly open territories. For example I have a grandparent that was a spy for the patriots, at the end of the war he was granted "10,000 acres of darned poor land!" Nolin River and Nolin Lake Kentucky, today its a state park.

Morgantown West Virginia

Another grandparent also got some land for his service... today they call it Morgantown WVA. Best I can tell his home was where the airport is now.

The veterans are NOT FORGOTTEN and the "Son's and Daughters of the Revolution," are the keepers of the gate on remains, history and veterans issues... Just as the SCV-UDC does for Confederates.

So where one of you decides to build that plaza southeast of town along Durbin Creek and that big bulldozer unearths some remains... Who you gonna call!


OCKLAWAHA