Robert Penn Warren called the U.S. Civil War the central event of the American imagination. Sept. 17, 1862 — the Battle of Antietam — remains the deadliest day in the history of the United States. Whole armies and whole towns — hundreds of thousands of people at times — heard, smelled, and saw massive battles. Most Americans in the early 21st century see the Second World War as the country’s defining moment. That conflict physically affected fewer Americans by percentage than the Civil War, and in many ways changed society less than the Civil War.
Civil War history should feel alive to Americans in the same way World War history does on the great battlefields across Western Europe — but it's hard to recognize the scope and scale of the war when you drive over battlefields on I-75 through Atlanta. Battles fought in foreign lands seem much grander than those fought in rural Tennessee. And yet those battles rank amongst the most gruesome the world has ever seen. Moreover, thanks to the great, unifying myths that World War II brought about, it’s hard for many people to imagine America at odds with itself as it was in the Civil War era. That disunity had brutal consequences. The most modern estimates put, however, the death toll of the Civil War around 850,000 out of a population of only 31 million, three times the number of deaths the United States, with a 1940 population of 132 million, endured in the Second World War.
Reports from an early battle, Shiloh, displayed the monstrous scale of the Civil War’s carnage. The number of men killed in action shocked Washington officials when they were received. The unbelievable casualty numbers — nearly 20,000 killed and wounded -- in this one battle in a relatively remote part of Tennessee were higher than all casualties the United States had amassed in all its previous wars combined.
Civil War changed U.S. culturally, economically, socially
Despite all this, now, for the first time, historians are starting to concern themselves with the many social and psychological effects of the war. By looking at the war through the eyes of different demographics, historians are grasping the bigger cultural, economic, and social aspects of the war.
Wartime mobilization meant that men left homes to control of their wives, and women subsequently revised their place in society during wartime. Numerous accounts relay daring reports of women attacking soldiers marching through their towns. Even teenage women, often sisters of soldier brothers, voiced their eagerness to fight if given the opportunity. In at least 400 cases (that we know of), women even posed as men to fight on the battlefield. Social security wasn’t required to register for either army, so there was no way of vetting whether women — or children — were really the men they said they were. Many women joined in order to stay near their brothers, husbands, and fathers, and others simply wanted to answer the call to action. Because both nurses and these disguised soldiers were often unregistered, we’ll never know how many women died in the war.
The nature of the war also redefined the domestic and social roles of women. With the casualties as high as they were, neither army could regularly afford to send individual messengers to break the awful news to families. Instead, towns used large notices in newspapers or posters that were updated when new sets of names rolled in. The dearth of men in towns across America meant that women became a larger portion of the reading public and were often the first to see casualty notices. For the first time, women led community grieving. It was a somber duty, but one which few shied away from.
Roles of children, slaves changed, too
Children were also widely affected by the war. Drummer boys as young as ten or eleven were not uncommon. Whether it was their fathers, brothers, or random men from faraway places, children came face to face with death. They also saw opposing forces sack their towns, steal their food, and kill whom they pleased. How many deaths were witnessed firsthand by northern and southern children? Worse still to ponder: How many children died?
What did slaves make of all of this? Soldiers were marching through their homes as well. Their responses to the war varied because their place in society did from person to person. House slaves might feel more trepidation at displacement than field hands because of the former’s more regular proximity to the white planter class. But regardless of whatever functions an enslaved person might exercise on a plantation, they were rooted primarily in their own freedom.
Whether you call it nerves, shell shock, or the 1,000-yard stare, what medical experts now refer to as “post-traumatic stress” wasn't formally addressed after the war. Yet while very little data was ever collected, countless numbers of American Civil War veterans would have undoubtedly suffered from it. Before the war, Americans feared disease, farming accidents, horses rearing, or local megafauna more than they did war. After the war, they were haunted by thoughts of dying far from home by means of an opposing bullet. Northern optimism overshadowed most any concerns for the emotional well-being of wounded soldiers. Reconstruction was underway, and the status of freemen, southern violence in the form of the KKK and other groups, and the country’s financial needs were more pressing concerns than what passed for PTSD.
Civil War still polarizing
It’s easy to say “you had to be there” to fully grasp a historical event’s importance. Almost immediately after the fighting ended, people took to calling it the "American Iliad." Whether it was because a staggering 2% of the population wandered through life wounded or maimed, or the fact that the war very literally scarred and maimed soil for a decade, Americans couldn’t divorce themselves from the ramifications of war. A jarring fact to ponder: In 2020, the last Civil War pension was paid to a Confederate deserter turned Union soldier’s daughter. This woman had parents who lived through the Civil War and she lived all the way through parts of the Trump presidency.
The Civil War remains one of the most polarizing topics in modern America. We argue about statues, flags, and school names every day without paying any recognition to the war’s actual importance. People become apathetic to history once too much time has passed, and yet, so little has between the Civil War and now.
If history is still playing out while you’re alive, it's worth caring about. If battlefields are in your town, they’re worth remembering. If the ground you stand on still contains shrapnel and blood from a violent struggle, it’s worth asking if that war was, and is, the defining event of American history.