American history of the civil war. She has published numerous books and articles, including the heart of the eagle, irishamerican volunteers in the union army, and the soldiers of most celebrated unit. This book will be on sale. She will sign it for you and after this presentation. You can get a copy at the gift shop and there will be an opportunity for her to sign. Shes a past president of the Mississippi Historical society, a member of the board of trustees for the society of military history and serves on the Editorial Board of civil war times magazine and the Advisory Board of the National Civil war museum. Her most recent research involves civil war governors of mississippi project, which she directs, this is a Collaborative Partnership between the Mississippi Department of archives and history, the Mississippi Digital Library and the university of southern mississippi, which will scan, stateribe, annotate and civil war era governors papers. About 50,000 documents spanning nine administrations from 1859 to 1882. 19th century americans never hesitated to contact the governor, and these papers offer scholars and the public valuable insights into the unknown or understudied experience. All the papers will be freely accessible online. What does she do in her spare time . We dont know. [laughter] i will tell you what, she tours the gettysburg battlefield as she has been doing the past two days. I also want to welcome members of the Texas Brigade Association reactivated, folks from texas, one person from australia, and they have been at harpers ferry, antietam, gettysburg, the National Civil war museum and we welcome you. We thank cspan for covering this for our national audience. Without further ado. [applause] hey, everybody thank you for coming out. It has been a wonderful week up here in pennsylvania. I moved to the south about 20 years ago. East texas is still considered south. I moved to mississippi about 10 years ago but spent my first decade here in pennsylvania. It is good to be home. It has been a wonderful week with the association reactivated. But we dont all come to the same conclusions, but we are dedicated to a tremendous amount of learning. It has been a good week. Wayne and mary beth, thank you for having me back. This is an outstanding museum. So often we dont become members of museums if we are not in the area. We support the ones we can get to a lot, and it is a wonderful reminder you can still support museums doing wonderful work. We toured this museum yesterday and had a behindthescenes to behindthescenes tour and the collections here are incredible. Its invaluable for me as a historian, but also for the public. I need to commend you all on what you are doing. I am here to talk today about mississippis confederate home. This is one of my favorite photographs of the home. It was taken in february 1926, and it is similar to other photographs you can find if you Google Jefferson davis soldiers home, as it was commonly known when it was open. Photographs like these, i stumbled across not long after moving to mississippi in 2009. I got curious about the home and thought, has anybody done research on this . You start looking for books or articles and i found a few related studies, but i couldnt find really good, indepth historical analysis of the home to help me unravel why i was seeing individuals i am not used to seeing in front of a confederate home as residents, or inmates as they were known in the earlier 20th century. This is unusual because most studies of confederate homes, number one, most confederate homes were just for veterans, usually just men out front, or there were womens homes, just for women. I wasnt used to seeing such a diverse crowd this early in the 20th century. There might be some crossover with men and women at the same home later in the 20 century, but this was fairly early to see Something Like this. I became curious, wanted to do research, but the problem i ran into was that there just arent that many traditional records. We dont have letters, memoirs of individuals who ran the home. We dont have a lot of the traditional resources historians work with, that those of you who have done research on your own know we tend to utilize as historians. I was trying to figure out how i could unravel what life was like at this home and what mississippi set out to create. This is a timely question. We are still wrestling with how we properly care for veterans, what are Services Veterans should be receiving, how do we make sure they receive them in a timely manner, that they are truly meeting the needs of veterans . This became a fascinating question i wanted to unravel. One of the issues i ran into, though, is that the home really doesnt fit the historical biography. If you are interested in the subject matter, get these books. While i disagree with some findings, and beauvoir and mississippi have challenged some of the findings, but these are the best starting points. This is about the overall experiences of veterans after the civil war, and the author looks at challenging experiences veterans face when they came home, where you would think that, for example, Union Veterans were warmly welcomed and celebrated, but in fact there were real concerns about these former soldiers coming home and what kind of bad habits they picked up in camp. Are they violent . Are we going to have a rise in crime . Are there bringing addictions home with them . And martin found that in the confederacy, there was more of a positive image of some of these veterans, but there was still concern, particularly when it came to caring for veterans and Veterans Homes. You dont want to do too much because pensions might make people lazy. You dont want to provide too much public support, because people get dependent on public support, these are 19thcentury ideas about welfare, they wont be independent anymore. We dont want to do too much, but we need to do something. This was something late 19th century americans wrestled with. This book on the right, this is much more focused on the subject atter we are covering today, history of confederate homes, and these confederate homes are funded by states, not the federal government. You took up arms against the federal government, the federal government doesnt tend to smile upon providing aid afterwards. The state of mississippi, louisiana, texas, virginia, provided homes for veterans and these were funded out of state coffers. The reason i say that beauvoir didnt really fit with my understanding of confederate homes based on these books and works like them is because these works argued, for example, the individuals in these homes were the poorest of the poor and the neediest of the needy. That makes sense. To receive a pension is a civil war veteran, north or south, you had to prove need, be indigent. You were unable to take care of yourself or you tremendously sacrificed and were worthy of care. We say as historians that we created in the minds of the public if not also Academic Work the impression that these individuals had always been the poorest of the poor. Assumptions crept in of, then they will have traditional issues you see with poverty, illiteracy, socioeconomic instability, moving around a lot from rental properties, Something Like this. But if you go back and look at some of these images, some individuals look impoverished but if you look at some of the women, of necklaces, a fur collar, some of the women fashionably dressed, again, this is 1926 but the people in this photograph are demonstrating that if they arent wealthy at this point, at some point in their life they enjoyed a certain amount of comfort, a certain amount of wealth, what historians called cultural capital. You might not have it now but you are wearing things indicating what your family once had. It might even be your name. You might not have much money now but Everybody Knows the surname whatever. In they are from up delta, from natchez, thats an old family the dates all the way back to virginia. So i started to become curious about where those descriptions didnt fit with what i was seeing at beauvoir. James martin also referred to these Veterans Homes as stately prisons of gratitude, that 19thcentury americans, out of gratitude for the service of these veterans, had built these homes, but then the veterans basically got stuck in them, pushed off to the side. If you look at rosenbergs title, living monuments, the argued these confederate veterans were old men pushed to the side, brought out on confederate holidays, maybe memorial day, but largely forgotten by society. They were these living monuments to the lost cause, but that is about all they were, living isolated from the rest of the world. Martin, in his study, he does a careful study of confederate homes, but beauvoir wasnt significantly in his study because it lacks traditional sources. He found that most residents of homes were lifelong bachelors or recent widowers, which makes sense if you think about the fact that most states Veterans Homes were just for veterans. There were separate homes sometimes for widows, but the Veterans Homes were just for veterans, so you cant move there with your wife. So youre probably going to wait until you were widowed, or maybe you are a lifelong bachelor, but the individuals here are single men, described as being done with lifes joys and basically waiting for death. Its a sad story, its a depressing topic. So i was like, i dont know, it seems so universally sad that it doesnt seem logical. We are rarely that consistent, we are rarely that good and we are not always that bad. So i became curious about what beauvoir could tell us about this understanding of confederate veteran homes. Does it fit the norm . And i would come across images like these from the early 1930s, where a famous individual, Franklin Delano roosevelt, goes to visit beauvoir. And im thinking, if they are just isolated and shuttered off, why is this individual bothering to visit this home, and why are all these individuals, clearly not residents, they are too young, at the home . This is clearly an important and worthwhile place for him to stop and visit. That didnt seem to fit with what we understood. But also did not fit, you can barely make him out in the corner, but this individual, its not conclusive but some have theorized this individual was one of the three africanamerican residents of the home. These are two of the men here in this photograph. The idea is that the gentleman is this man, nathan best. Mississippi was the first confederate home i have been able to find that admitted africanamerican pensioners as residents, not as employees but as actual residents of the home. To understand how that happened, we need to get into the background of pensions. Mississippi passed their pension law, theyre bill to provide pensions for confederate veterans, in 1888, a little later in the process but not too late. Other states had done this, and basically the idea was to provide for veterans. This also went to widows, and they also provided for enslaved body servants. The phrase used on the pension form is servants, who had been taken to war or sent to war as enslaved camp servants and military camps. The unusual thing about mississippi, mississippi is not the only place to provide pensions for enslaved servants, but the mississippi standout moment where it separates it from general policy and other Confederate States is that mississippi insisted on paying these men at the equal rate with widows and veterans of the confederacy who had served. You could only get a pension if you are indigent, in need. You could also only receive a pension if you were declared as having served honorably. If there is any record of desertion, if there is an indication you decided to stop serving the confederacy and take up arms serving the union, you are not getting anything from the confederacy. Real bad news is you probably wont get anything from the federal government either. That is a separate case. But mississippi did Something Interesting in 1888. In 1890 they passed a new state constitution that violated civil rights for poor whites and africanamericans during this time, but the legislature in 1896 clarified that the pension law would stay as it was. That all confederate veterans, widows and servants, the phrasing they used, should share alike, meeting get equal rights. If you look at some of the letters as people debated this in the newspapers at the time, one gentleman writes and he says, slaves who ran away and joined the union army are getting pensions from the u. S. Government. Are you going to tell me mississippi is not giving a pension to an enslaved man who stayed with the confederacy . I cant even wrap my head around this. This needs to be done, was the argument. That policy stayed in place until the early 1920s. In the early 1920s mississippi changes its law and says now, says no. They can still receive a pension but at a lower rate of white widows and white confederate veterans. In the photograph you have frank childress, there is nathan best on the far left, they are not combat veterans, they went to camp as body servants. In the case of nathan best, he does briefly serve. He is running a dispatch during the petersburg campaign, is badly wounded and ends up having a bone in his arm shattered and his arm is amputated, which you can make out a little more over here. But he received his pension. You can find this online if you are curious. It is all online. You can also find it at ancestry. Com and other places, but you can find a host of information about individuals in these pension records. This is another part of the curiosity for me, it wasnt quite making sense. If these homes are really only with the veterans, only men, they are isolated, then why is fdr visiting beauvoir . This is a photo of convention of newspaper editors in biloxi, mississippi, where the home is located, who come to beauvoir and have photographs made from residents, why is anybody coming to this home if these homes are traditionally isolated . If you work your way back with me into these images, why do we have this diverse home that i did not expect to find when you think about what the existing literature tells you about places like this . I started digging into this and i found Something Else that stood out as i tried to unravel who was at the home and what might have made it different, and i found this couple, el nathan and helen tart, and this is their son. They served as superintendents of the mississippi confederate home until 1943. There was a brief window when their patron was out of office, but the other interesting thing i want to point out is not just the length of time where you have consistent leadership by two outstanding managers of a home, but you also see an unusual case in the role of helen tart. Starting in 1916, she was her husbands assistant superintendent. The title was not officially hers until 1920, but starting in 1926 she became superintendent in her own right. By the early 1930s she will hold that office from 1936 until she dies in 1943. Helen tart is photographed here in the background, featured in the 1926 in the new Orleans Times picayune as the new woman of the south, this kind of modern woman. This article got me thinking about the fact we might also be looking at these homes from the wrong perspective. These homes are very much confederate memory, very much a part of the civil war. The gentleman in that group photo has all his reunion badges, very much Confederate Service is part of the experience that brought these individuals together, that is why they are here, but on the other hand, beauvoir became a symbol of what mississippi was capable of creating after the civil war. Beauvoir became a symbol of the new south, modern it he, efficiency, a society that can take care of its aging population, a massive scale of veterans, we had not seen that large of a veteran population in the United States that needed carrie. Care. And mississippi rose to the challenge, it was a crown jewel and a real pride for the state. And we have a very different scene where el nathan and helen tart are running this facility. And having a woman running these homes was incredibly unusual. You see this a lot by the 1930s, women running womens homes and even women running some of the mens homes by the time they were integrated with widows and other states, but helen tart, number one, starting in a leadership role that early, was different. The other thing i hope readers will rethink is helen tartt not just doing this as a member of the united daughters of the confederacy, caring for these veterans who cared for the confederacy, but really is a manager and business woman. If you look at newspapers from the time, she was running a facility with 250 residents, dozens of employees, massive state provided budget, also dealing with massive budget cuts during the great depression. The facility had a dairy, it was almost entirely selfsustaining. When work needed to be done, again, in the newspapers there are all these ads, contract needed, deliver sealed bid to helen tartt. She was the major employer on the coast. For me as a civil war historian and perhaps for some of you with interest in the civil war, we approach this looking for a story about the civil war. And it is absolutely there. If you dont know anything about beauvoir, this is the last home Jefferson Davis lived in and where he wrote his twovolume story about the confederacy. That is very much a part of their story. But what is also part of this story is the study of modernity, this study of caring for veterans and how this can be done and how this can be more efficiently done. I dont want to paint too rosy of a picture and want to include excerpts from a resident by the name of lanny reinhardt. If you look at her letter, this is one of only two or three letters from residents of the home. We hope more will trickle in, so please spread the word. If you look on the left, this is a positive image i sit on the , porch and the sunshine, looking at the grand building that surrounds our home, yes, i say our home. It is my home and every inmates home that is here, and it seems like one large family. A very p