it's our government bill. from here on it's up to us.

i have known our next speaker for quite some time. i remember probably decade or so ago sitting on a bus going from gettysburg college to the shenandoah, talking about next projects, our next speaker has been a great friend of me and institute and a great supporter of our journal of the shenandoah valley during the civil era. so it gives me great pleasure to introduce brian matthew jordan. bryant is associate professor of

civil war history and chair of the department of history at houston state university. he's the author or editor. six books on the civil war era, including marching home union veterans and their unending civil war, which was a finalist for the pulitzer prize in history in 2016. his more 100 reviews, articles and essays have appeared in scholarly journals edited volumes and popular magazines, so without further please join me in welcoming brian matthew jordan. well, thank you so much jonathan, for that introduction. thanks for the invitation to participate in this wonderful conference today. it's always a pleasure to be here at shenandoah university to support the work of the mccormick institute. the work that you do here i am just so admire what you're able

to do to preserve the legacy the civil war in the shenandoah valley to engage undergraduate students, historical research. you're a real treasure. i have the unenviable task, of course, of addressing death and destruction. a melancholic topic after lunch. so we're going to our best here this afternoon just days after the battle of antietam. the photographer, alex gardner, and his assistant, james gibson, captured in syrupy collodion of the most arresting images, i think of the civil war a federal burial party taking a much needed respite from its macabre toil on david miller's farm. there musket stacked. some men lean on shovels and

spades. one slings a pick over his shoulder, the foreground of the image is littered with splintered fence rails and human debris. lifeless bodies, very likely the the dead of the 124th pennsylvania volunteers raked by a fierce rebel musket tree delivered from the west, arrayed a neat row awaiting their soon to be excavator todd graves. if inspected with care this steria negative one of 95 images collected on the battlefield that autumn yields tantalizing clues as to the emotional toll levied by the civil war's inevitable post battle errand. somber and sallow faced the burial detail surveys the hellscape around them appearing

to oscillate between or or horror and disbelief, while some soldiers in the image engage in conversation. one member of the crew points directly ahead, perhaps indicating the location of the next shallow trench into which rows of bodies will be heaped seated the grounds yet another man turns away from the carnage still others knit their brows in seeming disgust. among civil war scholars. it has become axiomatic that these photographs of the antietam dead collected and displayed that october in a public exhibits mounted in matthew brady's new york city and gallery were the first such images of american dead on american battlefields, but much

less and much more significant. i think, is another novelty of this slaughter at sharpsburg. four prior to its victories at mountain and antietam the army of the potomac never rested upon arms on a battlefield rested from the enemy. the possession of these corp strewn fields then invited many unions. soldiers first sustained encounter with the grim realities of on a massive scale. this afternoon taking some cues, sensory history and from histories of material culture. i will attempt to examine how union soldiers and a few northern civilians confronted the dead of antietam as the sensory history in adam mack has

pointed out in a very different context. our historical narrative is too often allied the ways in which the past immediately felt and experienced by ordinary historical actors. this is especially unfortunate, matt continues these raw feelings and emotions shaped and informed historical memories stimulated and promoted future action indeed keenly aware they were participating in. history. they were at pains to assimilate their precise place in the war as a whole. union soldiers spent the days and weeks even months after antietam rummaging for meaning living in the shadow of the dead, moored place for six weeks.

moreover the assault that antietam made their senses persisted, such as sustained exposure to the war's basic realities challenged, refined their ideas about the war's conduct and its meaning, confirming for us historians as student of this war that events between battles and behind the lines did as much to shape war's outcome as its combat. wednesday september the 17th, 1862. of course, the deadliest day of the civil war in 12 hours near sharpsburg, maryland. some 23,110 men were added to the war's ever lengthening register of killed wounded, missing and captured divisions thrashed in a simple cornfield

field and snared in the fingers of the west woods, bloodied in an old sunken farm lane. the army potomac notched on that day a clear victory. flushing robert e lee from maryland and ending his to bring the war north, perhaps even into pennsylvania pennsylvania union soldiers when it was all over, confronted a staggering on the antietam battlefield. the landscape was otherworldly almost surreal. if phantoms from the spirit world could ever come forth bewilder mortals. one union brigade commander insists it sure never was their time or place or site so seasonable men their eyes as they survey the mangled bodies

littering, the field, the odors of burning animal flesh, annexing their nostrils, the death moans of, wounded men drumming in their ears war, its glories. one ohioan remarked. but it has 10,000 demons in these human tortures that makes eyeballs ache. the heart bleed, the lips and the brain real indeed the sensory overload showed that this soldier tantalize ingly described for us exacted often a physical toll. corporal bernard f blakeslee reported that many soldiers detailed to the burial parties from his regiment the newly formed 16th connecticut became owing to the nature of their

work, 24 year old major rufus dawes, the six wisconsin whose unit had trundled down the hagerstown turnpike in the battle's opening phase, attributed a severe attack of bilious sick headache to the late excitement in trying times of clearing the battlefield. we are encamped amid a dreadful stench of the half buried thousands of men and horses on the battlefield he protested dawes. mount, he continued, even trembled in fright himself, and was wet with perspiration perspiration. the odors of battlefield were truly most offending. some men explained that while they did not mind seeing the bodies, the insufferable their words was quite another matter.

you can imagine how it must improve the air to have bodies of men laying above the ground so long. and then the dead horses, mules explained. one massachusetts lieutenant in a sardonic letter to his wife sometimes is just perfectly horrible. still another baystate volunteer objected almost everywhere. carrion polluted the air. one regimental surgeon feared that the rank air was breeding a pestilence in his unit, which had been fortunate to see no action in the fight. we must leave soon from this place, he echoed. we should all die. meteorological conditions only the foul smells generated by antietam, the weather that september was phenomenally hot. temperatures were in the midst.

they would climb as high as 17 nine. the afternoon soon after the battle served only hasten the process of. decomposition in the humid evenings, the low dense fog that blanketed the battlefield intensified, the until it became, in the words of one man almost unendurable on a veteran of the 108th new york. remember that the scent of death was thick enough to be cut into chunks. first lieutenant samuel fletcher, whose massachusetts unit suffered 15 4% losses, only nine of the 62 men in his company from their abortive stand in the west woods committed four several days. he could taste the odor of putrefying flesh. for that very reason. joseph ward, his comrades in the

106th pennsylvania, were unable to eat. even the food seemed tainted with. those foul orders that enveloped us. he objected. one had almost to dig one's nose into the ground to get a good breath. as the sensory historian mark smith has observed, the stench of battlefield death constituted a very powerful form of meaning and memory. behavioral psychologists confirm that olfaction has a unique connection to emotion and associate tive learning further the anatomical overlap between memory and smell ensures that olfaction can tap and retrieve far older memories than other sensory systems. put simply the men would never forget for the rest of their lives.

antietam offensive aroma. decades later, they could still describe it with precision. these responses are all the more striking. i think, when we consider the normative smell of the civil war generation. these were men accustomed to dead pigs in alleys, to fecal matter, in the streets, to an age before public. nor would veterans forget what they had seen, heard antietam carnage made clear war's seemingly limitless capacity for human destruction. men cataloged with great care the lifelike poses in which they encountered the dead with every rigid, strained in fierce agony, with hands folded, peaceful lay on the bosom still, clutching their guns, hanging over a fence which they were climbing when

the fatal shot hit. target. it is an awful sight to go over the field after the exciting it is over, one soldier remarked, especially after a battle such as last wednesday's turkey circled mournfully overhead, anxious for their cadaverous feast, clinging to life among the dead. the wounded lay in all directions. one soldier jotted down the curses and the prayers, the piteous pleas for water and supplications for medical care that he overheard unable to trans late the battle's raving agony into neat or linear. he decided to record something of its auditory elements instead. decomposition was especially disconcerting, especially from mid-19th century americans who

looked, of course, to the physical body as an index of one's moral worth and manliness i have seen stretched too long in one straight line, ready for interment. at least a thousand black and bloated corpses with blood and gas protruding from every orifice. one regimental surgeon sighed, maggots holding carnival over their heads. with no small anxiety. george noyes noted that the bodies our late antagonists had turned so absolutely black that could be easily mistaken for a -- regiment. the irony, of course, was not lost on him, even so the self-described strong hearted soldier confessed that after he'd gazed upon as much horror as he could bear. pennsylvanian james voris

agreed. his 34th pennsylvania volunteer infantry tramped across the field on september the 18th, finding the dead putrid, fighting in heaps. voris and his comrades, he said, had to turn their heads and shut their eyes. oh, the young soldier. it was sickening, rather than turn away. still, other soldiers on rations of or alcohol to dull their senses and manage their grief. the bodies had become so offensive. ohioan reported that men could only endure it by being staggeringly drunk, wincing, turning away, guzzling whiskey. these responses reassured men in a contest of civilizations that had not yet devolved into.

while soldiers no doubt strove the self-possession that military discipline demanded, they nonetheless feared growing desensitize to death and mass violence. just weeks into his service example, one new yorker regimental wondered if he was already overexposed if it was already too late. i over the putrefying bodies of the dead, he marveled and as little unconcerned as though they were 200 pigs were there am and indeed harder hearted, or whether familiarity ever so brief with such scenes tends to sear my better feelings. i know not, but i can tell you this i slept too soundly. night in the open air as i ever did, almost under the same blanket with a dead man.

as they wandered the fields in a very real sense. the first battlefield visitors soldiers endeavor to make sense of the fight that northern at least cheered as a glorious victory, as the carol reardon has noted a soldier's recollection of battle began in his personal memory, scattered snippets of what happened to me. such snippets, of course, with time, demanded and meaning over time, veterans fill in the many gaps crucial gaps in their knowledge or remedy their dim understand of a larger strategic or operation. picture. i consult and in many cases appropriate, ing elements from other survivors, published accounts.

but these accounts, of course, in the immediate aftermath of the battle, were still years away most immediately then dead men lying the battlefield helped to fill in gaps, helped to tell the tale of the battle. and in the days and weeks after antietam soldiers evaluate the position, condition and distribution of antietam casualties as they attempted to piece what the rush of adrenaline in their narrow vantage point in battle had denied them a coherent narrative of the engagement in which had participated. the men took scruple less note which had been riddled by musket tree, which had been torn by shot and shell heaps of rebel mounted behind stone walls. the rebel army's appropriation

of fence lines as best works, the concentration the dead likewise revealed whether or not the enemy had prevailed at a particular point on the battlefield. not unlike civilians back civil war soldiers used the numbers of killed and wounded as reliable indices of a unit's courage or bravery in battle stagger losses betrayed stubborn were wandering the fields. these soldiers spectators made their initial assessment about the contributions of particular to the battles outcome. the morning the battle of south mountain three days before antietam major george h. of the 30th ohio brimmed with pride as he surveyed wise's field at foxes gap choked with the dead north carolinians of sam garland's.

well satisfied with our work. yesterday, he wrote matter of factly in his diary. close inspection of the enemy dead confirmed of northern critiques of southern society as a fit and uncivilized east and invited reflection on what was at stake in the larger contest. yankees insisted not, surprisingly, that dead rebels bore the marks of their character. the marks of a slaveholding society, and in turn that of their treasonous rebellion, according to one commentator they seemed the did to have retained in something of the last attitudes of their combat life, wandering along the enemy lines, a new york zoo of his eyes on the corpse of, a young lad not more than years of age, whose long curls flowed over his

shoulders, though his thighs had been terribly mangled, he wore a heavenly smile that exposed teeth remarkable beauty. this prompted the zubov to suppose that the dead boy was probably the pride of some aristocratic family who had sent him willingly to the war to defend slavery. william chamberlin, a medical inspector. the united states sanitary commission who traveled to the battlefield to the delivery of much needed linens, blankets, bandages, whiskey, noticed that decomposition was proceeding much more rapidly among the confederate dead than among ours in incongruity that he attributed to the restricted use of salt in southern rations. for his part, george noyce confessed that the sight of the

rebel dead provoked pangs of sympathy, even as he crowed that the dead confederates had merely what they had sown. so ends the brief madness sent him hither to fight against a government he only knew by its blessing. noyes mused as he gazed upon the decomposed, dozing body of a young rebel officer. in his view, those who were willing to fight, for a ghastly cause, those who are willing to wear forever the necessary furtive slavery, were fated for such a grim end. soldiers end, other spectators, not only surveyed the location and the condition of the dead. they also took pains, time and effort to inventory the slain many. historians, of course, have noted the statist tical

endeavors of civil war veterans like william freeman, fox and thomas leonard livermore, frederick henry dyer, who assembled comprehend of numbingly detailed registers of the dead that are still some do by scholars today. numbers are our currency. what less been less fully appreciated think is the wartime origins of these postwar projects. the obsession with tallying the dead began as soon as the guns fell silent. such counts could render incontrovertible an army's claim to battlefield victory. as the historian patricia klein has observed in the mid-19th century, counting was presumed to advance knowledge, since counting led to the most reliable and objective form of fact that there was the hard number quantification and became

especially important for antietam veterans, for the veterans of the maryland. when mcclellan's failure to pursue lee in the army of northern virginia back into the old dominion and a stubborn confederate revision ism conspired both through a face the decisiveness of the battlefield victories scored by the army, the potomac in maryland. in passing over the battleground, which was now in our possession. one ohio soldier was sure to point out it was absent only evidence that the loss of rebels greatly exceeded own. the aforementioned george hilts made a careful count of the dead at foxes gap. at 1.17 of their dead were lying, touching one another. he wrote their loss. that fight was 5 to 1 of ours.

three days later, the buckeye soldier was no less fastidious at antietam, combing the fields opposite burnside bridge that had been contested by the ninth corps. samuel wheelock, fisk whose 14th connecticut engaged enemy at the sunken road, counted nearly a thousand dead bodies of rebels lying still unburied in graves and cornfields on hillside sides and in trenches. the excitement of a battle comes in the day of it, but the horrors of it are felt two or three days after he reflected. in addition to these men collected tangible souvenirs battlefield realm made tactile an event that many soldiers could only describe as ineffable. trophy taking confirmed. the victors triumph over the

enemy. the whole field battle was littered with abandoned caissons and cannon rifles, swords, bayonets. dead animals. the dead of both armies and the accuser. more of the troops. one commentator observed. and while its burial parties disposing of the human wreckage of the battle, other details were engaged and gathering all of this material company b, the 93rd new york, for instance, was detailed to collect muskets discarded on the field. while not far away, the 14th connecticut replenished its supply of have sacks and blankets just as they had pondered the condition and arrangements of the dead. the men read and the physical detritus of the battle in. their efforts to piece together a nascent narrative of what had

happened. some of their regiments must have left in a great. the massachusetts soldier joseph collingwood surmised, for they left all of their knapsacks, clothing, guns, stores, etc. in large quantities. fisk drew the same conclusion from the object strewn fields. whole regiments away their overcoats and blankets and anything that encumbered them. he and so with and stores and ammunition and everything else. not surprisingly, fields with the debris of war invited much scavenging and plunder the catalogs of northern sanitary fairs and other wartime postwar public exhibitions, of course, provide partial inventories of items that federal soldiers purloined from the dead bodies of their enemies, the caps of

north carolinians who died at south mountain, the slouch hat of a mississippi felled at antietam a letter bearing confederate postage addressed to a captain. the 16th south carolina rifles, belt plates, sheaths and soldiers, also boasted of their bounties in letters to loved ones home. joseph collingwood, for instance picked up a great many relics, including an overcoat worn by a soldier killed in the battle. i got chest and i am going over the battlefield yet again to get more, he vowed. in the weeks that followed, the massachusetts lieutenant combed field on at least two more occasions in october sent home a button cut from dead rebel's coat, assuring wife rebecca that

she'd not be afraid of it. most of their officers are gentlemanly and intelligent, he cautioned. but i could never find yet who could define what their rights were, except that the abolitionists wanted to steal all of their enslaved persons. before long, soldiers encountered civilian competition in their pursuit of relics. very powerful evidence that many loyal northerners immediate apprehended. the significance of the antietam battle on the battlefield of. one soldier reported is trampled by a small army of curiosity seekers from the west, north and east. the narrow leading into sharpsburg were daily choked with carriages delivering civilians and aid workers to the battlefield. within a week, these civilians

had pretty well away. all material evidence of the struggle, leaving only the few bodies that eluded the burial crews to testify to the fight. many of these civilians felt no doubt, as charles w loring explained, an urgent need to see actual history. a battlefield and veteran troops. of course, one of the more famous visitors to the field was prose poet oliver wendell. senior, who boarded a maryland bound upon receipt of the news that his namesake son, a captain in the 20th massachusetts house, had been wounded after a frenetic traipse through field hospitals. holmes finally located his son. even he felt the almost magnetic lure of battlefield.

it was impossible for me to return to massachusetts, he declared, without that. hiring a hack driver to convey him to sharpsburg, the boston refused to north without a souvenir. i picked up a rebel canteen and one of our own, he began. but there was something repulsive about the trodden and stained relics of that stale battlefield. it was like the table of some -- left and. one turned away, disgusted its broken fragments and muddy heel taps. ultimate lee, the senior holmes, settled for a bullet or two a button and a brass plate from a soldier's belt, together with a which i picked up. he explained he directed to

richmond, virginia. it seal unbroken unbroken. the elder holmes was hardly alone in pondering propriety of his relics. indeed, the invited a fierce debate about what constituted conduct on a battlefield. yet strewn with wounded and dead bodies. even as own morbid curiosity delivered to the field. one philadelphia spectator registered indignation at the sight civilians plundering the shell plowed ground per lining, discarded muskets and other souvenirs. i expressed to many of them my opinion of such conduct. but men who will steal. argued, have no sense. shame. two years later, even president lincoln found himself

unexpectedly in the middle of this debate about battle decorum. democratic newspapers alleged that while touring the battlefield with general mcclellan in the fall of 1862, the president had asked close friend and the u.s. marshal ward hill layman. seated beside him in the ambulance that conducted the presidential party across the field to sing the minstrel tune picayune butler, a pious mcclellan purportedly objected. i would prefer to hear that tunes some other place and some other time. the story, of course, the in the middle of a presidential election year reeked of raw political opportunism. but by september it gained enough traction in the national to merit a firm reply from the lincoln administration. layman conceded that he sang a

little schoolboy song in the ambulance at the president's request. though he was clear that it was not at the battle site, the time was 16 days after the battle. lehman clarified. not a dead body had been seen during the whole trip, nor a gray xv that had not been rained on since it had been made. the manufactured contrary jersey soon faded, though not, without revealing. i think the anxiety that many northerners felt, as they attempted to navigate the strange new world of life. among death. catching a collective breath, the army of the potomac bivouac act in close proximity. the antietam battlefield for the next six weeks, which again that the sights smells of antietam

lingered. some civilian curiosity seekers visited with encamped soldiers. their recollections of their encounters with the men. their interviews with the men further underscore. the effects of confront antietam carnage. many of the veterans spoke of the scenes they saw at sharpsburg with actual shudders. one site, seer noted they could not off the impression made by masses of the wounded and dead. the wounded often lying, neglected and helpless under. the dead sometimes crushed to death. the wheels of our own. nor, it seems could the men of the 14th connecticut will away scenes. the regiment conducted religious services on the sunday after battle. every one wore a more sober face

than i had ever before. observed sergeant benjamin hurst, rockville recalled a massachusetts born officer who fed his 12th corps brigade into the cornfield fight insisted that neither time nor change could dim the remembrance of carnage to horrible to be real, and yet to real to forget. a doleful drip of reports from the hemo hospitals and home towns where men from their injuries continue to find haunt and stalk the men of the army. throughout that fall, issuing a keen reminder that grief and trauma were anything but linear. still confronting the war's realities. this visceral way. i think it's important to say set no great wave of

disillusionment crashing through the ranks of the army of the potomac. in fact, to the contrary, it seemed only to harden or renew that army's resolve. we see many sorrowful sights joseph collingwood. but the battle must be fought and victory must ours. rebel unit must be put down at any price. lt collingwood's nathaniel emmerson brate was a once devoted mclellan man, but now, however, he too rejected a war of conciliation. the dead of antietam. those horrific sights could not have been permitted to have died in vain. a fate that seemed increasingly likely. with each new day of inaction.

i am exceedingly desirous that something great be done. fall campaign. he wrote. unless is done soon. during this fall and the spring, there does not seem to be much prospect that the war be closed. during the lincoln administra, and if the latter not take place, why then all seems clouds and darkness. fuming that the army of the potomac failed to follow up on its stunning maryland victories? charles mcclinton of the 26th new york was even more exacting. our present plans, he wrote of the enlisted ranks, would admit of nothing than the total annihilation. the rebel army to be immediately followed by the collapse of that magnificent humbug, the so-called confed rc. visceral confrontation, with the

consequences of the rebellion fueled, i argue, a new raw indignation that found operational and tactical on the battlefield battlefield. ultimately, then, aftermath proved a very, very consequential moment in the life of the yet evolving army of the potomac. as other scholars have argued experiences between battles and behind the lines did as much, if not more than combat, to shape soldiers emerging understand king of the war. the war just been recast. frederick law homestead that november cost of war had not been fairly counted. the horror of war had not been fairly seen. but now a moment of disappointment, depression and

mourning the full cost pondered and the fool looked in the face. this is what alexander and james gibson captured on those wet plates. equipped with this deeper and more capacious understanding of the war and its human consequences, which rippled out in time, space. antietam veterans braced anew for the months and years of bloody work that were ahead. thank so much. be happy to take your questions. yes, ma'am.

do we have any darkroom mentation about disease in the burial parties? we don't have good. of course. no one has yet. mind to those records to kind of quantify my disease and the burial parties. but i'm certain that that is there i would to you a very numbingly new book by stephen couch called upon the fields of sharpsburg, which gives kind of the first introduction to what the effects of disease were on sharpsburg civilians. he doesn't go through and in kind of look at the burial parties themselves, but he certainly documents how those diseases were communicated through sharpsburg community and all of the difficulties that that they wrestled with for four

months after the battle. yes, sir. thank for taking my question. so in your research, the primary documents and such that you research for this presentation and was there any sort of common emphasis on loe on a battlefield location in particular, that kind of cap or the imagery from the accounts of the soldiers and other various primary documents that you examine. i was just curious. that's a great question. and i think, you know, serving accounts from, soldiers who were deployed all across the field, from the cornfield to the westward to the sunken lane to the on the opposite side of of the rohrbach bridge, there are is just a remarkable consistency in the experi ence, in the

descriptions in in wrestling with just the emotional of of the battle. so i just found a lot of consistency. there's one particular area that stood out that way, but i think what was really unique about this is the six weeks that the army of the potomac is there around that battlefield is so understudied, we, we so often narrate the war as though it's unbroken sequence of battles and campaign ads, and we forget about those spaces in between, which is where soldiers come to understand the war and their participation in it in those crucial weeks. so i can always book is is one great example of this and we've got a lot of other recent work that's us to get at those experiences between battles and certainly i think more work that way will will help us tell a and

more human story of war. yes, sir. you're argument at the conclusion of the talk about the sensory experience fueling something operational. yeah. in terms of a redoubled you know, intent to prevail. did that flow from particularly your research on antietam, the response to antietam or have been looking broadly at other battles and just found antietam as a as a really good example for showing how that dynamic occurred? that's a great question. i hadn't thinking about that question more broadly. it's something that leapt out from the documents looking at this period after antietam. i i do think that this is a moment, a pivotal moment in the

war and a pivotal moment for the army of the potomac. i mean, typically, we narrate this period, the war, as being very demoralizing. right. antietam is going to be followed up after this action with the fiasco at frederick's. and in there, we we hear of more accounts of this wave of demoralization that crashes through the ranks. and i just don't see it. right. because a couple of things happened. this is that first sustained encounter with the visceral of war. but this is also the moment when you get the ascendancy of. the antiwar copperhead, democrats and as these soldiers are moored in place, especially after fredericksburg and those winter encampments on north bank of the rappahannock river, there news from home. and there are learning about this mounting antiwar and it clarifies for them exactly what's at stake in the war and begin sending resolutions back the hometown newspaper saying we

want to stay out and fight this through to a victorious conclusion. you know the army the potomac was notoriously politically fractious but these two experiences i think the aftermath of antietam and then the aftermath of fredericksburg and the coincide dates of these events with growing sediments on the home front i think served to promote an ironic sense of unity among the rank in the file that that really comes to full flower. then in summer of 1863, when the army the potomac is a very, very different of fighting machine than it was in the early months of the war. yes, in the back. so the topic of desensitization is very interesting to me. so i was wondering during your research if you happen to find any primary sources or documents pertaining surviving soldiers

after witnessing the amount of death and antietam go home and recount stories or experiences to their spouses, parents, siblings and, their reactions to those? mm hmm. so not directly in my work on this project, but i will say in my previous book, marching home, one of the myths that i attempt to get at in that book is this myth that civil war, immediately after the conflict slipped into a period of hibernation during which they turned rapidly from the war, that allegedly this was the argument of general lindemann in a important 1987 book called embattled courage, soldiers turned rapidly from the war. they refused to write or speak or about it for at least 20 years after the conflict and then they kind of reemerge right to tell romanticized stories around the j.r.r campfires in the 1880s and nineties. and what found in that book and

sure, continuing this work, i would find similar things is that there was no real hibernation right that they did not turn rapidly from the war in fact they felt a great obligation a great burden to document in detail the history of what exactly they had seen and experienced. they become in many ways, veterans do the wars first. historians. i have accounts in my previous book of of men who come back with physical injuries, who literally right through their physical pain immediately upon their return home to to pen numbingly battle and campaign and unit histories right. they help mark battle fields. they draw the first maps. they the first major relic collection. so they're not turning rapidly all. they're attempting to share their stories with the northern public that frankly does not want to listen to these stories. they carp about the newspaper

editors and magazine editors who delete their so-called harsh adjectives and try to sanitize and sterilize the narrative of the war. the war they fought was profound not the war that the nation wanted to remember. and that gap, i think, is so terribly important in explaining the lingering trauma. some of some of the veterans that i have written about previously argued that, you know, they could work through the trauma that they had seen and experienced in combat. but they couldn't deal with is having losing control, losing authority over the narrative of their war and what it meant in the years of reconstruction. and i think there's still yet a of work for us to do to uncover that. yes sir. i'm curious about how a union burial parties handled the dead confederates as far as separating the burials, dead soldiers and dead confederates.

so there were some truces that happened immediately after. south mountain antietam, where rebels were able to remove their dead, although certainly not all of them. certainly in the maryland campaign, the most notorious insert it's related to dead rebels occurs. up at fox's gap on south mountain. there is an ohio burial crew, some as a matter of some as exactly how this but those bodies were pitched in to an old farm. well, 58 confederate bodies were pitched farmer daniel wise's. well, at foxes gap they later recovered in 1874 and were moved to the hagerstown city cemetery. but you do have instances like that you can find all the way through the war of sort of differential treatment or even mistreatment of of the rebel dead. and then certainly on the other

side. right. one reason that we get a national cemetery system immediately after the war are all of the accounts of former rebels. pillaging and destroying union graves that are, of course, all over the battlefields of the south. and there are so many acts of, grave desecration, both the and otherwise, that federal government decides we really need to collect of these bodies into a network of national cemeteries. so it's not a rosy tale, really, or a righteous tale either side, unfortunately. yes, sir. a follow up to that is how are the burial teams selected? in other words, new jersey survivors go out to look for their comrades in arms that decided to field. you have that end of the field. so they would be assigned, you know, based on their their practices, their location. they're not out looking, you

know, it's not done by by state it's just kind of a lottery assignment where you're on the burial and, you know, they're there combing these bodies. certainly, i think there's a lot more work to be done on the burial crews. certainly one of the more fascinating aspects to as we progress on in the later years of the war and then into that postwar period where a lot of these bodies are repatriated into the nascent new national cemeteries, a lot of those burial crews are right. and we've probably seen that haunting photograph, the burial party at cold harbor, which capture was an, after all, african-american crew in 1865, coming back to to still remove the debris from cold harbor. you know, these are the first african-american federal workers are the crews of of the civil war that are collecting bodies for the cemeteries and african-americans felt a keen

sense of obligation and ownership over the union dead there too i think is a major study that we need in civil war historiography to look at that relationship. african-americans and and their self-perception custodians of the union dead. fascinating. yeah. you soldiers that. i haven't heard described when we talk about world war one, world war two, vietnam. have you ever contrast, contrasted and compared why maybe what you just said that they came home they believed in what they did they wanted fight to fight did that them in terms of what we see in today, you know what are your thoughts on that? it's a great question. i not done that sort of comparative work. i do think jonathan mentioned

earlier in his presentation, i mean, there are some you know, historians study change over time, but are some timeless human elements that you can find in all of these conflicts and parallels that you can find in all of these conflicts. so i'll say that, but i will say that at least on the union side, this is a very complicated homecoming. precisely because they understood so keenly what war was about. right. i subscribed to generally to james mcpherson's argument that, civil war soldiers were ideologically that they understood what was at stake in the contest. but i think the implication of that argument is that if they understood that, then the betrayal was of reconstruction, right? the postwar politics, that came back, they had to to think, you know, they they literally had to ask themselves in the spring and summer of 1865 if they'd really won the war after all, as they watch former confederate, it's

return to positions of social and cultural power all across the south. as they see race riots in the south, instances of white supremacist terror. the redemption of southern states. i mean, i think all of this had a trauma impact on there ability to make sense of their service. and it's a reminder that that union victory for them was not a settled transparence statement of fact. right. the end of war was still so messy and tentative and uncertain. there was no i mean, immediately after the war. right. there's fears of another rebellion that would make a rather bloodless skirmish of the first. and so this is in part why they feel so devoted to this project of telling the story of what they seen and experienced, of making clear that there was, as frederick douglass put it, a right side and a wrong side in the war. and i think reconstruction only.

dramatically their efforts to return to civilian they they see. right i think this is really remarkable in the 19th century. you know this is an age that that prides itself on smaller republican citizen soldiers who return home and quickly perfumed the whiff of anything, martial and and set aside all of their authority over political issues. and they union veterans, i think, refused to do that they lost the battle over the war's memory in their lifetime. but i think they're they're winning in the long, long, you. yes, sir. last question. the horror that the civilian population saw firsthand was the revelation of the pictures and what have you of the day, which do you think impacted their feelings about support or lack

are not supporting the war as much? was it the dead themselves or was lincoln's emancipation proclamation a few days later? that's a good question. so we do have some preliminary work from largely political scientists who have studied kind of where antiwar opposition at the county level, where that's coming from, and then correlating that with the casualty. and and there is a correlation there. but i think it's also to point out that emancipation divide, the northern citizenry very, very dramatically. this is a population that has reached no consensus about emancipation. this is a population that to the war to suppress a rebellion, to preserve the union and certainly

emancipation is is is going to lead to a lot of divisions, lot of that copperhead rhetoric that you begin to hear in the fall of 1862 and especially in the spring of 1863, it's anti emancipation, anti rhetoric. so i think both of those things play a role. we we need to do a better job. i think in communicating that the war, the north versus the north versus the south versus, the south right that these are internally sections and that that to complicate right how veterans return back home because they return home to a society that's reached no consensus about the meaning of the war or their participation in it. thank you so.