Living Hell
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The deaths of soldiers in the war, the suffering of vets in the postwar, created long-term anguish and practical problems for relatives and friends. Domestic violence and drug abuse broke up homes. Captain George Carse, 40th New York, had been hit in the face and leg three times at Chancellorsville. Disfigured and in lasting pain, he drank whiskey heavily, also taking chloroform and absinthe. Unable to cope with her husband’s disintegration, his wife divorced him in 1876. The absence of a father in war, or his failure as a parent in the postwar, could lead neglected offspring into juvenile delinquency. Writing in 1918 about the Civil War, the legal scholar H. C. Parsons concluded: “There was a marked increase in juvenile delinquency and it was found to be due to the disturbance of home conditions, the absence of the father and elder brother, the employment of the mother in other than domestic pursuits and the interruption of school attendance.”55
Civil War people understood that children’s emotional problems often began with news of the father’s death. Chauncey Burr had written in 1865 that the youngster “Too young to know sorrow, Or life’s woes to borrow, / Must learn some to-morrow, Its father is dead.” War death could inflict permanent depression on young and old alike. Ada Bacot had been pregnant when her husband died in the Confederate service, January 1864. After the war, she struggled with chronic bouts of depression as she fought to raise her son alone, at times neglecting both herself and the child.56
Mary Todd Lincoln, having witnessed her husband’s assassination, became unnerved by the trauma. Her health slid precariously, symptoms including chills and migraines. Incessant weeping made her temples pound, her eyes burn and swell. Words she used to describe her condition included desolation, misery, agony, and affliction. She confessed to Simon Cameron, her husband’s first Secretary of War, that, “Such a fearful life, has injured my health, to such an extent, that at least 3 days, of each week, I am unable to sit up, with my severe head-aches.”57
Historians have not done an outstanding job of tracing the consequences of wartime loss over generations. A fascinating exception is Prof. Don Fehrenbacher, who writes about his own family. George Outman, a forebear, was mortally wounded at Stones River, December 1862. The death brought grief and poverty to the family. Seven years later, the widow died while trying to relocate the family to Kansas. She left behind an eleven-year-old daughter, the historian’s grandmother. This grim scenario limited the young girl’s life choices and horizons. Her grandson speculates that, if Outman had survived, his daughter would have grown up differently and married differently, perhaps leading a richer and fuller life. “My very existence, it seems, is connected to a single deadly moment in Tennessee on the last day of 1862.”58
The wartime inability of relatives to find emotional closure, when the fate and resting place of so many thousands remained unknown, continued into the postwar years, prolonging anguish and exacerbating grief. Walt Whitman noted that the War Department estimated at least 25,000 Union dead had never received burial, 5,000 drowned could not be recovered, 15,000 lay buried in hastily dug, unmarked graves, and 2,000 corpses had been unearthed by erosion or animals. Whitman acknowledged the government’s efforts to collect remains into National Cemeteries to give as much recognition to the fallen as possible, but he thought officialdom underestimated the number of unidentified: “ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word UNKNOWN.”59
By 1870, Federal authorities calculated that 309,225 Union dead had been reinterred, at a cost of $3,112,209. The Southern states tried to create Confederate cemeteries, but this proved a challenging task with meager public budgets. It helped that most fighting had been on home ground so that local and private groups could fill the place of government. Henry Bottom, whose land had been a battleground during Perryville, October 1862, created a Confederate cemetery on his property where he reinterred 347. But he could not identify 30. The same held true in the North. Clara Barton estimated the headstones of 45 percent in the National Cemeteries bore the legend, Unknown.60
To help comfort the bereaved, the GAR began sponsoring Memorial Day observance in 1868, building on periodic ceremonies at the national cemeteries. A similar event started informally in the South in 1866. It helped a little to know that loved ones lived on in memory, although remembrance day quickly morphed into an all-purpose holiday. Those who had suffered no personal bereavement soon forgot the dead; the unlucky families bore the full burden of grief. As a New York woman predicted during the war: “for everyone that falls on the battlefield or suffers a languishing death in the hospitals, some friends mourn and weep their lives away.”61
If the human consequences of the war proved long-lasting, so did the fiscal costs. We commonly think that wars always boost the economy. This may be true for war-related industries and businesses, but conflicts in general bear down hard on the taxpayer. Emory Upton, Victorian soldier and military theorist, estimated the Mexican War cost the U.S. Treasury $100 million. By comparison, the immediate cost of the Civil War to the Federal government reached $3 billion, with a further incalculable loss to the ex-Confederate states, whose treasury and banking system ceased to exist.62
To pay for the war effort, the United States in 1861 introduced the first Federal income tax, followed by an inheritance tax in 1862, with the Internal Revenue Service to police the system. Thaddeus Stevens, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, stated the underlying principle: “While the rich and the thrifty will be obliged to contribute largely from the abundance of their means … no burdens have been imposed on the industrious laborer and mechanic.” Following this rationale, the government imposed luxury taxes on such commodities as carriages, yachts, and jewelry. Only one measure caused real hardship for working people, a sin tax on tobacco, introduced in 1862. Despite these measures, the government still had to borrow money, financing two-thirds of the war through loans. Paying off such debt provides one reason why the cost of wars does not peak until two generations later.63
State and local governments also needed to raise taxes and take out war loans to pay for equipping troops and supporting the families of men at the front. For example, Claremont, New Hampshire, raised the property tax rate from $.39 per $100 of real estate value to $1.58, but still ended the war $71,000 in the red. Neighboring Newport found itself $56,000 in the hole. The bill to the states included the costs of maintaining asylums and orphanages. Pennsylvania for years supported 2,000 war orphans at an annual cost of $150 per child plus clothing.64
A further major cost to the national and state governments accrued in the provision of prosthetic limbs. Ultimately, pensions to soldiers, notably the disabled and their dependents, made up the largest postwar price tag. Adjutant Anthony McDermott, 69th Pennsylvania, applied for a pension due to the problems that developed as he aged, following a kick delivered in 1865 by an army horse. He drew the pension, granted in 1885, until his death in 1916. After that, his widow continued to receive a benefit.65
Pension disbursements ate up over 50 percent of many Southern state budgets and, by 1893, more than 40 percent of Federal allocations. The total cost to the U.S. taxpayer for military pensions from the Civil War may have crossed the $8 billion mark. It is not unreasonable to estimate that the final bill for the war, all costs to North and South, including destruction to infrastructure, fiscal, and economic resources, topped $20 billion.66
History never becomes simply a thing of the past. The consequences of wars, their impact on all areas of human life, remain with us long after the textbooks close the chapter on this or that armed conflict. The national government made pension disbursements for Civil War dependents into the late 1980s. Alabama holds the distinction of being the last government authority to make a pension payment to a Civil War dependent, Alberta Martin, aged eighty-nine. At twenty-one, she had married Jasper Martin, then eighty-one. As a boy soldier, he served with the 4th Alabama in Virginia, 1864–65. Alberta received her final distribution in October 1996.
Bill Clinton occupied the White House.67
Only one question remains. Given the huge costs of the war years, 1861–65, how long did Americans take before once again embracing armed conflict as one of the highest expressions of national character and values, pushing aside—if not entirely forgetting—the blood and muck of their recent experience? We can approach our question by eavesdropping on General Robert E. Lee.
— CLOSING —
GENERAL LEE AND THE GRAY LADIES
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ON DECEMBER 13, 1862, GENERAL LEE WATCHED TRIUMphantly as his troops threw back a determined Yankee attempt to break his lines at Fredericksburg. Caught up in the thrill of the moment, Lee turned to his colleague, General James Longstreet, and said: “It is well that war is so terrible—[or] we should grow too fond of it!” Success in combat could trigger the exuberant adrenaline flow that gripped Lee. But, as a wise and experienced soldier, the general understood that the heady rush came with a huge human price tag.1
By 1865, many on both sides agreed with the general that the price of war’s stimulating excitement might be exorbitantly high. Earlier, we met John B. Jones, who fought his war from behind a desk in Richmond. At first, he hoped to experience vicariously the excitement of war. By 1863, he understood the horror of fighting, and spent much of his time worrying about how to keep his family warm and fed. And by 1865, two years later, he no longer even cared about winning; he just wanted peace. “Sitting by our cheerless fires, we summon up countless blessings that we could enjoy, if this war was only over.” Jones could not believe that the survivors of the conflict might someday be brought to embrace fighting again. “Will this generation, with their eyes open, and their memories fresh, ever, ever, go to war again?” he asked.2
The South had every reason to be sick of war, with its harvest of death, ruin, and crippled men, its forests and wilderness areas infested with deserters and outlaws. In the North, despite early enthusiasm for the boys in blue, the unsavory reputation of soldiers had never quite dissipated. Now, as they came home in thousands, stories of their bad behavior went the rounds again. Popular repute stigmatized veterans as unreliable in habits, prone to substance abuse and sexual license (as indeed some had been). Bars and chop houses still posted signs prohibiting Irish, dogs, and soldiers. A police officer ordered men of the 10th Illinois, strolling a Chicago sidewalk, June 1865, into the gutter, as he would bums or vagrants. “Could a greater insult have been offered us?” asked Corporal James A. Congleton.3
The Soldier’s Friend, a Union veterans’ magazine, reported in its November 1865 issue that ex-soldiers met trouble getting hired, and so felt obliged to “conceal the fact of their having been in the army.” A grievous war wound might not be seen as a romantic red badge of courage so much as a burden upon the public. The Soldier’s Friend also related an anecdote of a man who had lost both arms, reduced to begging on a sidewalk. A passerby, angered at being panhandled, snarled at the cripple, “with an oath, ‘he was a —— fool for going to the war!’ ” Gratitude to the brave hero, maimed in his country’s cause, could prove short-lived.4
Boys who had not been in the war soon got tired of ex-soldiers acting as though military service had initiated them into another, special world whose secrets remained closed to all others. The veterans’ emotional inability to leave the war behind, their constant recurrence to marches and battles, bewildered adolescents. Edward Moore, of Poague’s Battery (C.S.A.), wrote that the younger generation “cannot comprehend, and express surprise that the old soldiers never forget and are so wrought up by the recollections of their war experiences.” How do we explain that Grant, a soldier, won the presidency in 1869? Simply, his appeal reflected his executive experience and presumed devotion to public service, rather than any enthusiasm for his military record, his doctrine of brutal total war. The president himself candidly remarked to John Russell Young during his world tour that “I never went into a battle willingly or with enthusiasm. I was always glad when a battle was over. I never want to command another army.”5
Yet by 1876, toward the end of Grant’s term, we may discern already a perceptible shift in the public mood, back toward a more favorable view of war and soldiering. Gluttony in the marketplace and corruption in government began to rekindle the myth of combat as ennobling, a cleansing of the selfish individualism of peace. Graft had reached as far as the western frontier, where unprincipled agents cheated reservation tribes out of government disbursements promised them by treaty. The Civil War’s boy general, George Armstrong Custer, travelled east to give evidence before Congress, testifying that unfair treatment drove the tribes toward war. Custer infuriated Grant, as his and others’ revelations about the scandal appeared to implicate some of the president’s intimate circle in the tawdry dealings. The chief executive almost refused to let Custer return to his command. This would have been a grave public humiliation when the 7th Cavalry would shortly be ordered to join other units charged with herding disgruntled Sioux and Cheyenne warriors back onto their reservations.
As events unfolded, Custer took the field to lead his regiment into a debacle, losing his own life along with those of most of his troopers. Public reaction to his death indicates the sea change occurring in attitudes to the military. The shift may be charted in the thinking of Walt Whitman. While not quite saying, “as Whitman goes, so goes the nation,” he does act as a barometer of the changing cultural climate. To set the scene, we need to appreciate, as the late Stephen E. Ambrose pointed out, that Custer did not rank as a great general. Ambrose’s succinct summation of Custer deserves quoting in full: “His undoubted audacity and courage were offset by a criminal lack of good judgment, a refusal to gather intelligence about the enemy, an insistence on attacking at the earliest possible opportunity, a petty jealousy toward his fellow officers, a monumental ambition, and a total disregard for the lives of his men.”6
In the Civil War, Custer adhered to the school that operated by blind faith in the moral superiority of the reckless offense. He failed to carry out effective reconnaissances or to maneuver for better tactical position before heavily engaging the enemy. Ambrose calculated that the general’s turnover in casualties became so high in his Michigan command that, “as a brigade commander, Custer suffered 100 percent losses.” Subsequently, Custer rushed into action on the Little Big Horn, ignoring warnings from his native scouts who believed the hostiles severely outnumbered the cavalry.7
The bodies of many troopers, found clustered around Custer’s corpse, superficially suggested a gallant last stand. Commentators quickly drew parallels to such epics as the Spartans holding the pass at Thermopylae or Charlemagne’s knights under Roland dying in the rearguard at Roncevaux. In fact, to the trained eye, as several officers studying the field after the action noted, the grouping of bodies did not suggest a heroic, well-fought, last action. The clustering suggested that the troopers had panicked, lost cohesion, deserted their posts, and bunched together in terror.8
How so? The development of fast-action, breech-loading rifles forced commanders at last to open up the battlefield, because densely packed bodies of troops now served as lambs to the slaughter. Soldiers in 1876 deployed on an extended picket line in squads of four. However, soldiers might lack the comforting shoulder-to-shoulder contact of the earlier close-order formations. To compensate for the sense of aloneness, squads needed to be made up of trusted comrades, welded together by the buddy system.9
Unfortunately, officers experimenting with the revised tactics did not yet understand the importance of small-unit bonding. The first four men to dismount formed an impromptu squad that might not know each other, particularly as many troopers had only just joined the regiment. Some recent immigrants barely understood the officers’ orders. When the companies came under heavy and unexpected pressure from hostiles, the skirmish lines buckled, losing vital control of the extended perimeter, the men herding back upon each other. Archaeological digs reveal a lack of shell cases on the skirmish line where we would expect to find th
em if the soldiers had put up a stern defense. Also, native accounts depict many troopers acting so frightened that they looked like drunken men, throwing down their weapons and waiting hopelessly to die. This paralysis often typifies units that have lost their confidence and cohesion.10
Whitman had not worn a uniform. Yet, in the Civil War, he enjoyed thinking of himself as a quasi-military man; he dressed like a soldier in a blue suit and army boots, sporting a black hat with gold acorns. He liked it when the guards at hospitals saluted him. He had gained insight into the human aspects of the war. But he had little grasp of military tactics and no understanding of their evolution since the war. Hence, he read into the bunched bodies on the Little Big Horn the makings of a great American epic of sacrifice. He had hoped the Civil War would be America’s “Iliad,” but it proved too bloody, mucky, sordid, and brutal. The vulgarity and venality of the postwar era disgusted him further. So he welcomed the sacrificial devotion to duty of Custer’s 7th. In the New York Herald, on July 12, 1876, he acclaimed “The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,” and saluted their demonstration of “the utter consecration of one’s life to his duty, the sublimest thing a man can do.”11