Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1989

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

History

Major Professor

Paul H. Bergeron

Committee Members

Susan Becker, W. Bruce Wheeler, John Muldowny, Allison Ensot

Abstract

This study treats not only the bureaucratic establishments themselves, but also the people who occupied and administered the South's first Confederate soldiers' home; namely those of Louisiana, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. Chapter I, based upon information derived from 1,682 applications for admission and other quantifiable data, demonstrates that the "typical" inmate had been poor at the outset of the war, and that his status did not improve in subsequent decades. A veteran's entrance into a soldiers' home may have also depended upon whether he suffered from a service-related disability, as well as his marital status and family size.

Chapter II describes how, beginning in the 1880s, various veterans' groups–composed predominantly of proprietary and low-white collar members-responded to the needs of their indigent comrades by founding homes as private relief projects. Gradually state governments assumed financial responsibility for the homes, while veterans continued serving as governing boards and staff members. The Georgia home, regarded as "the home that [Henry] Grady built," is dealt with separately in the following chapter, since the development of that institution was indeed an aberration.

Chapter IV explores how contemporary attitudes concerning poverty, aging, public welfare, social responsibility, as well as an eulogistic tradition of "Johnny Reb," influenced home officials to devise rigid institutional policies aimed at controlling and transforming the behavior of those believed to be incapable of taking care of themselves. The ensuing chapter illustrates how occasionally the homes were neither peaceful nor dignified retreats (despite what was envisioned and advertised), as inmates who had grown impatient with the paternalism of their social betters managed partly to subvert the homes' discipline and turn it to their own advantages.

Chapter VI stresses that, despite the many changes which occurred in the homes over time, they continued to occupy a central place within southern society, at least until their institutional breakup that commenced in the 1920s. Throughout their more than fifty years of collective existence, the homes benefitted from an outpouring of humanitarian concern; a fitting reward for men who, many asserted, symbolized the virtues of honor, masculinity, and obedience to duty.

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