Soldiers suffered too because of the limited medical knowledge of that day. Blood transfusions, X-rays, antibiotics, sterilization, vitamins, vaccines, wonder drugs all came after the Civil War. No assured treatment existed for typhoid fever, yellow fever, measles, or pneumonia, and great uncertainty prevailed over the proper way to stop a hemorrhage. Most bone fractures, and all wounds of the joint, meant amputation. In the Korean conflict of the 1950’s the chances of surviving a wound were 50-1; in the Civil War the chances were only 7-1.
That men of blue and gray endured these miseries is proof enough of their amazing capacity for hardships. Of greater importance to our American heritage, however, was their courage and devotion to duty. It shone forth on each side, and in every battle. Bell Irvin Wiley has commented:
“The Civil War was in large degree a soldier’s war. In that war the determination, self-sufficiency, and endurance of the individual in the ranks were of utmost importance. Officer casualties were heavy, and in the hurly-burly of combat those who survived often were able to exercise little control over their units. In the crucial, climactic stages of battle the common soldiers were to a large extent on their own, and it was often their courage and tenacity, individual and collective, that ultimately decided the contest.... For it was these men and their kind whose strength was the bedrock of their respective causes and whose greatness made their war one of the most inspiring in the history of embattled humanity.”
Co. G, 93rd New York Infantry, posed for this photograph at Bealeton, Va., in August, 1863. Note the drummer boy near the left of the bottom row.
Confederate troops on the march, as seen by Southern artist Allen C. Redwood.
SUGGESTED READINGS
Billings, John D., Hardtack and Coffee (1888). Cornish, Dudley T., The Sable Arm (1956). Eggleston, George C., A Rebel’s Recollections (1887, 1959). Fay, Edwin H., This Infernal War, ed. Bell I. Wiley (1958). Higginson, Thomas W., Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870, 1962). Jones, Jenkins L., An Artilleryman’s Diary (1914). Lord, Francis A., They Fought for the Union (1960). McCarthy, Carlton, Detailed Minutiæ of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia (1882). Robertson, James I., Jr., The Stonewall Brigade (1963). Stillwell, Leander, The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1920). Upson, Theodore F., With Sherman to the Sea (1943, 1958). Wiley, Bell I., The Life of Billy Yank (1952). ____, The Life of Johnny Reb (1943). ____, and Milhollen, Hirst D., They Who Fought Here (1960).
