Bodies in Blue

Disability in the Civil War North

Sarah Handley-Cousins

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• ISBN:
  9780820355191
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

How mental and physical disabilities influenced ideas of masculinity in the Union Army

In the popular imagination, Civil War disability is virtually synonymous with amputation. But war affects the body in countless ways, many of them understudied by historians. In Bodies in Blue, Sarah Handley-Cousins expands and complicates our understanding of wartime disability by examining a variety of bodies and ailments, ranging from the temporary to the chronic, from disease to injury, and encompassing both physical and mental conditions. She studies the cases of well-known individuals, such as Union general Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, alongside many cases drawn from the ranks to provide a more comprehensive view of how soldiers, civilians, and institutions grappled with war-related disability in the Civil War-era North.

During the Civil War and long after, the bodies of Union soldiers and veterans were sites of powerful cultural beliefs about duty and sacrifice. However, the realities of living with a disability were ever at odds with the expectations of manhood. As a consequence, men who failed to perform the role of wounded warrior properly could be scrutinized for failing to live up to standards of martial masculinity. Under the gaze of surgeons, officers, bureaucrats, and civilians, disabled soldiers made difficult negotiations in their attempts to accommodate impaired bodies and please observers. Some managed this process with ease; others struggled and suffered. Embracing and exploring this apparent contradiction, Bodies in Blue pushes Civil War history in a new direction.

CHAPTER 2

Army of the Walking Sick

On July 19, 1862, Pvt. Ephraim Pelton was having a bad day. He was sick and exhausted, but his commanding officers had disregarded his repeated requests for a disability discharge. Pelton found himself on guard duty for the second time in two days, standing for hours at a time and keeping watch on behalf of the rest of the unit. At some point in his shift, he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. This slip put him in violation of the Forty-Sixth Article of War and earned him a court-martial.¹

Pelton was charged with sleeping at his post and brought before the court-martial board on July 25, 1862. He pleaded guilty—after all, he’d been caught sleeping and couldn’t very well argue that he hadn’t been—but tried to explain that it wasn’t his fault. He was sick and waiting for a disability discharge. On this particular day, Pelton argued, he had been exhausted from constant guard duty and disrupted sleep. His captain and surgeon both testified on his behalf, but they didn’t paint quite the picture he had hoped for. Each agreed that Pelton had indeed been sick, but the men considered it more important that he was a terrible soldier and pathetic man. Capt. O. A. Payne testified that he had never signed the paperwork for the disability discharge Pelton had requested. “He complained of rheumatism,” Payne testified, “and I told him that if he would get the Doctor to write out his certificate stating his worthlessness and inability on account of manhood to make a good soldier, I would give him his discharge.” Unsurprisingly, Pelton was found guilty and sentenced to thirty days’ hard labor and the loss of one month’s pay. It is telling that Pelton’s punishment was more work, as if manual labor could rehabilitate his weakness and inferior manhood.²

Many Union soldiers found themselves in Pelton’s quandary at some point during their service: neither sick enough to warrant a hospital stay or discharge nor well enough to meet the expectations of able-bodiedness military service demanded. Relief was available for overtly ill soldiers, who could report sick and get extra rest or a trip to the hospital to recuperate. Those suffering from imprecise or common ailments were often deemed lazy or, worse, accused of malingering. Unlike the disabled men who believed their segregation into the Invalid Corps was unjust, the walking sick strove to inform officers that they were more impaired rather than less.

Military manhood depended on adherence to the demands of wartime’s unique expectations—respecting authority, following orders, completing duties without complaint. None of these requirements had to be fulfilled in such exacting terms in soldiers’ civilian lives. Pain and sickness made meeting these expectations more difficult.³ Soldiers who insisted on accommodations for their ailing bodies, or who were unable to overcome their physical infirmities and continue serving, risked being accused of lacking masculine resolve. The result was a difficult situation for disabled soldiers. In order to continue serving in their units, men bent to the needs of their bodies by straggling, leaving their posts, or otherwise violating the Articles of War. When they did so, they came into conflict with officers, surgeons, and court-martial boards. These interactions revealed another layer of the contest over who had the authority to define what it meant to be able and unable. Soldiers asserted the evidence of their own bodies; officers and surgeons asserted their rank. While officers sometimes agreed with ailing soldiers, it was officers’ authority that ultimately determined what counted as a disability.

The experiences of the walking sick also broaden our understanding of wartime disability. Civil War disability is most closely associated with battle wounds, particularly amputation, but disability from illness was a far more common experience. Though modern scholars often distinguish between ill health and impairment, Union army officials understood illness as a form of disability. Discharge papers for incapacitated soldiers drew no distinctions between disease and injuries. Far more disability discharges were granted for disease than for war wounds. For those who remained in the army, the Invalid Corps made the overlap between illness and disability apparent. As noted in the previous chapter, the majority of enlisted corps members were declared unfit for field service and disabled due to disease or chronic illness.⁴ While there are legitimate reasons to interpret illness and disability differently, the soldiers, officers, and surgeons of the Union army considered them critically interrelated. Such was the case even when illness caused temporary impairment.⁵ Sick soldiers, just like those incapacitated by war wounds, were sometimes unable to meet the expectations of military service. In many cases, they sought disability status so they could access care or rest. The trials of the walking sick offer evidence for a redefinition of Civil War disability and a reassessment of the war’s impact on the bodies of its combatants.

Ephraim Pelton’s trial centered on the question of whether he had truly been too ill to keep awake, or whether he was a bad soldier and weak man. Unbeknownst to the ailing Pelton, his case was part of a larger dialogue within the Union army over bodies, health, and military discipline. When soldiers used their bodies as an explanation for their crimes, they came up against commanders concerned about poor discipline, increasing absenteeism, and dwindling morale. These superior officers adjudicated not only the soldier’s guilt or innocence but also the legitimacy of their disability and the potency of their manhood.

Scholars of desertion and straggling identify a number of reasons why soldiers chose to leave the ranks, whether temporarily or permanently. Though many have discussed the role that physical discomfort played in desertions, few have specifically explored the relationship between health and absenteeism.⁶ Kathryn Shively’s recent study considers the ways that average soldiers used straggling—temporarily leaving the ranks with the intention of returning—as a form of self-care during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign.⁷ Shively concludes that straggling was often a response to soldiers’ bodily needs, rather than a reflection of poor discipline, low morale, or cowardice. In order to continue in service, soldiers sometimes felt they needed to leave camp for a night in a dry barn, a hot meal, or nursing from a woman in a nearby village.⁸ These men considered straggling a necessary part of successful soldiering, and they did not associate it with cowardice or lack of discipline. Officers, on the other hand, often distrusted soldiers’ claims of pain or ill health, believing such behavior indicated inferior martial masculinity.

Not all officers equated shirking or straggling with cowardice. Lower-ranking and noncommissioned officers were more sympathetic to the common soldiers’ complaints, but high-ranking officers, concerned about waning manpower, believed stragglers were proving their weak character by failing to “man up” and do their duty. Cultural and class differences, as well as conflicting ideas about military bearing, often accounted for differing ideas about military manhood. Most in the upper echelons of the officer ranks had come from the regular army. They therefore held strict beliefs about soldierly behavior and doubted volunteers’ ability to endure the difficulties of military life.⁹ The disagreement over how to deal with absenteeism led to a crackdown on straggling and absenteeism in the Confederate and Federal armies in 1862. Commanders required lower-ranking officers and surgeons to carefully scrutinize the sick and provide sick leave or furloughs only when absolutely necessary. Increasingly strict punishments were recommended for those caught out of ranks.¹⁰

As the creation of the Invalid Corps indicated, many in the Union army believed that disability discharges were given too generously early in the war, and that soldiers abused the system. Complaining that only a fraction of furloughed soldiers ever returned, commanders believed some men used an illness or wound as an excuse to go to the hospital, only to sneak away home.¹¹ Of course, some soldiers did try to game the system. Christian Lenker, sergeant in the Nineteenth Ohio, recalled soldiers flocking to the doctor each evening when he inspected men for furloughs after the Battle of Shiloh. “Many of the men should have been to the ‘front’ but some were homesick and ‘played off’ trying to get a discharge or furlough.”¹² Even Abraham Lincoln expressed concern at the high rate of disabled absentees in Gen. George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. The president suggested that most of these soldiers were likely “fit for duty.”¹³ Whether or not this impression was entirely accurate, a level of distrust surrounded soldiers who sought leave or disability discharges.

The perception that soldiers were taking advantage of furloughs prompted the War Department to issue new leave policies in June 1862. Together, the orders made it difficult to obtain a furlough and to use health as an excuse for a late return. General Order 61 disallowed anyone but the secretary of war, or in dire cases the commander of an army, department, or district, from authorizing leave. General Order 65 designated that all men away from their units be declared deserters, with no leniency extended for stragglers or those who overstayed a furlough. The order also made it clear that illness was not an acceptable excuse for absence.¹⁴

This strict policy only lasted a few months. In January 1863, as part of a campaign to improve morale in the Army of the Potomac, Maj. Gen. Joe Hooker relaxed the furlough policy. Leaves were granted to men with excellent records, and soldiers could only leave when the previous man returned. If even one soldier overstayed his leave, the entire company could lose the right to furloughs—a powerful deterrent.¹⁵ The change improved troops’ spirits, and many soldiers took it seriously. However, these modifications did not change the policy of treating late returners claiming sickness as deserters. Hooker’s requirements made furloughs more accessible. Even so, leave was often promised weeks in advance, making it difficult to use the time to recover from illnesses. Sympathetic soldiers swapped their furloughs with desperate comrades in some cases, but it generally remained difficult to get leave for ailments that weren’t severe. As one New Jersey soldier wrote his sister in 1863, “I might as well try to fly as to try to get a furlough.”¹⁶

Tighter control over what ailments merited a discharge and suspicion that soldiers gamed the system for light duty or time off meant that many surgeons only offered extra rest to those with severe ailments. But almost all soldiers became sick at some point during their service, though not all them would require hospitalization. For these walking sick, the needs of the human body and the requirements of the Union army were often at odds. Thus soldiers found themselves in the difficult position of trying to prove they were as sick as they claimed. Transcripts from courts-martial in which health was under debate offer a glimpse into this army of the walking sick, and into the negotiations between soldiers and the authorities. The small sample of courts-martial presented in this chapter spanned the war years and took place in both the Eastern and Western Theaters. Each source makes reference to the health of the soldier—sometimes in his own words, sometimes in the testimony of witnesses. The men in these cases were charged with various infractions, ranging from the relatively minor (such as sleeping on post) to the very serious (desertion).

At the center of these courts-martial lay the conflict between soldiers’ perceptions of their own bodies and authorities’ conclusions about their bodies. While soldiers believed their embodied experience should suffice as an alibi, officers and surgeons countered with the expectations of military manhood. The outcomes of these trials were mixed. When officers sympathized with the soldier’s story and felt assured of his good character, they were ready to offer lighter punishment or, on occasion, dismiss charges. Less scrupulous soldiers aware of this situation doubtless attempted exaggerating symptoms to gain favor. But evidence suggests that in more cases, ailing soldiers genuinely struggled to keep up or stay at it. Officers were not always quite so understanding. When they took offense at perceived evidence of cowardice, insufficient manhood, or malingering, officers meted out harsh or humiliating punishments. Whether a man was found guilty or innocent, the arguments raised in courts-martial revealed soldiers’ and officers’ differing, often conflicting definitions of disability, as well as the cultural assumptions about manhood and ability that informed those debates.

Sick soldiers charged with desertion or being absent without leave protested that they needed care or rest. Even when they knew that leaving violated military order, it still seemed sensible to seek a respite. Volunteer soldiers continued to think like civilians, and in their premilitary experience, sickness had meant avoiding exposure to severe weather, finding nourishing food, and getting rest. Steven Ramold describes the conflict that often arose between citizen-soldiers and the regular army over straightforward matters in the civilian world, such as speaking frankly or resisting poor leaders’ authority.¹⁷ Ill health constituted another instance where soldiers acted in ways that made sense in their civilian lives but violated codes of military order.

Though soldiers often admitted awareness of breaking the rules, they believed that their bodies would exonerate them. Pvt. David Okes, for example, was charged with desertion in September 1862 after he left camp with an ill-gotten pass and failed to return for thirty days. He had not attempted to shirk duty until suffering a “sprained or dislocated ankle” in June 1862.¹⁸ Witnesses explained that Okes had tried and failed to get a furlough from the regimental surgeon on account of his “sore feet.” Then he had made his mind up to leave anyway. Okes eventually found an army provost he could pay off in exchange for a pass, which he used to travel home for some rest. After thirty days, presumably when his ankle was feeling better, he returned to his regiment, ready to resume his duties.¹⁹ Okes understood that he had violated the Articles of War. Yet he also seemed to believe that taking a respite was the only way he could continue to serve.

Other soldiers only fell out for short periods of rest. Pvt. Alexander Cranston, feeling unwell, left the front lines to escape the rain for a few hours and warm himself by the fire. He fully intended to rejoin the regiment in the morning, but a provost guard arrested him.²⁰ In another instance, Pvt. Thomas F. Fenlan found himself unable to keep up on the march after four days on the sick list. He fell out and “left the Regt to go to a house to get warm.” A few days later, he tried to rejoin the regiment but could not find his superior officer. Fenlan then decided to find a warm meal while he waited for the lieutenant to return to his tent. In his search for some hoe-cake, Fenlan was discovered and arrested as a deserter.²¹

Even when they were obviously culpable, soldiers sometimes tried to pin their actions on the authorities who refused to accommodate them. Dennis Kelley tried to get on the sick list through the regimental surgeon’s recommendation several times, but each time was found fit for duty. Kelley explained to the court that he had been suffering from chronic bleeding— though from where and why somehow went unrecorded. In the winter of 1863, after a sleepless, bloody night, Kelley reported sick yet again. The exasperated surgeon could do nothing for him. Kelley thought he saw the surgeon write “duty” on the sick list, so when the surgeon wasn’t looking, Kelley took the list, rubbed out the word, and marked himself down as sick. In his desperation, Kelley had not seen that the surgeon had actually marked him down for a day of rest in his quarters. For his moment of panic, Kelley was court-martialed. In his statement to the board, he admitted his actions but placed the real blame on the surgeon. Kelley might have been technically guilty, but the exhaustion and excitement caused by continued duty had made him insensible.²²

For the most part, soldiers did their best to keep working, even when their bodies were at their limit. Like Ephraim Pelton, these men were charged with crimes not because they straggled or shirked, but because they had been denied care and their ailing bodies simply had not allowed them to perform their required duties. Pvt. Edward Stratton was suffering from a nasty case of seasickness while on the voyage from New York State to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. However, he was still required to keep guard for twenty-four hours, standing sentry for two hours and then taking four hours off. When the boat arrived in Baton Rouge, Stratton was immediately placed on picket duty, where he was to stand guard every two hours for two hours at a time. Sick and exhausted, h...