Mending Broken Soldiers

The four years of the Civil War saw bloodshed on a scale unprecedented in the history of the United States. Thousands of soldiers and sailors from both sides who survived the horrors of the war faced hardship for the rest of their lives as amputees. Now Guy R. Hasegawa presents the first volume to explore the wartime provisions made for amputees in need of artificial limbs—programs that, while they revealed stark differences between the resources and capabilities of the North and the South, were the forebears of modern government efforts to assist in the rehabilitation of wounded service members. Hasegawa draws upon numerous sources of archival information to offer a comprehensive look at the artificial limb industry as a whole, including accounts of the ingenious designs employed by manufacturers and the rapid advancement of medical technology during the Civil War; illustrations and photographs of period prosthetics; and in-depth examinations of the companies that manufactured limbs for soldiers and bid for contracts, including at least one still in existence today. An intriguing account of innovation, determination, humanitarianism, and the devastating toll of battle, Mending Broken Soldiers shares the never-before-told story of the artificial-limb industry of the Civil War and provides a fascinating glimpse into groundbreaking military health programs during the most tumultuous years in American history. Univeristy Press Books for Public and Secondary Schools 2013 edition

The Civil War Soldier and the Press examines how the press powerfully shaped the nation’s understanding and memory of the common soldier, setting the stage for today’s continuing debates about the Civil War and its legacy. The history of the Civil War is typically one of military strategies, famous generals, and bloody battles, but to Americans of the era, the most important story of the war was the fate of the soldier. In this edited collection, new research in journalism history and archival images provide an interdisciplinary study of citizenship, representation, race and ethnicity, gender, disability, death, and national identity. Together, these chapters follow the story of Civil War soldiers, from enlistment through battle and beyond, as they were represented in hometown and national newspapers of the time. In discussing the same pages that were read by soldiers’ families, friends, and loved ones during America’s greatest conflict, the book provides a window into the experience of historical readers as they grappled with the meaning and cost of patriotism and shared sacrifice. Both scholarly and approachable, this book is an enriching resource for undergraduate and graduate courses in Civil War history, American history, journalism, and mass communication history.

A fascinating collection of primary sources on medical experiences in the US Civil War.

Police services across the globe are increasingly perceived as heavy handed, racist, and unnecessarily violent. As a result, large, sometimes even national demonstrations have been waged against police policy and strategy. Mending Broken Fences Policing provides a discussion on contemporary policing, the role of policing in modern society, and its relationship to the diverse communities represented in a postmodern world. Mending Broken Fences Policing provides a model, based on social cohesion and police intervention, intelligence-led and community policing (IP-CP); which, supplemented by a quality/quantity/crime (QQC) framework provide a four-step process for viewing policing services from a vantage point beyond Broken Windows and StatCom.

The Civil War acted like a battering ram on human beings, shattering both flesh and psyche of thousands of soldiers. Despite popular perception that doctors recklessly erred on the side of amputation, surgeons labored mightily to adjust to the medical quagmire of war. And as Brian Craig Miller shows in Empty Sleeves, the hospital emerged as the first arena where southerners faced the stark reality of what amputation would mean for men and women and their respective positions in southern society after the war. Thus, southern women, through nursing and benevolent care, prepared men for the challenges of returning home defeated and disabled. Still, amputation was a stark fact for many soldiers. On their return, southern amputees remained dependent on their spouses, peers, and dilapidated state governments to reconstruct their shattered manhood and meet the challenges brought on by their newfound disabilities. It was in this context that Confederate patients based their medical care decisions on how comrades, families, and society would view the empty sleeve. In this highly original and deeply researched work, Miller explores the ramifications of amputation on the Confederacy both during and after the Civil War and sheds light on how dependency and disability reshaped southern society.

James Tanner may be the most famous person in nineteenth-century America that no one has heard of. During his service in the Union army, he lost the lower third of both his legs and afterward had to reinvent himself. After a brush with fame as the stenographer taking down testimony a few feet away from the dying President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, Tanner eventually became one of the best-known men in Gilded Age America. He was a highly placed Republican operative, a popular Grand Army of the Republic speaker, an entrepreneur, and a celebrity. He earned fame and at least temporary fortune as “Corporal Tanner,” but most Americans would simply have known him as “The Corporal.” Yet virtually no one—not even historians of the Civil War and Gilded Age— knows him today. America's Corporal rectifies this startling gap in our understanding of the decades that followed the Civil War. Drawing on a variety of primary sources including memoirs, lectures, newspapers, pension files, veterans' organization records, poetry, and political cartoons, James Marten brings Tanner's life and character into focus and shows what it meant to be a veteran— especially a disabled veteran—in an era that at first worshipped the saviors of the Union but then found ambiguity in their political power and insistence on collecting ever-larger pensions. This biography serves as an examination of the dynamics of disability, the culture and politics of the Gilded Age, and the aftereffects of the Civil War, including the philosophical and psychological changes that it prompted. The book explores the sometimes corrupt, often gridlocked, but always entertaining politics of the era, from Tanner's days as tax collector in Brooklyn through his short-lived appointment as commissioner of pensions (one of the biggest jobs in the federal government of the 1880s). Marten provides a vivid case study of a classic Gilded Age entrepreneur who could never make enough money. America's Corporal is a reflection on the creation of celebrity—and of its ultimate failure to preserve the memory of a man who represented so many of the experiences and assumptions of the Gilded Age. Published with the generous support of the Amanda and Greg Gregory Family Fund

Based largely on Civil War veterans' own words, this book documents how many of these men survived the extraordinary horrors and hardships of war with surprising resilience and went on to become productive members of their communities in their post-war lives. Nothing transforms "dry, boring history" into fascinating and engaging stories like learning about long-ago events through the words of those who lived them. What was it like to witness—and participate in—the horrors of a war that lasted four years and claimed over half a million lives, and then emerge as a survivor into a drastically changed world? Veterans North and South: The Transition from Soldier to Civilian after the American Civil War takes readers back to this unimaginable time through the words of Civil War soldiers who fought on both sides, illuminating their profound, life-changing experiences during the war and in the postbellum period. The book covers the period from the surrender of the armies of the Confederacy to the return of the veterans to their homes. It follows them through their readjustment to civilian life and to family life while addressing their ability—and in some cases, inability—to become productive members of society. By surveying Civil War veterans' individual stories, readers will gain an in-depth understanding of these soldiers' sacrifices and comprehend how these discrete experiences coalesced to form America's memory of this war as a nation.

In this never before published diary, 29-year-old surgeon James Fulton transports readers into the harsh and deadly conditions of the Civil War as he struggles to save the lives of the patients under his care. Fulton joined a Union army volunteer regiment in 1862, only a year into the Civil War, and immediately began chronicling his experiences in a pocket diary. Despite his capture by the Confederate Army at Gettysburg and the confiscation of his medical tools, Fulton was able to keep his diary with him at all times. He provides a detailed account of the next two years, including his experiences treating the wounded and diseased during some of the most critical campaigns of the Civil War and his relationships with soldiers, their commanders, civilians, other health-care workers, and the opposing Confederate army. The diary also includes his notes on recipes for medical ailments from sore throats to syphilis. In addition to Fulton's diary, editor Robert D. Hicks and experts in Civil War medicine provide context and additional information on the practice and development of medicine during the Civil War, including the technology and methods available at the time, the organization of military medicine, doctor-patient interactions, and the role of women as caregivers and relief workers. Civil War Medicine: A Surgeon's Diary provides a compelling new account of the lives of soldiers during the Civil War and a doctor's experience of one of the worst health crises ever faced by the United States.