Suggested Topic: What happened to the veterans; post war

Not only drugs, I'll bet. "Accidents" also. Last night I finished editing the bio of one poor man who made it through 4 years of warfare only to find everything at home had changed--and there was no place for him. In 1870 he fell off a railroad bridge into the river and was killed. I know that bridge--it is right next to a regular bridge, complete with footpath (it was then as it is now). He could have crossed the river in a perfectly safe way but he chose a riskier route. I wonder if it was done on purpose? Is this "accident" actually a suicide?

Accidents indeed. People didn't have much of a sense of work safety and there weren't any laws about such either. In the cemetery where I volunteer there are a number of veterans who died from accidents. The block we're currently restoring has a woman, her brother, and her two husbands (both veterans). Her first husband was accidentally shot by his nephew on a deer hunting trip and her second husband fell off the roof of the IOOF building he was helping to construct in town.
 
Accidents indeed. People didn't have much of a sense of work safety and there weren't any laws about such either.
All quite true. But in this case, the man made it through 4 years of battle (unscathed) yet was "foolish" enough to cross the river on a railroad trestle at night--when there was a safe and very accessible alternative--I wonder if this may have been a suicide masquerading as an accident.
 
All quite true. But in this case, the man made it through 4 years of battle (unscathed) yet was "foolish" enough to cross the river on a railroad trestle at night--when there was a safe and very accessible alternative--I wonder if this may have been a suicide masquerading as an accident.

It's a possibility for certain. I don't doubt there were suicides but just plain old accidents got a lot of folks. Farms, work places, homes ... all those were dangerous. Fires were very common as were shootings - at least out here in the boonies (accidental or otherwise). Dealing with horses and livestock was risky; lots of people even in the cites got killed or injured in carriage accidents.
 
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That's a tough one. There was no Center for disease control or central data collected. Very true that any drug was legal until the 1913 Harrison Act so a ACW vet would not be affected by the Harris Act until he was in his early seventies. Most vets didn't live that long.
There are medical historians that have argued a large percentage of the American population was addicted to various drugs but I forget the estimated percentages.
Leftyhunter
Dr. Lowrey who wrote the book about sex in the Civil War stated that the average consumption of alcohol at that time was about 6 gallons a year. That sounds a bit low, but there was a major temperance movement in 1860's. I think Horace Greeley was a member. And Sylvester Graham was active in temperance, vegetarian diets, "Graham" crackers, etc. And it seems like Kellog got his health sanitarium started post war.
 
A recent collection of essays: The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans, Brian M. Jordan,ed (LSU Press, 2020) looks very interesting. (Includes an essay on "the guerrilla as veteran.") See today's interview at Emerging Civil War:
 
While it only looks at one side, I would heartily recommend Brian Matthew Jordan's Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War. It discusses how veterans handled their experiences and how society viewed them and their service.

Among my ancestors, there were a variety of experiences. Patrick Kennedy went into the war a family man and returned an abuser who crawled into a bottle, whose wife divorced him. He remarried and had several more children, all but abandoning his family and dying in a ditch. His brother Andrew got into a couple minor scraps (mostly fighting in bars and that sort of thing) and then went West. Family rumor is that he did not like crowds and settled alone in Idaho. Eventually, he worked his way back East, stopping for a few years in veteran's homes on the way before moving in with his sister and her husband shortly before he died. Apparently, he was successful in the West (he may have been mining) because his sister's family fought her for his estate, which he had left to her in its entirety (it was quite substantial for a single man). My guess is that a lot of this stemmed from the combat death of their younger brother Joseph (who was mortally wounded at Spotsylvania and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery) and of James Sampier (he was the close friend of Andrew who enlisted with him but they parted company when their terms expired; he was killed in action at Petersburg).

The others seemed to have come to terms with what happened. One was a founder of his GAR post. The rest settled down to farm, mostly in upstate New York.

Ryan
I ordered Marching Home and it arrived yesterday. Skimmed it last night and this morning and am looking forward to a more concentrated reading. You're right: it is a real eye-opener and doesn't paint us all that well. I was especially interested in the chapter on Grove Cleveland. Thank you for your recomendation.
 
I ordered Marching Home and it arrived yesterday. Skimmed it last night and this morning and am looking forward to a more concentrated reading. You're right: it is a real eye-opener and doesn't paint us all that well. I was especially interested in the chapter on Grove Cleveland. Thank you for your recomendation.

It is one of my favorite books. It really was outstanding.

Ryan
 
Not an expert but the ability of a veteran to reintegrate into civilan society would have a lot to do with family structure. If a vet comes home to say a family farm or buisness and there is work to be done and a familiar routine the reintegration is more likely to be successful.
If a vet comes back to live in a city and his family gets him any kind of job even low paying but he has a roof over his head and the square meals plus community ties such friends and a religious institution then said vet has a good chance of reintegration.
If a vet is suffering from PTSD and has no family or a minimal amount of family I.e. a single parent who has their own issues and no community support then reintegration is more problematic.
Leftyhunter
 
Both of my GGFs were similar and did similar things in a lot of ways. They were both born in 1842 as the sons of wealthy slave owners, both enlisted at age 19 and fought in the Confederate cavalry (Virginia and Alabama), both were captured and became POWs, both got home after the war by walking or occasionally hitching rides on wagons, both headed west to Texas shortly after where they both soon got married and had large families, and both did well for themselves as land speculators who bought Texas land for cheap and sold it for more. They also both had the luck of marrying into prosperous Texas families who they had family connections to back east which I'm sure contributed to their financial success. However, according to my grandfather, the Virginian faced at least some financial troubles toward the end of his life. They also both had long lives, the Virginian dying in 1925 and the other in 1936. Two of their children (my great-grandparents) also married each other.

Personality wise, my Fourqurean GGF who was in the 3rd Virginia Cavalry seems to have had a more militant and violent attitude throughout his life. He enlisted almost immediately after Virginia joined the Confederacy in May 1861, fought under Jeb Stuart in numerous battles, eventually being promoted to lieutenant a month before the end of the war, and was captured at Five Forks in April 1865 and briefly sent to Johnson's Island before being paroled in June. In old age he was very active in Confederate veterans organizations and often traveled back east to Virginia. According to my grandfather he loved to talk about the war and what he did in it as well as having lots of other militant political opinions and a keen interest in WWI while it was being fought (which one of his sons was wounded and permanently disabled in). He was also heard to say he would have died a happier man if he had killed more Yankees and seems to have been fairly grumpy and cantankerous.

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-------------------------------c. May 1861---------------------------------------------------------------------------c. 1920-1925

My other Rylander GGF who was in the 1st Alabama Cavalry seems to have been perhaps more reluctant and less enthusiastic about the war and fighting. Instead of enlisting right away, he waited until February 1862 to enlist. His unit was then involved in a number of battles including Shiloh but he was captured at Shelbyville in Tennessee in June 1863. He then spent the rest of the war as a POW at Point Lookout. In old age he apparently didn't like to talk about the war except to say how it was so cold in the winter at Point Lookout that they had to dig trenches and pull snow over themselves to stay warm. I'm not aware of him being involved in any veterans organizations but even if he was he certainly wasn't as active as Fourqurean. His daughter (my great-grandmother) also didn't approve of her father-in-law (the previously mentioned Fourqurean) talking so much about the war in front of my young grandfather which is an attitude I suspect she probably got from her own father. He did apparently like to collect Civil War picture books in the 1920s.

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----------------------------c. February 1862--------------------------------------------------------------------c. 1928
 
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Not an expert but the ability of a veteran to reintegrate into civilan society would have a lot to do with family structure. If a vet comes home to say a family farm or buisness and there is work to be done and a familiar routine the reintegration is more likely to be successful.
If a vet comes back to live in a city and his family gets him any kind of job even low paying but he has a roof over his head and the square meals plus community ties such friends and a religious institution then said vet has a good chance of reintegration.
If a vet is suffering from PTSD and has no family or a minimal amount of family I.e. a single parent who has their own issues and no community support then reintegration is more problematic.
Leftyhunter
Yes, but one of the problems that I'm seeing with the vets in my study is their inability to maintain a place in that family structure. Their ability to re-commit to these families seems to have been impaired. The divorce rate among the veterans from this town is quite high and I'm seeing that in their relatives who served from other towns. I've read the divorce papers and they are remarkably similar. Ditto abandonment--men who come back only to take off, deserting families. Some men simply disappeared: they were mustered out but never came home.

I certainly agree with you on strong community ties. Quakers were problematic about going to war but they settled back into the Quaker community more easily than others.

It's not an area that I have much expertese on, either but I think that it is one worth looking into. Some of the incidents in "Marching Home" are not that different than those experienced by Vietnam and Gulf War vets. I've often said that after I finish up this piece on local soldiers, I'm going to do a more serious study of the veterans--and what Maine did right (and wrong); I think I shall call it "Broken".
 
Dr. Lowrey who wrote the book about sex in the Civil War stated that the average consumption of alcohol at that time was about 6 gallons a year. That sounds a bit low, but there was a major temperance movement in 1860's. I think Horace Greeley was a member. And Sylvester Graham was active in temperance, vegetarian diets, "Graham" crackers, etc. And it seems like Kellog got his health sanitarium started post war.
One of our newspapers runs a periodic blog by a retired reporter on Maine in the Civil War (Brian Swarz, the reporter, is a Civil War student and "buff"). Ironically, today's posting has to do with the 20th Maine Infantry (Joshua Chamberlain's old regiment). When told they were about to muster out, they decided they were going to drink their way back to Maine. The then-current Colonel, Ellis, was hard pressed to keep them in line so as to not disgrace the regiment.
 
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