y ownership, poverty, mortality, and preindustrial time sense among ex-slaves. Some lived precariously: Henry recalled that since he had lived in Centralia, Missouri, he had “worked for so many people at odd jobs I can hardly name them all” (p. 88). Others were more stable: Kitt Mitchell owned fifty acres of land, “all paid for” in Jacksonboro, South Carolina (p. 95).
The introduction is the fourth section and it explains the origins of the pension system, the limitations of the files as historical documents, and the authors’ selection criteria. The authors’ point concerning the limitations of pension files--“reductionist by their very nature”--is essentially correct (p. 5). The same could be said of the legal records examined by Frazier. Regosin and Shaffer’s selection criteria are a little more debatable. Their decision to include pension files to “allow former slaves to speak for themselves” is persuasive, especially in the appendix files. Indeed, I would hope that they plan to put some of these pension files online in order to meet their stated objective of reaching a broader audience. Less convincing is their criterion that the “document be novel in nature” (p. 6). The content of these documents, and the authors’ comments, add new details but not much more for those familiar with the enormous outpouring of slave and emancipation studies over the last two decades. In addition, those who have worked through the records of the Southern Claims Commission (Record Group 217) as well as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Record Group 105) would be less impressed with the authors’ claim for novelty.
There are specific limitations to the usage of these ex-slave pension files. The information on slave families and their obstacles from the trans-state slave trade in the pension files described in chapter 1 is repeated in chapter 4. The claim that pension files reveal that black soldiers did not experience much combat overlooks the obvious fact that those who died on the battlefield would not be claimants (some thirty-six thousand black soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice) while widows made unlikely war reporters. The description of the harsh conditions of Mexico faced by black troops transferred at the war’s end is silent on the importance of Mexico as a refuge from U.S. slavery to a previous generation of slaves since the 1829 abolition of slavery in that nation. Most important, the authors fail to capture the fundamental divide in values between the government and veterans. The former cared about the cash nexus and preventing fraudulent claims; the latter wanted their just rewards for work, service, and risking their lives.
Despite their limitations, both books provide us with some compelling details concerning the human experience of runaway slaves, wartime service, and postwar survival. Moreover, both works point to the importance of the changing nature of national government in the lives of Americans of African provenance. In the border-states, freedom was precarious, unless one could cross international borders--whether Florida before 1821, Mexico after 1829, or British Canada after 1834. With the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act in the United States, the protection of southern slavery gained the support of the national government. More than a decade later during the Civil War, black troops who fought for the Union eventually experienced a degree of equality in pension policy that local and state policies would take generations to emulate.
. One of my in-laws from Missouri once tried to persuade me of the benevolent nature of slavery.
. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Slaves No More: Three Essays in Emancipation and the Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 203.. For some of these studies, consult the annual bibliographical supplements published in the journal Slavery and Abolition. For instance, the December 2008 edition contains nearly five pages of secondary writings published on the antebellum South in 2006 and