The Southern Claims Commission

As United States armies moved through seceded states on campaign or settled into winter camps, they often requisitioned property (food, animals, wood) from private citizens with or without permission from the owners. Formed during Ulysses S. Grant’s postwar presidency, the Southern Claims Commission was the process that claimants could navigate to obtain payment for property lost during the war. While previous articles on ECW have explored some individual claims files and how they tell us rare personal stories, this article will primarily focus on the process of claims.[1] What was the Southern Claims Commission? How could applicants receive payment for lost wartime property? How did they prove loyalty? What can historians use these claims for?

The Southern Claims Commission was approved by an act of Congress on March 3, 1871, and all claims had to be submitted by March 3, 1873. This act authorized three commissioners to consider claims by loyal citizens “for stores or supplies taken or furnished during the rebellion for the use of the army of the United States in States proclaimed as in insurrection against the United States.”[2]

The commission closed operations in June 1880. During its nine months of official work, they received 22,298 claims and approved 7,092 or approximately one-third. Total claims measured at $60,258,150 of value while $4,636,920.69 was approved and paid. Even when claims were approved, the approved value granted may have been less than the value of property initially claimed. As the number of claims indicates, the work was well beyond the ability of three men to complete, and countless special commissioners travelled across the south to gather testimony and assess evidence put forward in claims.

It took them over seven years from the filing due date to complete their work, which attests to the number of claimants as well as the complexity of investigation. Still, it’s worth noting that in some cases congressional inquiry on behalf of constituents, later reinvestigation, and later congressional approval of payment meant that some claims were paid long after 1880.[3]

Claimants had to prove two things to the commissioners: that they had been loyal to the United States during the war and that the property was officially taken and used by the Federal army. They also had to be citizens residing in a state that seceded, which complicated things for many residents that suffered loss during the Antietam or Gettysburg campaigns.[4]

Once a claimant had filed their basic information related to identity, dates, and property lost, usually with the assistance of an attorney, special commissioners would carry out additional investigation. They would travel and interview claimants as well as other witnesses in order to confirm property ownership, loyalty, and the veracity of the claim. There was a standing list of questions to explore these topics.[5] Any white males of voting age were explicitly asked if they had voted for secession, while formerly enslaved individuals had to prove they, not their former masters, owned the lost property.

Loyalty was a tricky thing to prove. For example, claimants were asked “On which side were your sympathies during the war, and were they on the same side from beginning to end?” and then asked what, if anything, they had done to support the Union cause. If any local Unionists were known, they would also be asked about their neighbor’s loyalties.

While the loyalty of white claimants may have been doubted, often the claims made by African Americans had assumptions of loyalty. Government officials often required less evidence to accept that a formerly enslaved person had been loyal, assuming that enslaved people would have naturally have been loyal to a government that ultimately supported emancipation by the end of the war, though officials may have more closely scrutinized their statements of property ownership.[6]

In order to be reimbursed, the lost property must have been taken during legitimate military actions. Basically, this meant that it had to be an official requisition approved by regimental level or higher officers. Jonas Wampler of Augusta County, Virginia made claims for $162 of lost property including a horse taken in 1864, and while investigators assessed he was loyal, they determined “It does not appear very clearly from the brief testimony of the witnesses whether the property charged was taken legitimately, or whether it was mere depredation by thugging soldiers or camp followers.” [7] Looting by individual soldiers was not an official military action and was thus not covered. However, Wampler appealed in 1892, and the Congressional Court of Claims eventually approved his reimbursement from nearly thirty years prior. Some of the clearest approved cases featured receipts from US officers that explained exactly what was taken and when.

The more evidence a claimant could put forward, the more likely it was a claim would be approved. A wartime receipt from an officer listing property taken in official actions was the gold standard of evidence. Postwar letters from former officers that remembered the event or former US soldiers attesting to Union sentiment were welcome. However, sometimes special commissioners found proof that claimants had served in Confederate militias, sold goods to the Confederate government, or had voted in favor of secession. Neighbors might also bring up old animosities and freely provide evidence against the claim.

How might you access the records? Ancestry/Fold3 has the “Allowed” claims files for Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia, and Virginia digitized and searchable, which makes it easy to access records, even if sometimes it may be difficult to read the cursive script. Gary B. Mills edited Southern Loyalists in the Civil War: The Southern Claims Commission (Genealogical Publishing Company, 1994), where he painstakingly listed all claimants’ names, county of residence, paperwork file numbers, and whether the repayment was allowed or not. You can then use this as an index to hunt down additional records in the National Archives if they have yet to be digitized.

Historians can learn an awful lot from the Southern Claims Commission files. Records can be used as a way to learn about a single person. What did they own during the war? How did they live? How did they cope with uncertainty, what did they believe, what did the US army take from them? They can be used to map a region by studying all applications from a town or county. What neighbors supported each other’s claims? Who provided evidence against others? What does this teach us about the economics, politics, and social landscape of a region? Or, you could take a broader subset and use it as a lens to explore what Union and loyalty meant to Americans. In any case, the files of the Southern Claims Commission are a powerful way to look into the past.

[1] Several ECW articles have looked at specific records and used them to illustrate individual stories: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2024/05/16/we-helped-them-escape-whenever-we-could-southern-claims-commission-records-reveal-a-free-black-petersburg-familys-civil-war-experience-part-i/, https://emergingcivilwar.com/2023/02/13/james-h-foster-seeking-freedom-and-justice/, https://emergingcivilwar.com/2022/05/02/absalom-mcgee-family-our-farm-adjoining-chancellorsville/ https://emergingcivilwar.com/2022/05/16/a-pennsylvania-family-on-petersburgs-front-line/

[2] M-87 Records of the Commissioners of Claims (Sothern Claims Commission), 1871-1880, National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/files/dc-metro/washington/m87.pdf.

[3] The Valley of the Shadow project notes for one Virginia county, “A few of the disallowed claims received a second consideration in the 1890s. Under the terms of the Bowman Act (March 3, 1883) and the Tucker Act (March 3, 1887), claimants could transfer their cases to the Congressional Court of Claims and ask for an appeal on unfavorable findings. Forty-two residents of Augusta County, most under the guidance of Washington, D.C., lawyer Gilbert Moyers, appealed their cases to the Court of Claims, often taking new testimony before filing a series of legal briefs. These appeals sometimes lasted years; the final judgments for some Augusta County claimants did not come until 1906.” “About the Southern Claims Commission Papers,” https://valley.lib.virginia.edu/VoS/claims/aboutSCC.html.

[4] In 1866, the Pennsylvania state legislature passed “act for the relief of certain citizens of Chambersburg and vicinity whose property was destroyed by the rebels on the thirtieth of July 1864.” Residents of the town who had lost their homes to Confederate military action could apply for reimbursement. This is very different than the Southern Claims Commission as it repaid damage by Confederates. “Chambersburg War Damage Photos and Claims,” Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission. https://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1776-1865/chambersburg-war-damages.html.

[5] Handily, the list has been typed out by the Valley of the Shadow project and can be found here: https://valley.lib.virginia.edu/VoS/claims/SCC_questions.html.

[6]  Susanna Michele Lee’s excellent book, Claiming the Union: Citizenship in the Post-Civil War South (Cambridge University Press, 2014), explores how the commissioners defined loyalty differently based on gender or race. Her exploration of what loyalty meant when assigned to Native Americans or formerly enslaved African Americans is worth noting. She also wrote a web article on the Southern Claims Commission in Virginia. Susanna Lee, “The Southern Claims Commission in Virginia” Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/southern-claims-commission-in-virginia-the.

[7] Claim of Jonas Wampler, Valley of the Shadow, https://valley.newamericanhistory.org/claims/SCC0100