After the glory: the struggles of Black Civil War veterans (original) (raw)

has written an important book that examines the lives of African-American Civil War veterans from the war's end to the turn of the 20th century. While the years of actual combat are receiving increasing scholarly attention, After the Glory addresses a significant void in the literature by presenting the first extended analysis of black veterans' postwar experiences. Shaffer makes extensive use of a wide range of sources, including published biographies, memoirs, early histories, scattered manuscript collections and Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) records, Works Progress Administration interviews with former slaves, and, most impressively, Civil War pension files housed at the National Archives. Using a random sample of over 1,000 pension claims from black veterans or their survivors to complement assorted published descriptions of veterans' lives, Shaffer constructs a collective biography that augments statistical data (much of which is presented in a brief Appendix) with the rich personal details that many of the pension files contain. While the book makes a valuable contribution, some of its emphases and interpretations are open to question.