abeth A. Regosin and Donald R. Shaffer, professional historians at St. Lawrence University and Upper Iowa University respectively, who have written previously on the post-emancipation black experience.
The central objective of Voices of Emancipation is to expose readers to a sample of the Civil War pension files of ex-slaves in order to learn more about their individual and personal experiences during slavery, wartime, and the postwar era. Working backward, I would divide the book into four discrete sections. First, the index lists claimants by name. This should help genealogists as well as scholars researching individual black soldiers. Second, the appendix reproduces nine complete sample documents, all of which are depositions from special examinations. Veteran Frank Nunn, who fought for the 86th USCI, as well as widow Mary Jane Taylor whose husband Samuel Taylor fought in the 45th USCI, were among those interviewed. These depositions inquired into the validity of a claimant’s application; they are valuable because the voices are unedited.
The third section of the book, and its heart, consists of four chapters on the usage of the pension files for understanding slavery, the military experience of soldiers, postwar patterns, and marriage and the family respectively. Thus, chapter 2 draws on the pension files to reveal the similarities of military discipline experienced by all Civil War soldiers as well as the differences for black soldiers regarding recruitment, family members joining their enlistees, limited combat roles, prisoners of war, and postwar service. Denny, from Missouri, recalled the tedium of army routine: “We had dress parade in the morning, reverse arms at a funeral, and fired a salute in the grave” (p. 52). Cuffee Simmons reported that the 128th USCI had “skirmishes,” but we “were in no battles”; while Fort Pillow survivor Allen James testified that he “was not treated like the other prisoners” (pp. 65, 70). Chapter 3 uses the pension files to highlight postwar economic patterns of labor, property 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 clai