Let me go ahead and introduce our panelists. To my far right, david, who teaches a range of courses on civil war and southern history, reconstruction and civil war. This first book is an excellent moment of despair, suicide, divorce, and debt in civil war era North Carolina. Next to david is james brumar. He recently assumed the directorship of shepherd universitys george tyler center for the study of civil war. Shepherd university, as many of you know, is just across the potomac river, and, of course, just in West Virginia. He also is an assistant professor of history in the University History department. Hes published a number of articles. Hes done field studies for the National Parks service and hes just on the cusp of submitting his first book manuscript for publication at the university of North Carolina press. Next to him is james Jason Phillips. The professor of civil war studies at West Virginia university. His first book published by the university of Georgia Press entitled diehard rebels, the confederate culture of sensibility. This book looks at how confederates came to view the south as invincible, hes currently working on a new project entitled looming. A history of the future. This book explores how the years of anticipating a civil war ultimately influenced the very ways that it was remembered. Next to jason is brian craig miller. Brian craig miller is a professor of history at Emporia State University in wichita, kansas. Hes the author of John Bell Hood and the fight for civil war memory. He also served as the editor for one of the premier scholarly journals in our field, Civil War History, which is published by kent state university. His latest book entitled amputation in the civil war style. And that book is published by the university of Georgia Press. Finally, diane somerville. Dine somerville is an associate professor of history at Binghampton University in new york, she teaches courses in 19th century u. S. History, the american south, womens history and the history of sexuality. Shes recently published great grace in the 19th century south, and that was released by the university of North Carolina press. Shes also authored numerous scholarly articles, most recently, a burden too heavy to bear, the trauma, suicide, and confederate soldiers. This piece earned the john t. Hubble prize for the best article in the journals Civil War History. So well begin with diane, presenting a paper on her work, and then, of course, we have our handle to comment. Diane. [applause] diane well, thank you, everyone, for coming out this muggy summer gettysburg afternoon. The panelists and i are, what were going to try to do is to open up ways that we can have conversations with you yall about the experience of confederate veterans returning home and to that end what im going to do is talk for maybe 15 or so minutes about generally the work that im doing. But then also pivot each of the panelists who will spend 45 minutes talking about a different topic that we can then have questions about and take it to you and have a really lively conversation that will take us through our allotted hour. I want to begin with a very famous quote by a historian, a social historian by the name of who wrote 25 years ago, that we needed to see some history being done on the lives of ordinary soldiers. Despite the many, many other books and articles published on Civil War History, surprisingly, little has been written about the personal experiences of ordinary soldiers. Most of the work to that point, of course, had dealt with generals and battles, with high politics and with strategy, but the experiences of ordinary men and women emerged as a focus only relatively eventually, and study of veterans even later. Books by jim martin, jeff mcclurken, brian jordan and paul, all published since 2009, recreates the steps of the civil war soldiers as they return home to their families and communities. Only one of these books, case studies veterans out of one virginia county is the only book devoted to just confederate veterans. So two of the books cover both northern and southern veterans. In these treatments we view the myriad experiences of veterans after they return home, from the mundane to the heroics. They return to their plows and scour for employment. They collected pensions and ended up in veterans homes or in insane asylums. They ran for political office. A few became University President s. Others became alcoholics. Although i dont think mutually exclusive. Quite a few struggled with disability. Physical and mental, visible and invisible. Historians ask questions like, what did soldiers do after demobilization . How did they live . How did their service affect them . How did war change them . How were they treated when they returned home . Weve only just begun relatively speaking to answer these questions but we know the experiences were varied. Were not even sure what a typical veterans experience looked like. We also know much more about Union Veterans largely because of the availability of sources. Union veterans, of course, were eligible for federal pensions, so those records, which are a real treasure trove of information about soldiers lives after the war yield rich details about the veterans and their families. But former confederates were not eligible for federal pension so we lack that same space, although many Southern States did offer pensions, those records are spotty and certainly disperse. So working on confederate veterans poses some challenges. That said, we do have some examples of historians working in a variety of areas on confederate veterans. Some of them sitting to my right this afternoon. One of the Big Questions that we will address, either implicitly or explicitly is how did the experiences of confederate veterans differ from Union Veterans . After all, all veterans, north and south, shared similar experiences. They fought on the same field, they missed their families and acquired the same diseases but southern soldiers returning home after the war faced a different set of circumstances and conditions that made their post war lives in certain ways very different from that of Union Veterans. First and obviously, they lost. Their fledgling nation was destroyed. They faced defeat unlike Union Solders who returned home victorious. By contrast, southern soldiers limped home in humiliation. It also meant loss of suffrage and political rights. They were subjugated. Second, war was fought almost entirely in their homeland, so as the south sustained extensive physical ruin and economic devastation, many soldiers returned home to find their dwellings demolished or in ashes. Their fields in ruins. Third, slavery was abolished. Slavery was, of course, a chief form of wealth and labor in the region but its abolition posed questions about the very essence of southern identity. Who were white southerners now without slaves . As confederate soldiers made their way home in 1865 and sought to reintegrate into civilian life these three critical differences from northern soldiers experiences fundamentally shaped how Southern Households and communities developed during reconstruction. These posed challenges, defeat, devastation, and emancipation, cut to the quick of masculine identities of southern men and greatly influenced the homecoming of confederate veterans. Humiliation and shame from military loss and submission to the enemy, loss of political independence and rights, scattered confidence, financial and business failure, reliance on women for emotional and sometimes financial support, and diminished status in family and state. Regional recovery hinged on the ability of men to return to the support to support their family and Community Networks at a time when those very networks were damaged and destabilized. Former confederate soldiers returned home, in some cases, to unimaginable burdens and hurdles recovery. Psychological distress brought on by combat experience exacerbated issues, leaving veterans suffering psychological harm that impeded readjustment to civilian life and compounded their emotional and psychological distress. A southerner, like susan bradford, witness add bittersweet homecoming of relatives and commented on the demoralized demeanor of soldiers returning to the neighborhood. I sit here and wonder, if all the dear men in gray feel as crushed and as disconsolate as these. Will they ever be able to forget . This observation, that many confederate veterans were crushed at wars end is borne out in a variety of historical sources. The most seriously afflicted veterans ended up in southern, what was called at the time lunatic asylums. It presented history of violence often committed against family members and sometimes themselves. Over 3 4 of the veterans admitted to the Georgia State asylum from 1865 to 1872 were described as violent, very violent, had in the past had assaulted persons, many family members. Trauma afflicted veterans directed much of their menacing rage toward relatives making reintegration challenges. Confederate veterans in a state of Emotional Turmoil recently frequently turned on themselves and responded to their emotional agony by resorting to selfinjury. Suicidal behavior, of course, is an indicator of warrelated trauma like ptsd and occurs at a higher rate among veterans than the civilian population. Of the veterans admitted to the milledgeville georgia asylum about 1 3 were suicidal. The case of snelton epitomizes the suicidal spiral of a former soldier after the war. His demise began during the war. After the teen enlisted and earned his distress, his psychological demise earned him an early discharge from the war, and then later entry into the milledgeville insane asylum. He made clear his intention to destroy himself and while in the asylum tried to burn himself and several times attempted to throw himself out of windows. After years of a recovery and relapse cycle, peppered with multiple suicide attempts, he finally succeeded in ending his life in august of 1871, by ingesting strychnine. Another form of selfdestructive behavior among confederate veterans was alcohol and drug abuse in the postwar years. Today, we understand drug and alcohol use by soldiers and veterans as an attempt to selfmedicate, to numb one self from the traumatic experiences of warfare but in the 19th century substance abuse, especially alcohol, was viewed not as a symptom of Mental Illness as we know today but rather as a cause of Mental Illness. Post war southerners noted the rise of alcohol abuse after the war, which they attributed to the suffering associated with the war. Excessive drinking by southern men had been welldocumented in the antebellum period, but after the war southerners believed it was on the rise and as a consequence of the civil war and its aftermath. Exconfederate soldiers and civilians alike turned to alcohol to escape an array of societal and permanent problems after the war. Whether alcohol abuse in the postbellum south can be attributed to post combat disorder or to the depressive malaise that engulfed the region during reconstruction for southerners, especially men, excessively. Less commonly than alcohol, but just as addictive and destructive, confederate veterans sometimes abused opium. After the civil war many believed that the war had contributed to the recent uptake in opium users. Whether or not the civil war triggered increased opium use, opium addiction became more visible in the 1870s. With the increased visibility of opium addiction the demographics of the users shifted from women to men, in the antebellum period opium addiction was mostly opium users, opium eaters, they were called, were almost always believed to be women. Wounded veterans like a. G. Were among those who sought physical relief from opium. For a decade he relied on opium to relieve the pain following the amputation of a leg in 1862. A reliance that led to that addiction and eventually killed ewing. Transitioning back to civilian life proved even more difficult for southern men who, in the years after the war, already weighted down by defeat and war trauma faced financial ruin. Unlike the north, south experienced extensive physical damage that made rebuilding difficult. Pecuniary embarrassment, underscore the failure of men difficult one of the basic responsibilities of manhood. Providing for one family. Moreover, southerners experienced pervasive indebtedness. Single dependency. Undermining their masculine identity. Combined weight of financial ruin and embarrassment proved too much to some confederates. The defeated warriors cannot deny the massive work that lay ahead to rebuild. The physical reconstruction at home, farms, fields, and infrastructure awaited. The economy in shambles offered few opportunities for men who are desperate to resume their statuses as heads of households and breadwinners for their families. With little or no money, sharply diminished wealth, and dim job prospects, southern men faced abysmal a dismal outlook with little hope for a quick turnaround. These failures plague postbellum south. The inability to provide one family in an environment of Economic Uncertainty beleaguered many white men of the region. Voted devoted their lives to building businesses and cultivating the reputations and networks and relationships that were dependent to those crumbled and pace of business failures. White man business fire in the south eviscerated upon itself. Opportunitiesic about productive work, so that men were unable to challenge their emotional suffering into productive outlets like work. Home, andy failure at the military front and at work, southern men collapsed psychologically. Some committed suicide while others ended up in silent a silent. A german born watchmaker who served in the virginia infantry made good on offer threat to kill himself in february of 1871 despite his wife pleading. He replied to her, i am done. It is too late. Then he shot himself. His wife reported that he suffered from troubles. Financial calamity and material deprivation awaited confederate men returning home. The dire situation and pessimism about the future. Money worries and loss of property paralyzed numerous next confederates. Women also worried about their Family Financial wellbeing of many experienced economic misfortune. Signaledfinancial ruin dependency and an inability to fulfill one of the chief responsibilities as head of household, that a provider. In addition to diminish prospects for work, so theyre wightman streets reversal of wealth of property that also contributed to their mental decline. Menhern wightman white were embarrassed by their inability to provide for their families. Many equated financial failure with poor character, a holdover from the antebellum times though intellectually most understood that the war in the aftermath was to blame. Emancipation wiped out the wealth of many slaveholding families. , in 1860, hefamily possessed over 10,000 worth of property, largely slaves. When the working he enlisted and served in the cap reunion cap reunion cavalry unit. A is the war, it was wealth of 250. He drowned himself in a Virginia Creek later. Indebtedness, unemployment, loss of wealth, and livelihood, kurt reconstruction south and light nearly all southerners. But was a spirits in a very gendered way. Experienced in a very gendered way. It set the stage for an inhospitable homecoming for soldiers,atchels many of him who brought with him the baggage of emotional and psychological damage. With that as a bit of a springboard, i would like to pick it to our panelists pivot to our panelists who will speak a little bit about one aspect of the confederate homecoming. I will begin with Jason Phillips will start us off this afternoon by talking about the process of surrendering, making the point that the familiar story of surrender at appomattox was experienced very differently for most confederate soldiers. Thank you, diane. When ulysses s. Grant recovered appomattox, he said or has produced many stores of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true. Popular stories about appomattox history civil war with peace and reconciliation. This romance of reunion offereds robert e. Lee his sword to greater returns the blade and shared military honors. Then we are told that Union Soldiers confirmed the sentiment by saluting confederates while they stacked arms and hold flags. Homee end, southerners go with a federal promise not to be disturbed as long as they maintain peace and uphold the union. For confederate veterans, surrendering and returning home was more emotional and more complicated than the fiction suggests. Confederates coach with defeat by demeaning the enemy as barbarians, by arming themselves as the her rope remnants of a legendary army. Remnants of a legendary army. The victors helped it would ease union by this plaintiff moral superiority. Leniency embolden diehard rebels to resist change. The only union superiority the confederates would admit was numerical superiority. Diehard rebels cherished themselves a sign of reunion, but as proof that they personally had never abandoned the cause. Returning home present a new challenges for these veterans. During the long journey, troops invented rage and a sense of entitlement. They stole what they needed from storehouses and even from civilians along the path. A new orleans reporter noted x confederate soldiers have fought for four years without pay and out they proposed to pay themselves. Homed men walking presented a stark contrast to how they read to war on trains rode to war on trains and horses or years ago. To see that it literally brought white men down to earth. Horseback riding was a sign of white mastery in the old south. Now those masters shuffled along in the dust along with everyone else. And emptylothing stomachs did not this thing with veterans from thousands of free people who walked the sam