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Trauma and Coping Among Union Soldiers and Veterans

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Trauma and Coping Among Union Soldiers and Veterans Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2017 War on the Mind: Trauma and Coping among Union Soldiers and Veterans Kathleen Anneliese Logothetis Thompson Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Thompson, Kathleen Anneliese Logothetis, "War on the Mind: Trauma and Coping among Union Soldiers and Veterans" (2017). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 7136. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7136 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. War on the Mind: Trauma and Coping among Union Soldiers and Veterans Kathleen Anneliese Logothetis Thompson Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Jason Phillips, Ph.D., Chair Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Ph.D. Brian Luskey, Ph.D. Katherine Aaslestad, Ph.D. Jeffrey Daniels, Ph.D. Department of History Morgantown, West Virginia 2017 Keywords: Civil War; Mental Trauma; Civil War Medicine; Union Army; Union Veterans Copyright 2017 Kathleen Anneliese Logothetis Thompson ABSTRACT War on the Mind: Trauma and Coping among Union Soldiers and Veterans Kathleen Anneliese Logothetis Thompson “War on the Mind: Trauma and Coping in the Union Army,” is a work of social, cultural, and military history and examines experiences of mental trauma in the Union Army during the war and among veterans in the post-war period. Without our modern definition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Civil War soldiers had a very different view of how they were mentally experiencing the war. By looking at soldier accounts and the records of insane asylums it is clear that soldiers did have experiences of trauma and insanity during or related to their wartime service. However, those same asylum records, as well as medical and military policies and pension records, reveal that nineteenth-century Americans—doctors, military personnel, and the soldiers themselves—interpreted insanity as produced by physical or moral causes, not by the horrible experiences of warfare. My research analyzes official forms of treatment and diagnosis in the military and medical fields during the war as well as strategies of coping developed by the soldiers themselves. In the post-war period, the medical and social perceptions of insanity did not change drastically. Instead, society and the government distributed aid and support based on the same foundation of physical and moral causation as during the war. As a result of these continued perceptions of insanity, veterans’ organizations and commemorations served as a coping mechanism in addition to the political and social purposes already studied by historians. At the same time that veterans’ organizations, such as the Grand Army of the Republic, acted to commemorate their participation in the war and push for veterans’ benefits in the post-war period, these groups also provided veterans support systems that helped those struggling to survive and those struggling with their wartime experiences. By looking at both the wartime and post-war periods, this research demonstrates that the Civil War, which sparked great transformations in many areas, did not significantly change the study and care of the insane. Instead, the prevailing culture of nineteenth-century America—including notions of masculinity, standards of social behavior, and beliefs about society’s relationship with the government— hindered the acceptance of the idea that the horrific experience of war might itself affect soldiers. iii Table of Contents Introduction: “All very much worn out”: Trauma and the Civil War………………1 A Note on Research…………………………………………………………………21 Chapter One: “The Strain on Our Minds and Bodies had been Severe”: The Traumatic Experience of Civil War Soldiering………………………..24 Chapter 2: “The Supposed Exciting Cause is the War…The Disease is Probably Hereditary”: Official Definitions and Treatments of Insanity and Mental Illness……….62 Chapter Three: “I take great pains to take care of myself”: The “Unofficial” Coping Strategies of Union Soldiers…………………….101 Chapter 4: “Disqualified from Procuring Their Own Maintenance… by reasons of wounds…or sickness”: Government and Medical Treatment of Insane Soldiers in the Post-War Period……………………...153 Chapter Five: “To Sustain with Him the Relation of Comradeship”: Veteran Coping and Societal Pressures.........................................................191 Conclusion: Trauma from the Civil War to the Twenty-First Century………….....215 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………….. 229 1 Introduction: “All very much worn out”: Trauma and the Civil War On May 9, 1864, Private Lorenzo G. Babcock of Co. E, 125th New York Infantry shot himself in the breast near Todd’s Tavern, Virginia. Babcock’s unit had just fought in the Battle of the Wilderness with thirty-six percent casualties, only to keep pushing south as part of General Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign. By the 9th, comrades testified, the unit was exhausted, overcome by the heat, and “all very much worn out.” In the midst of this, comrades noted Babcock becoming excited and nervous, exclaiming that the enemy was approaching when all was quiet at camp, and attempting to shoot a fellow soldier he called a “Reb.” Comrade H. Sykes testified that Babcock’s friends tried to calm him down, but having their own duties to attend to in the midst of the campaign he was largely left alone and in the fighting on May 9th, Babcock killed himself.1 Less dramatic, but more common, is the case of Michael Schwenk of the 56th New York Infantry, who spent much of his post-war life in insane asylums in Connecticut, Minnesota, California, and Massachusetts. In 1864, Schwenk suffered a “sunstroke” while serving in the army which caused him to become deranged. Sent initially to a regular hospital, Schwenk was transferred to the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. where he was discharged from the service. His departure from the army did nothing to cure his ailments and he was a patient at insane asylums until at least 1890 as recorded in his pension file.2 1 Mother’s pension application (Mary; soldier Lorenzo Babcock) 197327, certificate 283941. National Archives, Washington, D. C. 2 Michael Schwenk pension application 414083, certificate 668845. National Archives, Washington, D.C. 2 Both of these cases illustrate the mental toll of warfare on Civil War soldiers, whether an immediate case of suicide or a long-term case of insanity resulting from service. In today’s post- Vietnam world, the idea of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or soldiers traumatized by wartime experiences is common and the current military works to research and treat the symptoms of trauma to ensure the mental health of their soldiers. PTSD, first officially included as a diagnosis in 1980, requires an individual to experience an event that is life-threatening or otherwise threatens physical harm, includes responses of fear, helplessness, and horror, and creates lasting and recurrent symptoms connected to this traumatic event. Symptoms of PTSD include nightmares, flashbacks, irritation and nervousness, emotional numbness or distancing one’s self from surroundings, difficulty concentrating, hyperarousal, depression or anger, feeling a loss of control, guilt and shame, and difficulty sleeping. Today PTSD is defined as an anxiety disorder that psychologists Mooli Lahad and Miki Doron claim affects about eighty percent of the Western World and causes long-term symptoms in forty percent of cases.3 The debate among historians and psychologists is whether military conflicts through the course of human history share the same trend of mental breakdown—allowing historians to carry the modern diagnosis of PTSD backwards in time to analyze previous conflicts—or whether each major war creates its own form of mental collapse. Historians, for the most part, agree that using the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in conflicts earlier than Vietnam and the 1980 official diagnosis is ahistorical; however, this should be only a question of terminology because the signs and symptoms of traumatic experiences in warfare are evident in earlier 3 Mooli Lahad and Miki Doron, Protocol for Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. SEE FAR CBT Model: Beyond Cognitive Behavior Therapy {Part of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Project ASI 983481} (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2010), vii, 17-21; John P. Wilson and Beverly Raphael, International Handbook of Traumatic Stress Syndromes (New York: Plenum Press, 1993), 2; Stanley Krippner, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2012), 7. 3 conflicts. Psychologists largely argue that—whatever it was named at the time—mental breakdown itself has been evident in conflicts of the twentieth
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