Take Care of the Living

Cover

Download PDF (2.4 MB)
pp. i-ii

Title Page

Download PDF (491.9 KB)
pp. iii-

Copyright Page

Download PDF (52.3 KB)
pp. iv-

Table of Contents

Download PDF (35.0 KB)
pp. v-

List of Tables

Download PDF (34.9 KB)
pp. vii-

Acknowledgments

Download PDF (44.1 KB)
pp. ix-xi

The creating of a scholarly work inevitably incurs significant debts from a number of people. This is my chance to thank them for their contribution to this work. Archivists and scholars at various institutions were extremely helpful in locating material and pointing me in the right direction for my research, including those at the Perkins Library at Duke University, at the Southern Historical Collection in Chapel Hill, and at Alderman Library at the University ...

Introduction

Download PDF (88.3 KB)
pp. 1-8

In 1861 and 1862, James Redd, William Dix, and Joseph Miller enlisted in the Confederate Army from Pittsylvania County and Danville, Virginia. So too did George and James, the husbands of Barsheba Adams and Jane Smith. By the end of the war, Smith’s and Adams’s husbands were dead, Redd had been wounded, and Miller had lost his leg and spent a year as a Union prisoner of war. By 1870, Dix’s family had lost 80 percent of their 1860 wealth, nearly ...

Chapter 1: The War Comes, 1860–1865

Download PDF (269.6 KB)
pp. 9-43

Pittsylvania County, Virginia’s largest in area, has the rolling landscape typical of the foothills east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The county is in the southern part of Virginia’s Piedmont region, located on the North Carolina border. In 1860, as today, its largest community was Danville, a city located on the south bank of the Dan River and in the southern portion of the county. Economic growth, largely based on tobacco, had caused the city’s ...

Chapter 2: Loss and Reconstruction: The Impact of the Civil War on Veteran Families and Their Postwar Rebuilding

Download PDF (169.8 KB)
pp. 44-71

In memoirs written in the early twentieth century, veterans William Dame and Robert Withers wrote about their experiences during and after the Civil War. Dame’s account portrayed the immediate postwar years in a heroic light: “Just after the war, in the far harder trials and soul agony of the Reconstruction days, [veterans showed] wonderful patience, and courage which . . . rebuilt their shattered fortunes and pulled their country triumphantly up out of indescribable disaster.” Withers was a bit more practical: “the ...

Chapter 3: Local Support from Baptist Churches

Download PDF (164.8 KB)
pp. 72-98

Veteran families in Pittsylvania County and Danville turned to long-established local support systems based on churches and elite community members when their familial resources and strategies failed to meet all their emotional or financial needs. This chapter examines the role that area Baptist churches played in veteran families’ lives. The Civil War increased the need for the support of churches, and men and women of veteran families ...

Chapter 4: Appeals for Local Elite Assistance: The Case of William T. Sutherlin

Download PDF (135.7 KB)
pp. 99-117

On July 26, 1865, C. B. Ball, a veteran of the Danville Artillery, appealed for assistance to one of the richest residents of Pittsylvania County and Danville, William T. Sutherlin. In his letter, Ball asked, “Can’t you let me have six or seven hundred dollars to start me in the world again?”¹ Ball’s written plea for help serves as another entrance into the world of needy veterans looking for help from the people near them.

Chapter 5: Veteran Families, Mental Illness, and the State: Dealing with the “Blue Devils”

Download PDF (164.5 KB)
pp. 118-142

The veterans of Danville and Pittsylvania and their families turned to sources of aid other than their local support networks and relatives. Many Southern Civil War survivors required significant assistance from their home state to rebuild their lives and sometimes just to survive. Virginia provided a variety of services and types of aid to its veterans and their family members. By using the records of the Western Lunatic Asylum (later Western State Hospital), this chapter examines the connections between the war and ...

Chapter 6: State Aid for Veteran Families: Artificial Limbs, Commutations, Pensions, and Confederate Homes

Download PDF (181.8 KB)
pp. 143-172

In an 1895 application for a pension, Confederate veteran W. H. Power attempted to explain how wartime wounds to his right arm and leg had affected him: “there are many things I can’t do now, that I am prevented from doing by the lameness which are necessary and which I used to do in laboring.”¹ In the aftermath of the Civil War, many of Virginia’s veterans and their families needed help. Some of that help came from relatives, friends, churches, or local members of the elite. Veterans and their families who needed more than ...

Conclusion

Download PDF (46.5 KB)
pp. 173-174

Clearly , the consequences of the war and its aftermath for Pittsylvania’s veteran families were significant. One-fourth of the soldiers sent by these families died during the conflict, and another half suffered wounds, diseases, or imprisonment. During and after the war, veteran families experienced significant financial declines in real and personal property because of emancipation, Southern economic depressions, and the temporary or permanent loss of the labor of men who had gone off to war.

Appendix: A Note on Sources

Download PDF (62.0 KB)
pp. 175-177

Notes

Download PDF (192.6 KB)
pp. 179-214

Bibliography

Download PDF (121.9 KB)
pp. 215-233

Index

Download PDF (71.2 KB)
pp. 235-239