TY - JOUR AU - Kang,Sung Won AU - Rockoff,Hugh TI - After Johnny Came Marching Home: The Political Economy of Veterans' Benefits in the Nineteenth Century JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 13223 PY - 2007 Y2 - July 2007 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13223 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13223.pdf N1 - Author contact info: sungwon Kang Samsung Economic Research Institute 7th floor, Kukje Center Building 191, Hangangro 2-Ga, Youngsan-Gu Seoul, Korea 140-702 Tel: 82-2-3780-8531 Fax: 82-2-3780-8008 E-Mail: sungwon90.kang@samsung.com Hugh Rockoff Department of Economics 75 Hamilton Street Rutgers University College Avenue Campus New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248 Tel: 609/897-0117 Fax: 732/932-7416 E-Mail: rockoff@fas-econ.rutgers.edu AB - This paper explores new estimates of the number of veterans and the value of veterans' benefits -- both cash benefits and land grants -- from the Revolution to 1900. Benefits, it turns out, varied substantially from war to war. The veterans of the War of 1812, in particular, received a smaller amount of benefits than did the veterans of the other nineteenth century wars. A number of factors appear to account for the differences across wars. Some are familiar from studies of other government programs: the previous history of veterans' benefits, the wealth of the United States, the number of veterans relative to the population, and the lobbying efforts of lawyers and other agents employed by veterans. Some are less familiar. There were several occasions, for example, when public attitudes toward the war appeared to influence the amount of benefits. Perhaps the most important factor, however, was the state of the federal treasury. When the federal government ran a surplus, veterans were likely to receive additional benefits; when it ran a deficit, veterans' hopes for additional benefits went unfilled. Veterans' benefits were, to use the terms a bit freely, more like a luxury than a necessity. ER -