Counterfactual Reparations: Black Prize Winners in the Civil War
This project studies African American sailors who received prize money for the capture of Confederate vessels during the Civil War, using prize awards as a natural experiment in the effects of cash transfers to formerly enslaved people — a historical proxy for reparations. Working from a list of sailors already identified in prize records, students will locate and match individual sailors to their digitized Civil War pension files online, extracting structured information on family, health, and mortality. Students meet with the project director weekly to review matches, resolve ambiguous cases, and refine coding rules. The role is a genuine research role: you will make judgment calls about identity matching, document your reasoning, and help build a dataset that does not yet exist.
In a few paragraphs, tell us why you are interested in this project and describe any experience you have with historical documents, handwritten records, genealogical databases, or data entry. No prior expertise is required — we are interested in your reasoning and attention to detail.
You will work directly with primary sources from the Civil War era and contribute to original research on one of the few cases in American history where formerly enslaved people received substantial cash payments. Students gain hands-on training in archival and genealogical research, historical record linkage, and research data management — skills that transfer to graduate work in economics, history, sociology, law, and public policy. Strong contributors may continue on the project, develop honors thesis work from it, and will be acknowledged in resulting publications.