Civil War

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One of the most dramatic psychological and emotional effects that such death and destruction produced was an increasingly formidable divide between those who fought and those who did not. When a soldier held a weapon in his hands, he transcended reality. Once men entered combat, fear and anxiety dissipated and “gave way to rage, anger, and a sense of disembodiment” (Dean 54-5). Soldiers became so consumed and possessed by the demands of war that they appeared to have entered a type of hell, “loading and firing with demoniacal fury and shouting and laughing hysterically…looked like demons rather than men” (Dean 55). The battlefield became an arena for killers, a lawless, unpredictable place, closed off from refined society. The pressures and demands a soldier carried were simply incomprehensible for the average civilian.

The experience of war for those in the midst of horrors of battle became something that only they understood and affected them for the rest of their lives. Instances of post-traumatic stress were very common but often underreported from soldiers as “thoughts and images of all types of mutilation and death occupied the minds of men” (Dean 65). In years after the war, one frequently encountered the expression “exposure” in the army as the claimed basis of a disability. Reviewing the conditions that these men had to endure – being thrown into the harshest of elements with little protection and sustenance, fending off disease and injury, and then being forced to kill or be killed – one begins to understand exactly what this “exposure” was and “how it shattered men’s constitutions and health – a situation from which they may never recover” (Dean 49). Men often revisited the horrifying images still burned into their minds year after the war. The psychological trauma experienced by soldiers served to form a strong sense of camaraderie among those who fought, an unbreakable bond that prevailed for decades after the war in reunions and clubs which became safe spaces for these veterans.

The physical and emotional losses soldiers and their families experienced made it difficult for them to ground themselves in reality after the war. Those who had not died on the battlefield had to continue on earth. Post-War Americans seemed “besieged by vulnerable, disruptive flesh (whether their own or their loved one’s and unnerving psychological deprivations” (Long 60). Many that fought had a difficult time transitioning back into normal life with their different minds and bodies. Amputees struggled with the belief that a fallible body limited “one’s ability to discern the fullness of the world” (Long 59). In addition, life for those who lost loved ones, was uncomfortable as they tried to process their new, unfamiliar reality. One woman reported that the “physical loss she sustained during the war caused her to lose her sense of individuality and selfhood” (Long 61). Post-War Americans lived as shells of their formal selves, trying to come to grips with what had transpired and struggling to continue despite the losses they experienced.

The inhumane environments soldiers lived in, the way that they died, and the way civilians were treated during the war illuminated the crisis of the body’s plummeting value. Even in times away from combat, soldiers had a hard time surviving. Many died on brutal marches through the extreme cold and heat. Difficult living conditions without adequate food, water, and clothing became a breeding ground for infectious disease – approximately 10 million cases of sickness were reported during the war and 414,000 died from diseases such as tuberculosis and dysentery (Dean 51). Soldiers were not treated as humans that deserved a quality of life or care but rather as instruments of war.

The nature and idea of death underwent a major shift away from a romantic, peaceful picture to one that was aggressive, quick, and distant. Before the war, American created a culture around death and burial that centered on reflection and emphasized comfort among family and friends at home in order to illicit a calm passing. Often, the moment of death was witnessed, keepsakes were gathered and the loved ones were envisioned in heaven (Long 67). However, during war, deaths were “generally occurred too suddenly to leave time for reflection, while thousands died anonymously, receiving a ‘lonely personal burial’…thereby making it hard for relatives to imagine a loved one last moments” (Clarke 62). Bodies were not taken cared for or respected in any way as “corpses sometimes lied on the field for days…covered with living vermon” (Clarke 68). Many mourners struggled with the fact that their loved ones never returned home and the enduring discomfort in the “thought of a disembodied soul floating about heaven” (Long 68). The mutilation that frequently occurred to bodies and the lack of burials resulted in deaths that were impersonal and cheap. A body was seen as a statistic, one of the 620,000, rather than an individual loss.

Soldiers were not the only ones that suffered a disrespect of their body. Women, particularly in the South where most of the war was fought, experienced a disturbing amount of sexual abuse and physical violence from Union soldiers raiding their backyards. Several hundred women in occupied Southern and border states brought charges of rape or attempted against Union soldiers or civilians attached to the US army (Barber and Ritter 50). No woman was safe from this predation – women of all social strata and even as young ten years old (Baber and Ritter 57). Many of these reports did not make it to courtrooms, however, because of deeply embedded notions of honor and shame women harbored. Soldiers believed that, in addition to livestock and home, that Southern women were “one of the other spoils of war to which they were entitled” (Barber and Ritter 61). This attitude of humans as property and objects to be abused illustrates one of the most disturbing results of a civilization functioning at a primal, unbounded level.

Possible idea for a conclusion:

Perhaps one of the biggest changes that occurred as a result of the war was the new image of a hero. A hero was the soldier that marched for days with no food or water, the nurse who saved a commander’s life, the limping man on the street corner and his wife carrying his cane, and the families that survived without the peace of burying their loved ones. The war mutilated and destroyed a lot of bodies, traumatized many minds and completely reshaped a nation. However, those that emerged amidst the dust became the inspiration and hope for America for generations to come.