Month: July 2021

A few years back I was wandering a small local cemetery. It’s the final resting place for a number of my ancestors. Looking at family headstones I noticed the lone grave of a Civil War soldier, James R. Van Meter. His marker was engraved with an eagle and the inscription “Rest Soldier Thy Warfare is Ore”. His surname was one in my family tree but I knew he wasn’t a direct ancestor. He had to be a collateral relative. When I saw he was only 21 years old and died during the Civil War I decided to learn more about him. What happened to James? My thoughts jumped around with various theories. Had he been shot in battle? I wondered if he had a wife? Did he leave children? My thought was that he didn’t leave a wife and family, given his age. I’m sure he was mourned by his parents and siblings, but I’ll bet it wasn’t too many years later that his name probably wasn’t mentioned again. Not out of disrespect of course, it’s just that life goes on. Parents pass away, siblings marry and have families of their own. Brothers or uncles who died in the war […]

Losing a limb was a devastating consequence of war for many soldiers. Reentering civilian life with a disability proved as challenging as their military experience. Here’s how some veterans coped. Medical treatment evolved rapidly during the Civil War. The continuous stream of sick and wounded soldiers taxed regimental field surgeons and physicians to the limit. Yet these same illnesses and battle injuries, that plagued both sides, forced the medical treatment of the time to advance. The same can be said for the makeshift field hospitals of the early Civil War years. Medical camps evolved from unorganized, unsanitary, disease ridden quarters to more efficient, better supplied centers of treatment. Field hospitals gradually developed higher standards providing an improved quality of care in the aftermath of a battle. Medical treatment and hospital surroundings progressed significantly enough that a soldier wounded in the latter part of the Civil War had a much better chance of survival than the soldier injured in the war’s early years.  Well documented is the vast number of soldiers who lost a limb after a battle and were treated in field hospitals. At the close of the Civil War, nearly sixty-thousand soldiers, both north and south, had suffered amputation. […]

Today society is aware of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and its painful effect on those suffering with it. Treatment with compassion is available but that was not the case during the Civil War and latter part of the nineteenth century. Soldiers were considered weak or worse yet, malingerers. Let’s take a moment to look back with understanding at those veterans who experienced trauma to both mind and body during the war.