Original pay voucher document, completed by a Union officer from the 1st Tennessee Light Artillery, Lt. Col. Robert Clay Crawford. Crawford claims to have been on detached duty in Florida at the time he completed this pay voucher, which includes pay for both himself ($190) and two “private servants” ($58). Not only does this document bring the Union Army’s pay disparity between white and black men into sharp relief, it may also be evidence of a crime! Crawford, a shady character who had a murky relationship with Andrew Johnson, was dismissed from the Army in November 1864 after a military court found him guilty of counterfeiting, bank robbery, horse theft, and other assorted crimes.



[African-American History, Slave, Slavery, Abolition, Abolitionist, Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Union, Confederate, Document, Letter]