Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America by James Marten (review)

The historiography surrounding the common soldier continues to evolve ever since Bell I. Wiley's seminal study on Johnny Reb and Billy Yank. Over the past few decades, in an effort to tackle broad historiographical issues, historians have delved into every crevasse of duty, honor, and masculinity. Penetrating questions such as why soldiers fought, how they fought, what they experienced, and their connection to the home front dominated the field as scholars sought to understand the overall impact of the war. Despite the wealth of research and analysis on this topic, few historians have followed soldiers beyond the Grand Reviews and celebratory homecomings of 1865. James Marten's Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America bridges this gap by examining the lives of Civil War veterans throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. What follows is a rich narrative that weaves together elements of accolades, tribulation, deformity, pensions, masculinity, and the movement toward a "rights-based" American society. In effect, Marten keenly demonstrates that the term "veteran" was loaded with "multiple meaning and uses" throughout the postbellum period (30).

First and foremost, Sing Not War is a study about veterans. While this may seem to be a simplistic statement, Marten demonstrates that there was much more complexity to the term than we may think. In the postbellum years, the term veteran was imbued with an immense amount of ambiguity and contradiction, which only grew over time. While trying to blend back into their former lives, in the public's eye Civil War veterans often blurred the line between glorified hero and financial burden. Against the backdrop of this social uncertainty, Sing Not War explores "how soldiers lived and how they were seen to live" (5).

The ambiguity surrounding veterans began almost immediately upon being ushered out of the military. Homecomings were often fraught with concomitant emotions of affection and fear. Citizens tried to reconcile the mixed feelings of gratitude for soldiers who sacrificed bravely in the defense of their nation with the realistic knowledge that a soldier's duty required one to take part in the maiming and murdering of others. In an essay published in A Soldier's Friend, one homecomer noted the general public's perception of returning soldiers in an article entitled "Civilians Are Afraid of Us" (53).

Marten's well-researched study draws together a deep analysis of competing themes. While writing about disabled Civil War soldiers, he confronts the social disparity between the laudable symbols of pinned-sleeves and wooden legs versus the suspicion levied against veterans with "invisible" injuries, such as chronic dysentery and herniated discs. As the Gilded Age progressed, and the eminence of the war waned, social leaders blended all disabled men together and urged citizens not to provide aid to these aging veterans out of a nostalgic sense of gratitude, pity, or duty (95). His thorough investigation into this kind of inconsistency allows him to trace the cultural stereotypes surrounding ex-soldiers. While drunks, addicts, shirkers, and those who failed to merge back into civilian life constituted a small minority of veterans, the invective labels came to represent all ex-soldiers. Marten's study goes on to address the interplay between contemporary ideals of manhood and the loss of independence a veteran experienced when entering a state or federal soldier's home. In addition to the themes of disability and manhood, Marten places the narrative of veterans firmly within the late nineteenth century's move toward entrepreneurial spirit and public consumption. The commoditization of memory became a big business as former soldiers and savvy businessmen competed over the living legacy of the Civil War through relics, museums, cartes de visite, and literary publications.

Marten's study benefits from a plethora of primary sources. His use of pension records, newspapers, and statistical data fits seamlessly into his analysis of important cultural...