REMEMBERING THE VETERAN DISABILITY, TRAUMA, AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, 1861-1915 Erin R. Corrales-Diaz A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Art. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved by: Ross Barrett Bernard L. Herman John P. Bowles John Kasson Eleanor Jones Harvey © 2016 Erin R. Corrales-Diaz ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Erin R. Corrales-Diaz: Remembering the Veteran: Disability, Trauma, and the American Civil War, 1861-1915 (Under the direction of Ross Barrett) My dissertation, “Remembering the Veteran: Disability, Trauma, and the American Civil War, 1861-1915,” explores the complex ways that American artists interpreted war-induced disability after the Civil War. Examining pictorial representations of disabled veterans by George Inness, Thomas Nast, William Bell, and other artists, I argue that the veteran’s broken body became a vehicle for exploring the overwhelming sense of loss that Northerners and Southerners experienced in the war's aftermath. Oscillating between aestheticized ideals and the reality of affliction, visual representations of disabled veterans uncover postwar Americans’ deep and otherwise unspoken anxieties about masculinity, identity, and nationhood. This project represents the first major effort to historicize the visual culture of war-related disability and presents a significant deviation from previous Civil War scholarship and its focus on death. In examining these understudied representations of disability and tracing out the ways that they rework and reinforce nineteenth-century constructions of the body, this project models an approach to the analysis of period imaginings of corporeal difference that might in turn shed new light on contemporary artistic responses to physical and psychological injuries resulting from warfare. iii To my family. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I cannot express enough thanks to my advisor, Dr. Ross Barrett. Dr. Barrett guided me through what seemed at times to be an insurmountable task. His insight, generosity, and support have made this project a successful one. I would also like to thank the rest of my committee members: Drs. John P. Bowles, Bernard L. Herman, John Kasson, and Eleanor Jones Harvey. Dr. Bowles’ sharp insights regarding race and disability focused my interpretation of the images of disabled African American Civil War veterans. And his eternal optimism was always much appreciated. I could always count on Dr. Herman for engaging and intellectually stimulating conversations, the results of which are manifested in this dissertation. It was during Dr. Kasson’s course “Bodies on Display,” taken during my first semester at the University of North Carolina in the fall of 2010, that I began to delve deeply into the topic of disabled Civil War veterans. I had the good fortune to receive a dissertation fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum where I met Dr. Eleanor Jones Harvey. Her wealth of knowledge about the American Civil War and enthusiasm for my project encouraged me to see American art history in a new light. I am indebted to several institutions, grants, and fellowships that have shaped my research and writing. As a recipient of an Archie K. Davis Fellowship from the North Caroliniana Society, I was able to conduct research at UNC’s North Carolina Collection and Southern Historical Collection, the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the North Carolina State Archives. It was during research at the latter where I met a fellow v scholar of disabled Civil War veterans, Ansley Herring Wegner. A Jacob M. Price Visiting Research Fellowship allowed me to dig deeply into the collections at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. Many thanks go to Clayton Lewis for his tireless efforts. A Rockwell Center Dissertation Fellowship enabled me to take a trip to Richmond, Virginia, and unearth material on Confederate disabled veterans at the Library of Virginia, the Historical Society of Virginia, the Richmond Historical Society, and the Museum of the Confederacy. Before this dissertation was completed, Dr. Joyce Schiller, the Norman Rockwell Museum’s first curator of the Rockwell Center for American Studies, passed away. Although we never had the opportunity to meet in person, I believe she would be pleased to know how much her institution’s generosity shaped this project. A Frank Hideo Kono Fellowship at the Huntington Library brought me into contact with a fellow enthusiast of ephemera, David Mihaly. The receipt of a Francis A. Countway Library Fellowship for the History of Medicine allowed me to spend two weeks researching Civil War medicine at Harvard’s Countway Medical Library; special thanks goes to Dr. Scott Podolsky, Jack Eckert, and Dominic Hall. While at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, I had the pleasure of sharing my research and writing with my fellow fellows, including Drs. Melissa Dabakis and Wendy Katz, and program coordinator, Amelia Goerlitz. A Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science Fellowship aided me in visiting several critical archives and libraries in that city, including the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. Special thanks go Erika Piola, Associate Curator of the Prints and Photographs Department, at the Library Company of Philadelphia. A Winterthur Research Fellowship let me conduct crucial work on early twentieth-century ephemera with the John and Carolyn Grossman vi Collection. Many thanks to Jeanne Solensky for assisting me in navigating such an immense amount of material. A Swann Foundation Fellowship funded a two-week research trip at the Library of Congress. Particular thanks go to Martha Kennedy and Eric P. Frazier. I was grateful to spend another year with Dr. Melissa Dabakis as a Marilyn Yarbrough Dissertation Fellow at Kenyon College. I extend thanks to my Kenyon colleagues: Dr. Austin Porter, Dr. Eugene Dwyer, Dr. Sarah Blick, Dr. Theodore Mason, Dan Younger, Marcella Hackbardt, and Elizabeth Williams-Clymer. I would also like to thank the students of my ARHS 391 class: Alivia Bloch, Madison Breschi, Chloe Friedman, Gavin Mead, Julia Plottel, Julia Richards, Rachel Sweeney, Jack Washburn, and Julia Weaver. Several other scholars were influential in shaping this dissertation: Dr. Timothy Marr, Dr. Joshua Brown, Dr. Louis P. Masur, Michael Rhode, Dr. Janice Simon, Dr. Sarah Rieder Ipeson, Dr. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, and Dr. David Lubin. Particular thanks go to Dr. Leo G. Mazow for providing comments on several chapter drafts and being my cheerleader. Several of my classmates at the University of North Carolina read chapter drafts and helped work through research conundrums: Adam Domby, Jennifer Kosmin, Josh Lynn, Sarah Blythe, and Kim Bobier. I especially want to thank Johanna Gohmann and Klint Ericson. During the final stretch, my Johnson Collection colleagues (Sarah Tignor, Lynne Blackman, Holly Watters, Aimee Wise, and David Henderson) pushed me to the finish line. I would also like to thank Susu and George Johnson for their encouragement while I put the last touches on my dissertation. And finally, I am thankful for my family, who has supported me throughout this long process. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………….…….x INTRODUCTION…………..…………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER 1: VISUALIZING THE “REAL WAR”: THE U.S. ARMY SURGEON GENERAL’S OFFICE AND CIVIL WAR SUFFERING………………..……………………..30 “An Enduring Monument”………………………………...…………………………......34 “A Bureau of Art”……………………………………...………………………………...35 Ars Medica……………………………………………………………………………….37 Metonymical Flesh……………………………………………………………………….43 Mnemonic Bones………………………………………………………………………...46 Inscribing the Disabled Body…………………………………………………………….52 Preforming (Gendered) Pain……………………………………………………………..55 “The Human Wheel”……………………………………………………………………..64 Severed, Suffered, and Sacrificed………………………………………………………..67 CHAPTER 2: VANISHING VETERANS: PICTORIAL HAUNTING, METAPHYSICAL TRAUMA, AND THE LIMITS OF REPRESENTATION………………..78 Inness’s Limits of Realism……………………………………………..………………..82 Labor and Land…………………………………………………………………………..91 A Southern Gothic: Haunted Ruins and Spectral Bodies………………………………..97 Irritable Hearts, Nostalgia, and the Spiritual Divide……………………………………103 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...…107 viii CHAPTER 3: EMPTY SLEEVES AND BLOODY SHIRTS: DISABLED CIVIL WAR VETERANS AND PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS, 1864-1880……………………………………………………………...114 Stumping and Dismemberment: Disability and Antebellum Political Cartoons……….117 “A House Divided”: The 1864 Presidential Campaign………………………………...121 “Enough to Vote”: Political Struggles of Disable African American Veterans………..129 “Vote as You Shot”: Reconstruction and the 1872 Election…………………………...136 The Hero of Gettysburg and the 1880 Election………………………………………...144 CHAPTER 4: PAPER MEMORIES: MASS MEDIA AND COMMERICIALIZED CIVIL WAR HISTORY………………………………………151 The Northern Madonna: Reproducing the Empty Sleeve………………………………154 Imprinting Disability: William Ludwell Sheppard and Confederate Memory…………165 Decorating the Intersectional Body: Garfield Thomas Haywood and Disabled Black Veterans…………………………………………………...............173 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...164 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................190