Oxley Johnson
Battles for a Pension
by Neil Allen Bristow
Oxley first applied for a disability pension a dozen years after the war, 12 Jun 1877, submitting what he felt was sufficient proof of his service and his disability. He was rejected a year and half later. The notice, signed by C. Bartlett on 25 Jan 1879, cited "no record of the alleged disability & inability to furnish any medical evidence from service." Had he been wounded in combat, had his eyesight been impaired by an exploding shell rather than disease, his pension probably would have been quickly granted.1
His efforts to qualify for a pension were hampered by the lack of official records. He had no certificate of disability issued at the time of his discharge, and the regimental medical records for 1861 attesting to his sickness and hospitalization had been lost or never filed, so he was out of luck. Regardless of the testimony of his comrades who described the events that befell Company D of the 23rd Missouri in the fall of that year, the Pension Bureau took the position that without the appropriate official records, none of it happened. And by the time Oxley applied for a pension, the Regimental Surgeon, John B. Ralph, had died, so he could not verify Oxley's claim. So had Ralph's assistants, Drs Edward L. Atkinson and Wlliam Elligood.2
Why did he persist? Why did he keep coming back time and again with more affidavits, appealing rejections, and calling for a special examiner to come out and take testimony in person? I suspect that his four-decade struggle was motivated not only by a desire for the money — welcome as it would have been — but also by a need to compel an unfeeling bureaucracy to recognize his sacrifice. He may also been encouraged by the successive liberalization by Congress of the pension program, figuring that if he had not qualified under the old, restrictive rules he would under the new, more generous rules.
Under pressure from veterans groups, such as the well-organized Grand Army of the Republic, Congress kept tinkering with the pension laws, making the benefits more generous and more equitable and extending coverage to former soldiers whose disabilities were not service-connected but the result of old age, injury or illness.3
Oxley's pension files contain hundreds of pages of documents, dozens of affidavits and depositions, reports of hearings, medical reports, and the like. As hefty a pile as it is, the record held by the National Archives is not complete, for there are references to documents that did not make it into the package. A second application, 11 Jun 1880, was also rejected and he requested a special examination which was held October 1885. His claim was again denied in November.
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When he did qualify under the provisions of the 1890 Act (which only required that a veteran be disabled, not due to service), his success rated comment in the Neodesha newspaper. "Oxley Johnson has been granted a pension under act of June 27th. He gets $12. per month from July 28th. 1890."5 Since he seems to have enlisted the support of many of his Wilson County neighbors in his efforts, the award of a pension probably did qualify as a newsworthy event.
One appeal finally bore fruit, though less nourishing than Oxley had hoped. On 4 February 1892, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior directed that Oxley receive $2 per month from the date of his discharge (2 Jun 1862) up to the time he was included under the more generous provisions of the Act 0f 27 Jun 1890. The amount was only for impairment of vision, not for any of the other ailments Oxley had claimed. The lump sum of $674 or so he received may have eased his discomfort, at least for a time.6
Almost two decades after the unsuccessful 1885 hearing by the special examiner, Oxley tried once more to qualify for a full service-related pension. In a Motion to Reopen and Reconsider, 14 Jun 1904, he took an unusual approach. In fifteen handwritten pages he not only went over the old evidence but also alleged that he had been sabotaged by his enemies in Cainsville and Harrison County. He maintained that "the testimony [given at the hearing] was malicious, having been prompted by spite and ill-feeling toward the claimant..." He went on to lay out the charges:7
The Several causes which produced the prejudice and unfriendly feeling against him and converted some of his former friends, associates, and even family relations into avowed enemies for a period of several years antedating the year 1885 and caused them to institute a relentless crusade of persecution and vilification against the claimant in this case, which course they pursued until after the claimant had removed from Harrison County and State of Missouri, and until the claimant's aforesaid pension claim was rejected by the Bureau of Pensions in 1885, when their revengeful feeling appeared to be satisfied and they ceased their open warfare against him.
First~ Political Prejudice ~~~
After the Close of the war of the Rebellion, and when the claimant had partially recovered from the effects of his aforesaid alleged diseases, the claimant herein renounced his allegiance to the Democratic party of the state of Missouri with which he had affiliated since he became of age entitled to vote at a general or special election in the state of Missouri, and allied himself with and became an aggressive worker in the Republican party of Harrison County, and state aforesaid, and this too, at a time in the history of said party, when a public declaration of adherence to the primary principles of said party by a citizen of the County and state aforesaid, was regarded by a large majority of the citizens as being equivalent to the omission of the "Unpardonable Sin" and subjected the individual making Such Declaration to a visitation of all the terrors of a well planned System of political ostracism and the concomitant evils thereunto belonging, and the claimant in this case being an active and efficient worker within the ranks of the minority party of said County and state he was selected by his former political associates as a culprit justly entitled to receive at their hand the penalty of political persecution and for a time political ostracism ...Second ~ On the tenth day of January 1876 a sad but wholly justifiable (as to results) event in the life of the claimant in this case occurred near Cainsville in the County and state aforesaid, in a personal rencontre between the claimant in this case, and one William C. Chapman, (who was a distant relative by marriage to this claimant) in which the said William C. Chapman was shot and killed by said claimant. Said claimant was duly arrested, Charged with murder in the first degree, being arraigned before William McElfish, a Justice of the Peace, within and for the aforesaid County and State, who was assisted by the other Justice of the Peace for Madison Township, in said County and State, John C. Stoner, by name. On hearing the evidence adduced at such preliminary examination the claimant was held in the sum of One Thousand Dollars bond to appear if indicted by the Grand Jury of said County and State, at the next regular term of the Circuit Court, and the claimant after executing the required bond, was released from arrest. A protest was at once filed in the Circuit Court within and for aforesaid County and State by the friends of the late William C. Chapman on the ground of insufficiency of said bond, whereupon said bond was increased to the sum of One Thousand and Five Hundred Dollars ($1,500.oo) which required bind was at once executed by the claimant in this case, accepted by the Court and the accused was discharged from arrest and was not at any time imprisoned for one moment for the Commission of the crime for which he stood charged, and when the cause was reached by the trial Court, after hearing the evidence in the case, the Claimant as found Not Guilty and discharged from arrest, as shown by the Evidence submitted herewith.
Third ~ There resided near the Claimant in Harrison County on the State of Missouri a widow lady named Nancy Stallsworth, who was aged, decrepit, and destitute of means to provide for her support, and notwithstanding the fact that she had numerous relatives residing in the vicinity who were financially able to care for and provide for her, they either would not or did not do so, and without expectation of receiving any remuneration for the act, the claimant in this case received her into his own family, gave her shelter and supported her at his own expense for more than two years, when she was granted a pension as the dependent mother of one Andrew Stallsworth who was killed in the battle at Corinth in the state of Mississippi, and received as her first payment approximately One Thousand and Eight Hundred Dollars ($1,800.oo). From said Pension she gave the claimant in this case, for his kindness in providing a home for her and for her support, the sum of Four hundred and fifty dollars ($450.oo). This action on the part of said Nancy Stallsworth greatly offended her relatives who had done nothing for her comfort and maintenance, and they caused suit to be brought against the claimant in this case (in the Courts to compel him to refund the money he had thus received; the Court, on hearing the evidence decided in favor of the Defendant and he retained the $450.oo and likewise the enmity of his prosecutors and their personal friends, who thereafter improved every opportunity presented to them to make manifest their ill will toward and dislike of the affiant. [...]
What are we to make of this remarkable set of charges? The accusation of political persecution is belied by the fact that he was elected (and reelected) township constable and collector over an eight-year period, and later served on the school board.8
Although the killing of William Christopher Chapman and the subsequent trial naturally generated some excitement it is not clear that the incident led to serious divisions in the community. Some Harrison County neighbors, such as Joseph Burrows and John Q Chambers, did seem to hold the Chapman affair against Oxley, but others, including Emily Chapman, the widow of the slain man, offered testimony favorable to him.9 Joseph Henry Burrows (1840-1914), a preacher and politico who served a single term in Congress as a member of the short-lived Greenback Party, wrote a hostile letter, summarized by the Pension Bureau examiner:10
In reply to Office letter, says he has known claimant ever since the latter came out of the army, and has regarded him for years as the strongest and most robust man in the community; that for four or five years he worked in 'our mill' & could roll bigger logs and carry more sacks of grain than any man in the mill. His aunt told the writer that he never had measles until after his discharge and then they did not hurt him in her opinion. While engaged in sawing at saw mill a small splinter was thrown in his eye making it very sore and much inflamed and obliging him to quit work, in consequence of which certain benefits were allowed him by the IOOF. That several years ago he killed Judge Freeman [sic], and it took quite an amount of his property to save him from paying the penalty. The writer and claimant are quite good friends and the former has no unkind feeling in what he has said.
Oxley did help Martha's Aunt Nancy with her pension applications (with more and quicker success than he had on his own), and he was not hesitant to ask her for recompense. She applied first in 1877 and then reapplied under the new law in 1879, which allowed payements for arrears. The claim was approved in 15 May 1882 (Certificate 195672), awarding her $8 a month from the date of her son's death (5 Oct 1862).11 After her death, 26 or 27 Aug 1883, complaints to the Pension Bureau led to an investigation, which generated its own pile of papers, leading to a criminal prosecution against Oxley in Federal Court. The matter was heard in 1885, not long before the hearing on Oxley's own pension. Once again he prevailed, and the judgment did not sit well with some of Aunt Nancy's kin.
Nancy's son Jesse Stallsworth offered a vivid description of just how Oxley was paid by Nancy when her money finally arrived.12
... I was present when she made her mark on the check and then went with Oxley Johnson to Bethany, Harrison Co., Mo. where he drew the money on the check and then returned home with him to his home where my mother was staying at the time. After we got to his house he and I went up stairs, locked the door & he poured the money out in four piles, the same amount in each pile, except one in which I think there was twenty-five cents less than the other three. He then unlocked the door and called my mother & his wife up in the Room, and then said Aunt Nancy (speaking to my mother) which one of these piles are you going to give me for my service. She said You don't claim half of it. He replied no there is four piles of it. Mother then picked up one pile and handed it to him. She gave him the pile which was twenty-five cents less than either of the other three. He told her that that pile was twenty-five cents less than either of the others & she then put her hand in her pocket & gave him 25¢.
Advancing a conspiracy theory still failed convince the authorities that his disabilties were the result of his service and Oxley continued to draw compensation under the 1890 act.
Thanks in some small part to Oxley's dogged pursuit of compensation, in 1892 more than half a million veterans were receiving payments from the Pension Bureau. In that decade Civil War pensions cost the taxpayers almost $130 million a year.13 Such a large program, which represented a sizeable portion of the entire federal budget before World War I, required a suitable building to house those handling the paperwork and handing out the checks. Congress authorized the construction in 1881 and it was completed in 1887. Designed and built by the talented architect and engineer, General Montgomery C. Meigs (1816-1892), the structure rates high on several 'outstanding buildings' lists. Meigs' accomplishments far outshine those of the twentieth century's closest counterpart, Leslie Groves, who gave us the Pentagon and the atomic bomb.14
The 1907 Act allowed higher amounts for advanced age. After some difficulty in trying to prove that he had reached the age of 75 in 1907 to qualify for an extra five dollars a month, Oxley dashed off the following impassioned note:15
OXLEY JOHNSON,
CITY GARDENER
Neodesha, Kansas August 27th 1908Dear Uncle Sam
Yours of April 13th 1907 At hand. Will Say tha- I don't Remember the Day tha- I was Borned. All I no is tha- My Father Died in March 1850 My Mother told Me tha- I would be 18 the 26 of August and on the 24th of August 1861 I volunteered I just like 2 days of being 29 years of age. And that is all I no About My Age but if you no Any better About then this I wish tha- you would Write and tell me just how Old I Am. Very Truly Yours
Oxley Johnson
He had to wait a year to collect the higher amount.
A later act boosted his stipend to $22.50.16
Finally he sought the assistance of members of Congress and he was included in the provisions of a Special Act in 1918, which directed the Secretary of the Interior to pay him $30 a month. (Oxley's angel was probably Senator William H. Thompson, who took up his cause in 1917.) The pay was approved 5 October. However, Oxley and other pensioners in similar circumstances had qualified in the meantime for a higher rate of $32 under the Act of June 10, 1918, amending the Act of May 11, 1918. The higher rate went into effect 16 Nov 1918, and he was receiving that when he died in 1919.17
When his second wife, Kate, applied for a widow's pension, her claim was rejected because she had married him after the cutoff date of June 27, 1905.18
Notes:
[Click on the footnote number to return to the text.]
1 Oxley Johnson Pension files, Claim No. 237,502. Photocopy of original documents in National Archives. He retained P.H. Fitzgerald of Indianapolis, one of many attorneys specializing in pension claims. Although Oxley did from time to time use the services of local lawyers, Mr Fitzgerald's firm appears in documents over the years. In spite of the overwhelming evidence that far more soldiers suffered and died from illness than from combat, the pension laws reflected a popular view that death or disability inflicted by human action was somehow more noble than death or disability arising from disease.
2 Col W.P. Robinson to Pension Bureau Examiner (2 Jun 1881) Ralph was Surgeon from 1 Dec 1861 and resigned 31 Mar 1862 before the regiment left Missouri. Ellegood, Assistant Surgeon from 9 Sep 1861, resigned 10 Mar 1863. Atkinson is not listed as being with the regiment until Feb 1863, a year after Oxley's time in hospital. (Dates from Gooch's roster.)
3 An outline of the history of the Pension Acts can be found at the Veterans Affairs site. A more detailed analysis is by Claudia Linares, "The Civil War Pension Law" Center for Population Economics, 2001.
4 Reproduced on the Veterans Affairs site.
5 Clipping from an unidentified Neodesha paper, undated, [early March 1891?]. He had been approved 21 January 1891.
6 Letter, L. Stillwell, Deputy Commissioner, to OJ (21 Mar 1912), recapitulating Oxley's (by this time voluminous) case. The original form recording the award is ambiguous as to whether it was approved or not. Oddly, the files contain no records of the actual amounts disbursed, only forms indicating approval of a given amount to be paid from a particular date. Maybe they were kept by the Treasury Department.
7 Oxley Johnson, Motion to Reopen and Reconsider (14 Jun 1904), 5, 7-10. I have skipped over the repititions of legalistic formulae. Among those named adverse witnesses in a deposition by his daughter Mary Lowe (29 Jan 1904) were also John B. Rogers, Hannibal Harrison, and William McElfresh.
8 See Oxley Johnson (7 Jun 1880). See also John C. Stoner (1 Feb 1886 and 9 Jul 1888) and H. H. Stoner (12 Apr 1904).
9 John Q. Chambers, Deposition (23 Oct 1885). Statement of Emily Chapman (3 Feb 1886). See my notes on the murder trial.
10 9 May 1882. He gave a fuller version in a deposition (24 Oct 1885), stating "I do not know a man in the Country who had better health or who done more hard work than Mr Johnson."
11 My thanks to Pat Friesen and Rick Harms for copies of Nancy's pension papers.
12 Deposition of Jesse Stallsworth (5 Sep 1884).
13 Linares, 3-4.
14 See a History of the building, which is well worth a visit, not only for the delightful structure itself but also for the excellent displays. A sketch of Meigs can be found on Wikipedia.
15 "The Service and Age Pension Act of February 6, 1907 ... granted pensions based on a veteran's age and length of service, producing a unique pension system. Any person, irrespective of rank, who had fulfilled all the requirements of the 1890 Act to obtain a pension was eligible for a pension of $12 per month if at least 62 years of age, $15 per month if at least 70 years of age, and $20 per month if 75 years or older. Pensions commenced from the date of filing a claim with the Pension Bureau." Linares, "The Civil War Pension Law", 16.
Oxley maintained in his filings at this time that he had been born in 1832, but all other references place his birth a year later. In March 1908 he had explained that he could furnish no copy of a family record becuse "neither father or mother could write so much as their own names." The note quoted was written the day after he turned 75. When he had applied for the increase a year before he was only 74. A little wishful thinking may have led his memory to play false because his father was still alive 15 July 1850 when the census taker called. Other evidence gives his birth as in 1833, so probably his father died the next spring, in 1851. See my notes on the elder Oxley Johnson.
16 Letter from Commissioner G.M. Salzgaber, 31 Oct 1914, explaining that the law "does not benefit soldiers who have passed the age of 75 years. There is no law under which your pension can be increased on account of age."
17 A request for information on the case from the Senate Veterans Committee, noting Mr Thompson's name, was received by the bureau 27 Dec 1917. Thompson (1871-1928) was a Democrat who served one term (1913-1919) from Kansas. Pension Bureau forms, 25 Oct and 16 Nov 1918. See also Linares.
18 Letter from Acting Commissioner of Pension Bureau to Senator Arthur Capper, 6 Nov 1919. Capper (1865-1951), a Republican who replaced Thompson in the election of 1918, took office the following January and must have found the demands of his constituents consuming a lot of time.
