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Introduction
- The University of North Carolina Press
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1 Introduction Civil war changed Virginia. In 1862, the blue-green patchwork of Shenandoah Valley hills and farms and the immense, slithering rivers of the Peninsula, so picturesque from a distance, became more like sprawling latrines to the hundreds of thousands of humans who hunkered down to make war. Regiments and their horses rapidly fouled the water supplying encampments, and, in the worse cases, piled trash high between the rows of their tents, forming transitory urban slums. Armies felled trees for firewood and shelter, eliminating protection from the sun and rain, while digging entrenchments produced standing pools of water that bred mosquito larvae. The bodies of men and animals slain in battle polluted soil and air and attracted fearsome swarms of flies. In 1862, Virginia looked and felt ominous, and indeed it was. War also changed common soldiers. The men who composed Union and Confederate armies now labored almost entirely outside, exposed to exceptionally challenging conditions with scanty protection. Too often they lacked supplies, infrastructures, and, crucially, the scientific knowledge that might have encouraged better environmental management. When illness or melancholy struck, soldiers most intensely missed civilian life; before the war, they had relied upon family members (usually women) to care for them in times of distress. Now they were expected to turn to army surgeons, whose limited understandings of disease and uneven training rendered them unreliable, their treatments suspect. Worse still, soldiers would be treated in the hospital, a space once reserved for the unloved, the itinerant, and the urban poor. The soldier became entangled in this frightening new existence before he even fired his weapon at the enemy. Eighteen sixty-two Virginia, and indeed the Civil War as a whole, provides a window in time to when hundreds of thousands of average 2 / Introduction Americans lifted their pens to interpret and respond to an environment they largely perceived as hostile to their survival. Indeed, both Federals and Confederates believed nature to be a significant and sometimes definitive force in shaping their physical and mental health. Connections between the body, climate, weather, seasons, terrain, flora, fauna, water, and air were so commonplace in soldier accounts that they have appeared as background rather than objects of analysis in previous histories of the common soldier. In light of the oft-quoted statistic that at least two-thirds of Civil War mortalities were from disease, these overlooked stories can help to answer a perplexing question that scholars have failed to even ask: How did any Civil War soldier remain healthy? Stationed on the Virginia Peninsula in July, a hazardous month darkened by clouds of malaria-bearing mosquitoes, Pvt. Allen S. Davis informed his brother, rather remarkably, “My health is fine now and I enjoy myself very well and keep in the shade as much as possible. The weather is very hot but occasionally have some cooling showers. The health of the troops is improving and the army of the Potomac is in excellent spirits.”1 The Minnesotan’s analysis of the interconnectivity of nature, health, morale , and behavior stemmed from his observations of the environment and lived experience in the ranks. The soldier who, like Davis, could adapt to the uniquely challenging environment of war, becoming fully “seasoned” in contemporary parlance, had a better chance of maintaining high morale and good health, proving more valuable to his unit and more likely to survive the war. Soldier adaptations, or what I term self-care, could be as simple as Davis’s use of tree shelter to avoid heatstroke or range to the remarkably creative. Self-care could include eradicating pests; constructing protective shelters; intervening in camp terrain; supplementing rations, especially with fruits and vegetables; locating suitable water for drinking and bathing; attending to sanitation and dress; obtaining regular exercise; and straggling for relief. It was often a group effort: soldiers taught each other techniques or learned from officers, formed communal messes to share food, cared for one another when illness did strike, and reached out to civilians at home and at the front for advice, supplies, and comfort. What resulted was an unofficial network of care, in contrast to the military Medical Departments, which resembled the individualized and familiar health system of prewar civilian life. Self-care was more effective at keeping soldiers fit than the official army systems, particularly in 1862, the first full calendar year of the war. In 1862 the Union and Confederate Medical Departments were still scrambling to implement adequate infrastructures. The year marked a [54.157.61.194...