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# US Civil War veterans' pensions were paid to widows and a daughter until 2020
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/pomniu-kak-v-odnoi-knige-o-grazhdanskoi-voine-v-ssha-1861-1865-prochital-chto-gosudarstvo-prodolzhalo-vyplachivat-voennye-pensii-vplot-do-1960-kh-godov/
- Published: 2020-12-20T10:04:29.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:59:33.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Observations, Mores, Society

I remember reading in a book about the American Civil War (1861-1865) that the state went on paying war pensions right up to the 1960s. Not a bad lag of a hundred years.

But quite recently, in another book, written in the 1990s, I came across an interview with one of the last widows of Civil War soldiers, who was still alive when the book came out. The woman said that she had married a veteran of the war when he was 70 and she was 19\. Such marriages were not uncommon in America in those years: by law, after her husband's death she received a pension as the widow of a serviceman, which is why some call these unions "pension weddings". Asked by the interviewer why she had married an old man in her day, the widow replied that it was better to be a darling to an old man than a slave to a young one.

One of the best-known Civil War widows was Helen Longstreet, the second wife of the legendary Southern general James Longstreet; he was 76 and she was 34\. She lived splendidly for almost a hundred years, dying in 1962\. All her life the general's widow was an honoured guest at official events and carried on with public work; during the war years she laboured on the home front, took a great part in charity, and even travelled the country giving lectures about her husband.

However, if USA Today is to be believed, the last woman to draw a Civil War pension passed away in the summer of 2020\. The 90-year-old Irene Triplett received her pension as a disabled child of a veteran. When she was born her father was 85 years old; she lost him at the age of eight and was left in the care of her mother, who suffered from a mental disorder and could not support the family. Both women remained in the care of the state to the end of their days (1967 and 2020 respectively). True, Irene Triplett's pension amounted to $73.13 a month.

On the whole, an interesting example of a state that does not renounce its obligations. Though the pension might have been indexed, if we are to do things properly.