How the War Changed Them....

[Borderland]

A recent thread on Longstreet got me to thinking about how the war changed the men who fought in it.

For example, think of the different life trajectories of men like Nathan Bedford Forrest and George A. Custer after the war.

For those people who have read biographies, I would like to know more about how you think the war changed some of the more famous personalities.

 

[63rdOVI]

My cousin Maj. Gen. James Lawson Kemper (1823-1895) went back to work as a lawyer and was eventually elected the 37th Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The bullet he received during Pickett's Charge, however, could not be removed and caused him enormous pain and grief through the remainder of his life, crippling him for a number of years prior to his death.

 

[Northern Light]

It certainly changed Grant's life, from hardscrabble farmer to president in less than ten years.

 

[rhettbutler1865]

Robert E Lee, from a student: "It looked as if the sorrow of a whole nation had been collected in his countenance, and as if he were bearing the grief of his whole people. It never left his face, but was ever there..."

 

[rhettbutler1865]

Who, after seeing and doing the things they (the soldiers) had to, would be the same? Not just the ACW, but every war; the poor guys carried those images to their graves...officers and enlisted alike.

 

[Allie]

Re: famous men - it seems, for most I'm thinking of, that rather than changing them, the war revealed them. I can't think of an example of a person whose character fundamentally altered before and after the war. Forrest was a businessman both before and after the war - setting his hand to make money at whatever was the going thing.

For the less famous, a good place to look at long-term physical effects is in pension applications, which usually contain a doctor's statement about the applicant's health. Frequently there will be some remark about rheumatism from exposure, or something similar.

I keep meaning to do a study of the men in the company I'm researching, comparing their wealth in 1860 to their wealth in 1870.

Yesterday I was looking at Colonel Duckworth's wife's pension application. Rev. William Lafayette Duckworth is primarily known for bluffing a larger Union force into surrendering at Union City, Tennessee. In 1915 his widow was indigent. She had some money in the bank but was not allowed to touch it, only to live on the interest.

 

[KansasFreestater]

rather than changing them, the war revealed them.

Very good point.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Some found redemption; some found dam nation; and many, many found a grave.

 

[Jamieva]

War changes every man that fights. My maternal grandfather served in Europe in WW2. I always tried to get him to tell me stories as a kid and my grandmother would say "he saw things over there he won't even tell me about".

 

[JerseyBart]

How many of them went gray (hair) long before they should have? Pictures of Chamberlain a few years after the war show him pretty gray whereas he wasn't gray at all in wartime pictures.