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Theses: how were the African Americans treated differently than white Americans?The problems that black pension applicants faced after the war was symptomatic of much of what had happened to the black soldiers and their families during the war. The implied contract between the government and its soldiers guaranteeing support for the families and equal treatment for the soldiers was only partially met. Equal pay, equipment, and bounties were granted to black soldiers only after long delays, and many states never provided equal financial aid to the black families of soldiers. Even color-blind legislation did not ensure equal treatment. After the war, despite formal equality with white applicants, African Americans received fewer benefits and encountered long delays in receiving their pensions. Only part of the explanation lay in the greater social problems that black applicants had to overcome when applying for pensions, although they had many. The other factor was that government officials frequently refused to see black veterans or their dependents as being as deserving or as worthy of the gratitude of a nation as were the white veterans. It reflected a dilemma that became evident after the government decided to add African Americans to its large citizen armies. Once the decision had been made to use black soldiers, justice, military efficiency, and the precedents of a citizen army dictated equal treatment for all soldiers. Grudgingly and in incremental steps, the army and the government moved to make regulations color-blind and to offer to black soldiers the same benefits available to white soldiers.92 In doing so, the army and the Pension Bureau were in advance of attitudes held by much of the white population. Only a limited number of civilians, or officers for that matter, believed that black military service translated into co-equal citizenship. When the various branches of government tried to balance the obligations owed to black soldiers and their kin in the face of widespread white prejudice, they found it easier to guarantee approximate equal financial support than establish equal civil rights. It is easy, nevertheless, to underestimate the importance to many impoverished blacks of the financial benefits conferred by military service even if those benefits were slow in coming. It is also too easy to ignore how the government's final policy of a more equal treatment of black military personnel forced the nation to reassess, however briefly, its racial preconceptions

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