After the Civil War, many soldiers struggled with poverty, mental health issues, and physical disabilities. The federal government and concerned citizens provided pensions and group homes for Union soldiers, but in the former Confederate states those responsibilities fell to impoverished state governments. The Jackson family sold five hundred acres of The Hermitage to the state of Tennessee in 1856, including the mansion. In 1889, the Tennessee General Assembly set aside four hundred seventy-five of those acres for the Tennessee Confederate Soldiers' Home, while the remaining twenty-five acres around the Hermitage mansion went to the Ladies' Hermitage Association to preserve as a shrine to Jackson. The home stood about one-half mile southwest of this spot and, over forty-one years of operation, housed more than seven hundred veterans. The state provided an annual appropriation, and employees farmed the land to help pay expenses. Trustees first planned to house the men in small cottages, but the cost of building and maintaining them led instead to a large dormitory-style home. Finished in 1892, the main building typically housed one hundred twenty-five men during its peak years, with veterans' rooms in the wings and dining and community space in the center section. Former Confederate captain and architect William C. Smith designed the building with steam heat and running water. Soon after the home closed in 1933, the Ladies' Hermitage Association tore down all but one wing, which was converted into employee housing, and the remaining wing was demolished in 1953.