Biography
The large number of veterans of the American Civil War presented an unprecedented challenge to the institutions and resources of the United States and impelled significant structural change. Often underappreciated by historians, the growth of a substantial military pensions system during the late nineteenth century was driven by an admixture of party politics, ideology, and Civil War memory. Indeed, with the cost of such pensions demanding an increasingly large portion of the Federal budget, the distribution and administration of veterans’ benefits became a hotly contested battleground of bipartisan politics throughout the ‘Gilded Age’, while the burgeoning bureaucratic and investigatory capacity of the Bureau of Pensions reflected the reconceptualization of the American state during the post-war period. My PhD research will focus on the politics of Civil War pensions and in so doing, offer a fresh perspective on late nineteenth-century political culture in the United States.
I am also the holder of an Honorary Vice-Chancellor's Award.
