Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia

1. Health and the American Populace before 1862

16 1 Health and the American Populace before 1862 In their wartime journals and correspondence, soldiers fixated upon cataloging their natural environments. Pvt. William Randolph Smith of the 17th Virginia, for example, wrote in March 1862, “There is the finest pine timber on the road I ever saw. . . . The farms are also fine and fertile. . . . From Robison River to the Rapidan is the finest country I ever saw. The land is easily cultivated and is splendid.” He also recorded the weather with painstaking precision: “We had some fine weather on the march, but some very bad. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the 11th, and 12th, and 13th were very fine. Then it was rainy and quite disagreeable camping out without any protection, from the rain until the 16th when we had some fine days until the 19th when the Equinoctial rains commenced and continued without remissions until the 2nd when it cleared away, and the weather is now clear and cool.” On March 28, he lowered his keen gaze earthward. “The ground is full of stumps but lays well, and have an abundance of water, which is so essential to the soldiers health.”1 Such fastidious (even tedious) detail is not simply an idle soldier’s Civil War Era small talk—it presents continuity with his farming roots. Smith identified land that could be easily cultivated, catalogued the exact dates of precipitation, and connected environment to human health. Like Smith, the majority of soldiers were farmers with extensive experience observing nature, because environmental circumstances shaped their livelihoods and, they believed, their health.2 They connected the visible changes in nature, which governed planting and harvesting, to the invisible worlds of their bodies and minds. Even the smaller population of Americans who grew up in cities was accustomed to the idea that environment—the Health and the American Populace before 1862 / 17 crowds and filth by which urbanites were surrounded—contributed to diseases. Explaining disease origins based on observation and experience made more sense to average Americans than parsing out new, often conflicting scientific theories. While most Americans were literate and could read about the scientific debates raging among orthodox physicians and middle-class reformers, they exhibited a clear preference for self-reliance typical of the Jacksonian era.3 After all, the 1840s push toward medical professionalization, epitomized by the establishment of the American Medical Association in 1847, did not mean doctors proved better at rescuing Americans from the clutches of death. Historian Mark Schantz estimates that the quarter century preceding the war actually brought a dip in life expectancy; average Americans only lived to their mid-forties.4 Doctors provided diagnoses and medications but left comfort and care to one’s family members. Furthermore, access to professional physicians was limited, particularly in rural and developing areas, such as the South and the West. For these reasons, antebellum laypeople interacted infrequently with medical experts and developed their own means of transmitting medical knowledge, but the Civil War would usher in a cultural shift that pushed common soldiers into contact with physicians, reformers, and hospitals.5 Because soldiers in 1862 attempted to retain and recreate prewar health ideas and care networks in the midst of great challenges to civilian norms, it is important to understand the antebellum health experience before turning to the war. DISEASE ENVIRONMENTS OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY While there was a dizzying array of hypotheses about what caused mental and physical sickness, historian Conevery Bolton Valencius has identified common ground among Jacksonian Americans when it came to conceiving of disease environments. Prevailing ideas followed several trends. First, different geographic regions produced distinctive diseases, which also varied based on the seasons and weather. The surest way to avoid an environmental illness was to physically relocate, if one were able. Second , bodies underwent a process of seasoning, or bodily adjusting to a new climate when one moved, which is something most soldiers would experience in wartime. Because migration characterized the antebellum period as well, Valencius explains that Americans frequently discussed the salubrity of places, considering the seasoning process “debilitating 18 / Health and the American Populace before 1862 and disorienting.”6 Sometimes entering a new area could so profoundly upset the body as to trigger mental infirmity— “hysteria, hypochondria and insanity,”— as one medical journal cautioned.7 Accordingly, itinerant Americans were well schooled in examining the weather, water, air, and ecological markers of a place. Third, specific terrain features within...