Civil War Talk: Soldiers After the Civil War

This episode of Civil War Talk deals with the conditions and situations soldiers faced following the Civil War. This is often an overlooked aspect of the greatest conflict in American history.

The article by Chris can be read here

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*** Note highlights

*The trauma didn't end when the battle was over. By the 1880s soldiers began to reminiscence about the war in memoirs and regimental histories. But yet there was still a population in both the North and South that drifted from soldier home to soldier home, from town to town, jail to jail and some (perhaps many) living their last days in insane asylums.

*in 1861, there were approximately 8,500 people institutionalized. By 1866 the number had doubled, and continued to double every ten years for the next fifty years

*Many veterans were hospitalized repeatedly or incarcerated, and were often perceived as dangerous.

Most returned home, picked up the pieces, and moved on. But some could never find that peace.

*One of the clear conclusions is that trauma left thousands of unseen casualties in its path. Men who were legitimately traumatized may have been seen as weak, cowards, or unpatriotic.

Soldiers who were either unwanted or unwilling to stay at home drifted from place to place. Many found their way West and to the Frontier. There some found peace, bought land, and settled down.

*Outlaws – men like Jesse James

*Buffalo hunters – could earn more than the president

a) Men like Frank Mayor who made a fortune. (I have nothing to look forward to back in civilization. I’m crazy about guns).

b) 2 million rifles in circulation – tens of thousands of sidearms – mass produced

-men who had experienced such violence, and were trained to use these weapons

Though records for insane asylums are often limited if not missing, it appears that a significant number of old veterans ended up being wards of the state in some fashion or another.

If it wasn’t the veteran putting himself in the asylum there are even records I have come across where a wife or family will admit their loved one and sometimes under false pretenses in order to gain access to their pension.

Larry M. Logue’s To Appomattox and Beyond : the Civil War Soldier in War and Peace (Chicago : I.R. Dee, c1996.) devotes several chapters to the Civil War soldier after the war. Here are some of his findings:

In 1879 the U.S. Surgeon General estimated that 45,000 veterans were addicted to morphine. – Heroin created to replace this?

Newspapers often reported of destitute ex-soldiers and of veteran suicides. – today we have 20 or so veterans committing suicide every day – Jackson’s NC regiment

By 1870 at least 3,200 veterans were staying in soldier homes in the North.

We also know that Southern soldiers returned to a defeated and often destitute home. It would be years until individual Southern states initiated pension plans, and the aid given could never match what the Union soldier received.

Soldiers who suffered the amputation of a limb in both North and South faced hardships and destitution

- Up to 400,000 men continued to suffer from their wounds. Tens of thousands seriously.

- You couldn’t work, plow, etc.

- Luckily for the Northern soldier the soldier home and pension plans kept them afloat.

*And then there are the civilians

*Women and children were also exposed to multiple forms of trauma unrecognized by history’s focus on battles and leaders. Understanding how the War impacted soldiers and civilians requires us to consider the invisible, but very real, wounds inflicted by trauma.

Nurses? There's book after book with nurses writing of their time spent gluing shattered men together or watching them die horribly or cleaning maggots from wounds.

*there are thousands of untold stories of harm because of the War.

*or the idea that there was something of a collective trauma to a town deeply impacted by a battle (such as Gettysburg, Franklin, Fredericksburg) – Lots to explore

* Civil War is that it broke open the floodgates on people who simply were not ready to comprehend large scale slaughter.