The world around war
This horrid and senseless
war...'
While soldiers carrying arms under both
flags faced death or maiming at the battle
front, their families at home coped with a
wide variety of fundamental changes and
challenges. Some home-front Americans met
with fabulous economic opportunities;
others with dire economic suffering. Millions
of civilians struggled with numbing grief at
the loss of loved ones, and millions more
faced personal danger from scavengers -
both 'friendly' troops and invaders.
'The world around war' chapter of
Gallagher, The American Civil War,
describes those trends on a war-wide basis,
including the impact of the war on the
growth of government; women's roles in
society and commerce; inflation and
wages; speculation; corruption in the
production of war materials; taxation;
refugees; slavery and freed ex-slaves; and
politics. In every context, the impact of
the war upon civilians became broader
and deeper during 1863-65 in the Virginia
Theater than it had been during the war's
first half.
Since all but a few days of the armies'
campaigning in the theater unfolded on
Confederate terrain, the impact on
Southerners was far greater. Millions of
Northern firesides mourned deeply and
bitterly when the casualty lists from
Virginia arrived, but on the economic and
social front most Northern institutions
actually gained strength, while the
Confederacy was in the process of utter
destruction. Southerners carefully watched
the news about the price of gold in New
York, and relished evidence of inflation.
They were deluding themselves. The
North thrived, as victorious nations' war
economies generally do. Only on the
battlefield could Confederates hope to create
circumstances in which they might generate
enough war-weariness to win their
independence.
Southern civilians faced war's brutality
on a far more intimate level than their
quondam fellow-citizens in the North. Until
fairly recently it had been conventional
wisdom that mid-nineteenth-century mores
kept occupying soldiery in check. A recent
careful survey and indexing of United States
Army courts-martial during the war has
banished that old-fashioned notion. More
than 83,000 Union soldiers came before
courts. Nearly 5,000 of them were charged
with crimes against civilians, including
558 for murder and 225 for rape. The
number of formal trials, of course, only
begins to reflect the volume of untried
crimes, especially in areas where civilians
were utterly powerless to protect themselves.
For millennia, European wars have
trampled the citizens of the continent,
shattering property and minds and leaving
millions of non-combatant dead. In the two
and a quarter centuries that comprise the
relatively short life span of the United States
however, no large body of American civilians
has ever felt war's horrors up close -except
Confederates during the final stages of the
Civil War. As a direct result, soldiers from
desolated areas of the South came under
immense pressures to go home and protect
their families. A letter from home came into
evidence at a desertion trial of one of Lee's
men. 'I have always been proud of you,' wrote
Mary to Edward, 'and since your connection
with the Confederate army, I have been
prouder of you than ever before ... but before
God, Edward, unless you come home we must
die.' Edward went home. Provost guards
brought him back to the army. After the trial
Edward was returned to duty, perhaps on the
strength of the emotions provoked by the
letter. Soon thereafter he was killed in action.