Did Civil War Soldiers Have PTSD?

This is very good. The brain actually physically breaks. Micro scans can now show a field of neuro-receptors that once looked like flowering bushes....that after mental trouble or war trauma or whatever....look like a field of dead, thorny stump of a shrub. The actual physical construction of the brain can change. With or without physical trauma.
I have seen pics of these scans and they are amazing. Sad, though. They can probably be viewed online if you are a good searcher.

I personally don't think very many humans are built to withstand the emotional and visual trauma of war. I don't think very many of us were intended to withstand that kind of constant turmoil.
As far as ACW soldier was concerned I think their physically demanding life actually helped. I think ahead of the chance for trauma the physical toil and physical requirements placed on the body and brain chemicals was actually preventative and restorative. Now not to the point of enduring disease, just a great deal of strenuous physical activity. Men on the march were immeasurably healthier than men in camp., also.

A few people seem to do fine...almost like they WERE built for this purpose. Most of those are not high officers but warriors in the ranks.


That's exactly correct, it's quite literally broken and creates new neuro pathways like a creek in flood sometimes settles into a new course. Or some electrical wiring rewired poorly. Agree completely; we as humans just are not glued together to absorb this stuff, wrecks havoc on all kind of functions neurologically. One trauma can overwhelm the brain and cause PTSD- can NOT imagine how many acts which literally can shock your brain off the tracks these men and women witnessed, how frequently they found themselves in fear of their lives. Both can do it- prolonged stressors like war? Oi. Hate to speak in gradients when it comes to PTSD, just have always thought a soldier's PTSD a different, whole dimension of broken.

Yes, for someone's brain not to react to the shock after shock after stunning shock of war would have to mean there was something poorly wired up there in the first place. Since the true sociopath was a lot rarer then than now you have to wonder if there were many unaffected. The one humanizing feature of Dan Sickles exists for me in some of his actions post war. He actually led a sad and somewhat scattered, tragic life. I could be wrong but it's pretty much the kind of evidence which always causes me to think ' PTSD '. Well gee whiz, the man lost a leg- a leg? Tough stuff on top of the carnage he witnessed ( and brought about.. ). I actually am convinced his championing of Gettysburg Battlefield wasn't just some grandiose thing- affected him deeply, he may have been determined to keep it a memorial to those who died on his watch. Guilt is a huge, huge factor/manifestation of PTSD. Was this Dan's? Possibly.
 
My maternal ancestor was several months shy of being fifteen when he became a substitute for what I believe was his brother-in-law. The family was torn apart by the war and over a hundred years passed with out contact between the two groups.
JW deserted and was caught but not punished supposedly due to his youth. He was wounded in action at Waite's Shop during the Battle of Spottsylvania Courthouse, he kept the arm but lost use of it. He had been a fiddler and I'm sure missed being able to play as he lived more than sixty years with that useless arm.
After his own wound healed, he spent the remainder of the war in the invalid corps at Chimborazo and was paroled after the fall of Richmond. The details of his life afterwards are few. I was told by my ninety odd year old great uncle who remembered him from his childhood that he was very quiet.
I cannot know how he and others felt about their wartime experiences. But all his grandsons returned from WW2.
 
My maternal ancestor was several months shy of being fifteen when he became a substitute for what I believe was his brother-in-law. The family was torn apart by the war and over a hundred years passed with out contact between the two groups.
JW deserted and was caught but not punished supposedly due to his youth. He was wounded in action at Waite's Shop during the Battle of Spottsylvania Courthouse, he kept the arm but lost use of it. He had been a fiddler and I'm sure missed being able to play as he lived more than sixty years with that useless arm.
After his own wound healed, he spent the remainder of the war in the invalid corps at Chimborazo and was paroled after the fall of Richmond. The details of his life afterwards are few. I was told by my ninety odd year old great uncle who remembered him from his childhood that he was very quiet.
I cannot know how he and others felt about their wartime experiences. But all his grandsons returned from WW2.
Wow. That is good to know about your ancestor. Thanks.
 
Yes, for someone's brain not to react to the shock after shock after stunning shock of war would have to mean there was something poorly wired up there in the first place
I think this is true most of the time with a few individuals who are just someway less affected.
You are unusual to recognize that the brain can "break". Most people won't admit it. I guess it's too scary.
 
I think this is true most of the time with a few individuals who are just someway less affected.
You are unusual to recognize that the brain can "break". Most people won't admit it. I guess it's too scary.


Oh I don't know. I think most people do admit brains break- watching the news every night is proof of that. You may be right, thinking about it. Some obviously badly disturbed person will commit something dreadful then tax payer dollar are spent while everyone argues ' Gosh, was this a normal person or not? '

There are certain agendas behind denials of mental illness, connecting this with an actual biological defect, funding being one of them. That is what is crazy. It's disheartening watching an entire society's perspective shaped because it's too expensive to treat people with mental afflictions. One of my son's history final questions was " 150 year ago, mentally patients were treated like.......? ', answer being criminals, I thought well heck, our prisons are full of mentally ill people now, where's the History? The homeless population has a good percentage of veterans, men and women whose PTSD just made it impossible to cope in important functions, so tragic. Our Civil War veterans had the veteran homes to turn to, places their PTSD was accepted even if it lacked a name.
 
That's exactly correct, it's quite literally broken and creates new neuro pathways like a creek in flood sometimes settles into a new course. Or some electrical wiring rewired poorly. Agree completely; we as humans just are not glued together to absorb this stuff, wrecks havoc on all kind of functions neurologically. One trauma can overwhelm the brain and cause PTSD- can NOT imagine how many acts which literally can shock your brain off the tracks these men and women witnessed, how frequently they found themselves in fear of their lives. Both can do it- prolonged stressors like war? Oi. Hate to speak in gradients when it comes to PTSD, just have always thought a soldier's PTSD a different, whole dimension of broken.

Yes, for someone's brain not to react to the shock after shock after stunning shock of war would have to mean there was something poorly wired up there in the first place. Since the true sociopath was a lot rarer then than now you have to wonder if there were many unaffected. The one humanizing feature of Dan Sickles exists for me in some of his actions post war. He actually led a sad and somewhat scattered, tragic life. I could be wrong but it's pretty much the kind of evidence which always causes me to think ' PTSD '. Well gee whiz, the man lost a leg- a leg? Tough stuff on top of the carnage he witnessed ( and brought about.. ). I actually am convinced his championing of Gettysburg Battlefield wasn't just some grandiose thing- affected him deeply, he may have been determined to keep it a memorial to those who died on his watch. Guilt is a huge, huge factor/manifestation of PTSD. Was this Dan's? Possibly.
To think of all the children here in the US and around the world living in violent situations. So fragile is the brain. At least today we recognize the problem somewhat. Back in the 19th century a lot of people just wanted people to "get over it."

But I know there were strides being made. I went to the University of Buffalo and the architecture building had been the insane asylum in the mid-nineteenth century. And in tiny Weston West Virginia there is a giant building for the housing the mentally ill built around the same time. Long way to go though, even now
 
Here's an excerpt from Sarah Emma Edmond's memoir, Nurse and Spy, that fits the bill. (She had served in the 2nd Michigan under the name "Frank Thompson" since the beginning of the war.) She's ill at the beginning of the excerpt:

&&&&&&&&&

I would often wake up and imagine my mother sat beside me, and would only realize my sad mistake when looking in the direction I supposed her to be, there would be seen some great bearded soldier, wrapped up in an overcoat, smoking his pipe.

I remained in my tent for several days, not being able to walk about, or scarcely able to sit up. I was startled one day from my usual quietude by the bursting of a shell which had lain in front of my tent, and from which no danger was apprehended ; yet it burst at a moment when a number of soldiers were gathered round it — and oh, what sad havoc it made of those cheerful, happy boys of a moment previous! Two of them were killed instantly and four were wounded seriously, and the tent where I lay was cut in several places with fragments of shell, the tent poles knocked out of their places, and the tent filled with dust and smoke.

One poor colored boy had one of his hands torn off at the wrist ; and of all the wounded that I have ever seen I never heard such unearthly yells and unceasing lamentations as that boy poured forth night and day; ether and chloroform were alike unavailing in hushing the cries of the poor sufferer. At length the voice began to grow weaker, and soon afterwards ceased altogether; and upon making inquiry I found he had died groaning and crying until his voice was hushed in death.

The mother and sister of one of the soldiers who was killed by the explosion of the shell arrived a short time after the accident occurred, and it was truly a most pitiful sight to see the speechless grief of those stricken ones as they sat beside the senseless clay of that beloved son and brother.

All my soldierly qualities seemed to have fled, and I was again a poor, cowardly, nervous, whining woman; and as if to make up for lost time, and to give vent to my long pent up feelings, I could do nothing but weep hour after hour, until it would seem that my head was literally a fountain of tears and my heart one great burden of sorrow. All the horrid scenes that I had witnessed during the past two years seemed now before me with vivid distinctness, and I could think of nothing else.

&&&&&&&&
How awful
 
I've always assumed that one great draw for soldiers for the Grand Army of the Republic was for them be around others that had the same sort of issues from the war.
 
I spent a lot of my working life with PTSD sufferers and their families, its a human condition brought about by the inability to respond to the 'flight or fight' response along with very high levels of stress and fear. Its not just a military illness, an eye witness to a particularly horrible road accident for example can suffer from PTSD. One of the main symptoms is that the PTSD sufferer will relive the stressful experience, it can occupy their every thought and it takes very little to trigger it . Us humans have always suffered from it, I would imagine that there were Roman soldiers that experienced it, the problem is, that different cultures and generations will all have their own way of dealing with it. During WW1 we simply called it shell shock, now we call it 'Combat Stress' I guarantee that CW soldiers suffered from PTSD. I suspect that after the war, many CW soldiers with PTSD turned to alcohol and violence, many of them would have been in trouble with the law, I expect that we are all able to recall stories where an ex CW soldier went of the rails. They weren't necessarily bad men, they just weren't getting the help they needed because nobody really understood much about it. With respect to all of our ex-service men, its still happens today.
 
Last edited:
There is a piece of work that doesn't get a lot of attention, but Kate Stone's Brokenburn Diary is worth a look.

She was a young woman of privilege who kept a diary through the war years. There's a lot there and she records a brother's return from the Confederate Army. He'd been a very gregarious, inquisitive and entertaining young man, who couldn't do much but look out the window and stare, after the war. Kate was very worried about what had happened to him.

So yeah, PTSD as we understand it now was there, no question.
 
One of the oldest accounts of PTSD is by the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who mentioned that at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC an Athenian soldier was stricken blind when a comrade beside him was killed, despite having suffered no physical injury himself.

It is now thought to be one of the earliest recorded cases of hysterical blindness.
 
One of the oldest accounts of PTSD is by the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who mentioned that at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC an Athenian soldier was stricken blind when a comrade beside him was killed, despite having suffered no physical injury himself.

It is now thought to be one of the earliest recorded cases of hysterical blindness.
Hysterical blindness was portrayed in 'Band of Brothers', www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvEI7k8pfHg All Blithe needed was some reassurance.
 
I found this in a book The 24th Wisconsin Infantry in the Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment by William Beaudot page 222



24th Wisconsin.JPG
.
 
To think of all the children here in the US and around the world living in violent situations. So fragile is the brain. At least today we recognize the problem somewhat. Back in the 19th century a lot of people just wanted people to "get over it."

But I know there were strides being made. I went to the University of Buffalo and the architecture building had been the insane asylum in the mid-nineteenth century. And in tiny Weston West Virginia there is a giant building for the housing the mentally ill built around the same time. Long way to go though, even now

What we fight now is the battle for public understanding. My dad had severe depression and thyroid trouble at once in his early twenties. After fixing the thyroid he still, for his lifetime, battled depression and it's accompanying anxiety.
He managed a grocery store with about 100 employees for 29 years in a small rural town.

People never understood why, when he got nervous, he would go out in any weather and walk laps around the parking lot to quell his anxiousness. Even his wife, my late mother, never really understood the depression part because she never had any form of it, even like many women have mild battles due to hormones, she didn't.

And this mental malfunction, although deadly to the person who has it in the most severe cases, is nothing compared to more serious and complicated mental disorder, disease or trauma.
I understand now why SO many vets come home from war with so much trouble. Some people's brains just can't deal with war and violence, even after training.

We should screen our front line troops carefully and PREVENT much of this from ever occurring.

Yes, they had ptsd and yes it was horrible with very little empathy.

Why can't the general population understand that folks don't jump off bridges just for kicks and giggles. They are not lazy or bad, they are sick.

If it was not such a downer of a topic I would look more deeply into this aspect of ACW soldiers lives.
 
There is a piece of work that doesn't get a lot of attention, but Kate Stone's Brokenburn Diary is worth a look.

She was a young woman of privilege who kept a diary through the war years. There's a lot there and she records a brother's return from the Confederate Army. He'd been a very gregarious, inquisitive and entertaining young man, who couldn't do much but look out the window and stare, after the war. Kate was very worried about what had happened to him.

So yeah, PTSD as we understand it now was there, no question.
Reading a book about Vicksburg right now that references her a lot. A part I read last night,not from her,talked about the advantage to Grant of being able to rotate troops in the forward entrenchments because of both the mental and physical effects of being at "the front" for extended periods vs. the disadvantage to Pemberton of not having enough troops to do that with the troops in the forward Confederate entrenchments.
 
Reading a book about Vicksburg right now that references her a lot. A part I read last night,not from her,talked about the advantage to Grant of being able to rotate troops in the forward entrenchments because of both the mental and physical effects of being at "the front" for extended periods vs. the disadvantage to Pemberton of not having enough troops to do that with the troops in the forward Confederate entrenchments.
Those trapped forward troops who were always entrenched became abnormal in their perception of the wider world. A mind blown out by more juice than it can handle and things it was never meant to endure shifts to a gear it shouldn't ever have to use, just to survive.
Oh that men would not feel the need to kill one another. Even though defense is necessary.

PTSD and exaggerated startles still happen.
At a gathering in my 12k town, of 60k Catholic Vietnamese, a Vietnam vet popped out of his house and began shooting a .22 rifle at passing visitors, but apparently had enough subconscious control that he didn't even hit anyone...and you know he could have easily. This was 15 years ago. But some vets still have to leave town for a few days during this week long festival because it triggers old bad responses that they don't trust themselves to govern.
 
I have more.
Liquor was issued to the troops. The germans got beer.
If you think pot wasnt smoked back then you dont know pot heads. You meen its legal? George Washington grew 40 acres and his wife had a recipe of pot tea for that time of the month.
Charles Haydon was in the A.o.P. In his diary he says there is a problem in the camps. He says troops were coming back with 'side arms'. He explains that that is slang for a bottle of morphine in one pocket and a syringe in the other.
When yanks got up in the morning they were asked if their bowls were open or closed. As diarrhea was the major killer, most responded closed and were given what looks like a gumball of heroin. Heroin is a constipater.
One grunt in the ranks related the following tale. He said after an all night march the regiment was halted. The regimental surgeon rode to the front. He took his canteen, poured water on his palm, then sprinkled granulated opium on the wet spot. Turning his hand over he rode down the ranks letting each man lick the granuals off his palm. This was repeated till each man had his fill. They then went into battle.
In Mary Chestnut's unabridged diary she tells the following story. On a railroad trip she was harrassed by a drunken preacher. She says she hit her bottle of laudinum till till problem was solved.
 
I have more.
Liquor was issued to the troops. The germans got beer.
If you think pot wasnt smoked back then you dont know pot heads. You meen its legal? George Washington grew 40 acres and his wife had a recipe of pot tea for that time of the month.
Charles Haydon was in the A.o.P. In his diary he says there is a problem in the camps. He says troops were coming back with 'side arms'. He explains that that is slang for a bottle of morphine in one pocket and a syringe in the other.
When yanks got up in the morning they were asked if their bowls were open or closed. As diarrhea was the major killer, most responded closed and were given what looks like a gumball of heroin. Heroin is a constipater.
One grunt in the ranks related the following tale. He said after an all night march the regiment was halted. The regimental surgeon rode to the front. He took his canteen, poured water on his palm, then sprinkled granulated opium on the wet spot. Turning his hand over he rode down the ranks letting each man lick the granuals off his palm. This was repeated till each man had his fill. They then went into battle.
In Mary Chestnut's unabridged diary she tells the following story. On a railroad trip she was harrassed by a drunken preacher. She says she hit her bottle of laudinum till till problem was solved.
Good stuff...I mean post! Very interesting
 
Back
Top