Mexican-American War

The mounted plaque stands in front of the headstones at Mobile National Cemetery in Alabama. The dark, cast-aluminum tablet draws a stark contrast to the sea of pearly marble beyond. Across its face in white lettering runs the sorrowful first stanza of Theodore O’Hara’ elegiac poem, “Bivouac of the Dead,” beginning with the verse “The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat / The Soldier’s last tattoo; / No more on life's parade shall meet / That brave and fallen few.” Tablets bearing passages from O’Hara’s poem can be found in dozens of VA national cemeteries across the country. Originally written to honor the Kentucky volunteers who died in the Mexican War (1846-48), the poem now serves as a literary memorial to all lives lost in service to the nation.

The North’s victory in the Civil War came at an enormous cost to the more than two million men who fought for the Union cause. Over 350,000 lost their lives due to battle or disease. Almost as many were wounded in action. According to Northern medical records, Union surgeons performed just under 30,000 amputations during the war. For these disabled Union Veterans, Congress made provisions to provide monetary compensation. In July 1861, lawmakers hastily passed a law for Union recruits making them eligible for the same pension allowances as soldiers in the Regular Army. Later in 1862, for the first time, a pension law explicitly granted benefits not just for men wounded in battle but also to those suffering from “disease contracted while in the service of the United States.”

Three burial vaults, two funeral processions a thousand miles apart, and a daytrip to quash an assertion of foul play–the remains of Zachary Taylor, the only U.S. president laid to rest in a VA national cemetery, have taken an especially tortuous path to their resting place in Louisville, Kentucky.

In 1776, the fledging American government passed the first national law compensating soldiers and sailors disabled in the Revolution, but it was slower to make any provisions for widow's pension claims.

For a nation with limited financial resources, bounty land warrants were an appealing tool to encourage military enlistments. The promise of free 160 acres was the country's second benefit authorized for Veterans. However, the measure had devastating effect on the Indian nations that were dispossessed from the land.