An Environmental History of the Civil War

Judkin Browning, Timothy Silver

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781469655383
• eBook ISBN: 9781469655390
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' relationship to the natural world. To be sure, environmental factors such as topography and weather powerfully shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns, and the war could not have been fought without the horses, cattle, and other animals that were essential to both armies. But here Judkin Browning and Timothy Silver weave a far richer story, combining military and environmental history to forge a comprehensive new narrative of the war’s significance and impact. As they reveal, the conflict created a new disease environment by fostering the spread of microbes among vulnerable soldiers, civilians, and animals; led to large-scale modifications of the landscape across several states; sparked new thinking about the human relationship to the natural world; and demanded a reckoning with disability and death on an ecological scale. And as the guns fell silent, the change continued; Browning and Silver show how the war influenced the future of weather forecasting, veterinary medicine, the birth of the conservation movement, and the establishment of the first national parks.

In considering human efforts to find military and political advantage by reshaping the natural world, Browning and Silver show not only that the environment influenced the Civil War’s outcome but also that the war was a watershed event in the history of the environment itself.

INDEX

Adams, Charles Francis, 114

Aedes aegypti, 31. See also mosquitoes

African American troops, 140, 143, 160, 188

Alabama, 46, 70, 82; cattle herding in, 127; cultivated land in, 194; loss of livestock in, 191, 195; ore mining in, 111; salt refining in, 162, 163; Union raids in, 66–67, 87, 124

Alabama units: Tenth Regiment Infantry, 23

Albuquerque, NM, 43, 44

Alcott, Louisa May, 154

Alexander, E. Porter, 93

alfalfa, 128

Alton, IL, 36, 37

American Veterinary Medicine Association, 193

Amherst County, VA, 180

amputations, 153, 154

Anaplasma marginale, 128–29

Anaplasmosis, 128

Andersonville prison, 156–57

“Angel’s Glow,” 149–50, 153

Anopheles quadrimaculatus, 27–29. See also mosquitoes

Antietam, Battle of, 6, 77–79, 112, 166; battlefield preservation of, 184–85; burning horses after, 119

Apache Indians, 39

Appomattox, VA, 7, 187, 190, 193, 196

Arizona, 15, 39, 43, 44

Arkansas, 14, 88; cut off from rest of Confederacy, 101; hog cholera in, 126; loss of livestock in, 191–92; salt refining in, 163

ARkStorm, 42–43

Army of Northern Virginia, 72, 155; at Battle of the Wilderness, 141; at Fredericksburg, 183; on Gettysburg campaign, 93, 102, 115; measles in, 11; shortage of food for, 92

Army of Tennessee (Confederate), 106, 115

Army of Tennessee (Union), 140

Army of the Cumberland, 115, 166

Army of the Mississippi (Confederate), 67

Army of the Ohio (Union), 66–67

Army of the Potomac: 12, 29, 140, 152; in Antietam campaign, 76; at Battle of Chancellorsville, 92; at Battle of Gettysburg, 167; at Battle of Spotsylvania, 133; at Battle of the Wilderness, 141, 170; health of, 11, 35, 64; horses in, 109, 112, 114; in “Mud March,” 1–5; in ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction: More than the Mud March
• One. Sickness: Spring–Winter 1861
• Two. Weather: Winter 1861–Fall 1862
• Three. Food: Fall 1862–Summer 1863
• Four. Animals: Summer 1863–Spring 1864
• Five. Death and Disability: Spring 1864–Fall 1864
• Six. Terrain: Fall 1864–Spring 1865
• Epilogue: An Environmental Legacy
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index