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Uncounted costs: the Civil War's impact on an infantry company's men and their families
Descriptive
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Title
Uncounted costs: the Civil War's impact on an infantry company's men and their families
Name
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Heaney
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Michael K.
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Michael K. Heaney
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author
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O'Neill
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William
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Advisory Committee
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William O'Neill
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chair
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John
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Advisory Committee
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John W Chambers
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internal member
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Rockland
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Michael
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Advisory Committee
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Michael A Rockland
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internal member
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Barnett
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Louise
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Advisory Committee
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Louise K Barnett
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outside member
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Rutgers University
Role
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degree grantor
Name
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NamePart
Graduate School - New Brunswick
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school
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Text
Genre
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theses
OriginInfo
DateCreated
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2008
DateOther
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(type = degree)
2008-05
Language
LanguageTerm
(authority = ISO 639-3:2007);
(type = text)
English
PhysicalDescription
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electronic
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application/pdf
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text/xml
Extent
xii, 700 pages
Abstract
(type = abstract)
Much scholarship has focused on the experiences of soldiers in the American Civil War (1861-1865), and of those left behind on the home front. About 3 million men served in uniform during the war, and an even larger circle of family members – wives, parents, children, siblings – were significantly affected. Yet no significant body of scholarship has been devoted to describing the post-war lives of common soldiers or their loved ones.
This work is a modest attempt to begin correcting that deficiency. It focuses on 100
volunteers who comprised a Union infantry company from rural New Jersey, and their
family members. Relying primarily on information obtained from federal pension files, the study describes the lives these people led over the balance of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth.
The work first portrays the region and times the men grew up in, compares the volunteers as a group with all men who served in the Union Army, and examines their motivations for going to war and their particular wartime experiences. This section concludes that the company was in most respects typical of the Union Army, except for suffering an unusually high casualty rate; more than 40% of its volunteers died from wounds or disease. (A high-casualty company was chosen intentionally for the study.)
The work then investigates what can be determined about discrete aspects of the
veterans’ and/or their family members’ post-war lives, including: health and longevity; domestic and marital patterns; residence and migration; work, income, and wealth accumulation; pension claiming; post-war adjustment issues and dysfunction; and veterans’ memories of the war, and the meanings they attributed to it.
The work demonstrates that the life courses of the company’s surviving veterans, and of many of their loved ones (especially parents and wives), were generally difficult and economically tenuous, and often physically and/or emotionally painful. Though veterans and their wives displayed remarkable resilience and adaptability – many looking back with satisfaction at their wartime accomplishments and sacrifices - their post-war lives were
frequently hard and sometimes bleak: war’s “uncounted costs”.
This work is a modest attempt to begin correcting that deficiency. It focuses on 100
volunteers who comprised a Union infantry company from rural New Jersey, and their
family members. Relying primarily on information obtained from federal pension files, the study describes the lives these people led over the balance of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth.
The work first portrays the region and times the men grew up in, compares the volunteers as a group with all men who served in the Union Army, and examines their motivations for going to war and their particular wartime experiences. This section concludes that the company was in most respects typical of the Union Army, except for suffering an unusually high casualty rate; more than 40% of its volunteers died from wounds or disease. (A high-casualty company was chosen intentionally for the study.)
The work then investigates what can be determined about discrete aspects of the
veterans’ and/or their family members’ post-war lives, including: health and longevity; domestic and marital patterns; residence and migration; work, income, and wealth accumulation; pension claiming; post-war adjustment issues and dysfunction; and veterans’ memories of the war, and the meanings they attributed to it.
The work demonstrates that the life courses of the company’s surviving veterans, and of many of their loved ones (especially parents and wives), were generally difficult and economically tenuous, and often physically and/or emotionally painful. Though veterans and their wives displayed remarkable resilience and adaptability – many looking back with satisfaction at their wartime accomplishments and sacrifices - their post-war lives were
frequently hard and sometimes bleak: war’s “uncounted costs”.
Note
(type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note
(type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 660-668).
Subject
(authority = RUETD)
Topic
History
Subject
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Topic
United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865
RelatedItem
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TitleInfo
Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier
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rucore19991600001
Identifier
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http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.2/rucore10001600001.ETD.17107
Identifier
ETD_993
Identifier
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doi:10.7282/T3GX4BXH
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NjNbRU
Subject
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Geographic
United States
Genre
(authority = ExL-Esploro)
ETD doctoral
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Rights
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The author owns the copyright to this work.
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Copyright protected
Availability
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Open
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Name
michael heaney
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Affiliation
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
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Non-exclusive ETD license
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Author Agreement License
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I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
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