The payment provided to soldiers wounded during the American Revolution is the nation’s oldest form of Veterans benefit. Bounty land warrants are a close second. Three weeks after passing the law compensating the injured, the Continental Congress in September 1776 also approved a resolution awarding grants of public land to all who served in the Continental Army for the duration of the conflict. The amount of land varied with rank, ranging from 100 acres for privates and noncommissioned officers to 500 acres for colonels and 1,100 acres for major generals. After the Revolution, the federal government reserved several million acres in Ohio for the settlement of Veterans who earned a bounty land warrant. This tract of land was part of the territory the Native American tribes of the region ceded by treaty in 1795 after the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
For a nation with limited financial resources, the bounties were an appealing tool to encourage enlistment and reward military service. Congress readily used the promise of free land for this purpose during the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, although it restricted eligibility to enlisted men and noncommissioned officers. In both conflicts, the size of the grant was fixed at 160 acres. The government set aside six million acres in Michigan, Illinois, and Louisiana for War of 1812 recruits who enlisted for five years or until discharged. Volunteers for the Mexican War benefited from more generous terms. They qualified for the bounty after only a year of service and could exchange their warrants for any property in the public domain. In the 1850s, Congress responded to pressure from survivors of the War of 1812 and passed a series of more liberal bounty laws. These measures culminated in the 1855 act that awarded 160 acres to Veterans (or their widows or minor children) of any war since 1790, regardless of rank or type of military service, provided they served at least 14 days or fought in one battle.
More than 260,000 Veterans or their heirs claimed warrants under the 1855 act. Overall, the different bounty land laws enacted between 1776 and 1855 resulted in the federal government dispensing over 500,000 warrants encompassing more than 61 million acres. How many Veterans used the warrants to obtain a parcel of land is unknown. Most probably sold them to land speculators at a reduced rate. The practice of issuing land grants to new recruits ended with the Mexican War. During the Civil War, Congress decided to make the western lands freely available to all Americans by passing the Homestead Act of 1862. While this legislation and the earlier bounty laws were a boon to those who acquired property, these measures had a devastating effect on the Indian nations that were dispossessed from the land.
By Jeffrey Seiken, Ph.D.
Historian, Veterans Benefits Administration
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History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 86: The Roll of Honor
“The following pages are devoted to the memory of those heroes who have given up their lives upon the altar of their country, in defense of the American Union.”
So opened the preface to the first volume of the Roll of Honor, a compendium of over 300,000 Federal soldiers who died during the Civil War and were interred in national and other cemeteries. The genesis of this 27-volume collection published between 1865 and 1871 can be traced to Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs and the department he oversaw for a remarkable 21 years from 1861 to 1882.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 85: Congressman Claypool’s “$1 Per Day Pension” Ribbon
Founded in 1866 as fraternal organization for Union Veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) embraced a new mission in the 1880s: political activism. The GAR formed a pension committee in 1881 for the express purpose of lobbying Congress for more generous pension benefits.
An artifact from the political wrangling over pensions is now part of the permanent collection of the National VA History Center in Dayton, Ohio. The item is a small pension ribbon displaying the message: “I endorse the $1 per day pension as recommended by the Departments of Ohio and Indiana G.A.R.” The button attached to the ribbon features two American flags and the phrase “saved by the boys of ’61-65.” The back of the ribbon bears the signature of Horatio C. Claypool, a Democratic judge who ran for the seat in Ohio’s eleventh Congressional district in the 1910 mid-term elections.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 84: Gettysburg Address Tablet
President Abraham Lincoln is one of the most revered figures in American history. Rankings of U.S. presidents routinely place him at or near the top of the list. Lincoln is also held in high esteem at VA. His stirring call during his second inaugural address in 1865 to “care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan” embodies the nation’s promise to all who wear the uniform, a promise VA and its predecessor administrations have kept ever since the Civil War.
Ever since Lincoln first uttered those memorable words in November 1863, the Gettysburg Address has been linked to our national cemeteries. In 1908, Congress approved a plan to produce a standard Gettysburg Address tablet to be installed in all national cemeteries in time for the centennial of President Lincoln’s birth on February 12, 1909.
