In Iraq and Afghanistan, improvised explosive devices put soldiers and support personnel at constant risk of death, dismemberment and traumatic brain injury away from the front. Civil War combat, by comparison, was concentrated and personal, featuring large-scale battles in which bullets rather than bombs or missiles caused over 90 percent of the carnage. Most troops fought on foot, marching in tight formation and firing at relatively close range, as they had in Napoleonic times.
But by the s, they wielded newly accurate and deadly rifles, as well as improved cannons. As a result, units were often cut down en masse, showering survivors with the blood, brains and body parts of their comrades.
Many soldiers regarded the aftermath of battle as even more horrific, describing landscapes so body-strewn that one could cross them without touching the ground. Wounded men who survived combat were subject to pre-modern medicine, including tens of thousands of amputations with unsterilized instruments.
Opiates were widely available and generously dispensed for pain and other ills, causing another problem: drug addiction. Nor were bullets and shells the only or greatest threat to Civil War soldiers. Disease killed twice as many men as combat. During long stretches in crowded and unsanitary camps, men were haunted by the prospect of agonizing and inglorious death away from the battlefield; diarrhea was among the most common killers.
Though geographically less distant from home than soldiers in foreign wars, most Civil War servicemen were farm boys, in their teens or early 20s, who had rarely if ever traveled far from family and familiar surrounds. The men of the 16th had only just been mustered in , and barely trained, when they were ordered into battle at Antietam, the bloodiest day of combat in U. The raw recruits rushed straight into a Confederate crossfire and then broke and ran, suffering 25 percent casualties within minutes.
In a later battle, almost all the men of the 16th were captured and sent to the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville, where a third of them died from disease, exposure and starvation.
Upon returning home, many of the survivors became invalids, emotionally numb, or abusive of family. Wallace Woodford flailed in his sleep, dreaming that he was still searching for food at Andersonville. Others carried on for years before killing themselves or being committed to insane asylums. Gordon was also struck by how often the veterans of the 16th returned in their diaries and letters to the twin horrors of Antietam and Andersonville.
Not all scholars applaud this trend, which includes new scholarship on subjects such as rape, torture and guerrilla atrocities. While he welcomes the fresh research, he worries that readers may come away with a distorted perception of the overall conflict. No driving personal ideology rationalized his service. Instead, like many around him, he believed the pending war to hold great importance, even if he could not particularly define the patriotic instinct or adventurous excitement that spurred him into the ranks.
Throughout his service, Morey captured his experiences through meticulous diary entries and honest letters home. George E. Nineteenth-century Americans accepted a certain rubric for the proper way to face death.
A dying individual should be at home with family around to see them off into the next world. The battlefield clearly denied realization of this standard, but a surrogate could be attained through mortally wounded soldiers offering last words home to comfort and reassure their families.
Frederick W. Chamberlin in the neck as the 2nd Vermont aided the Union assault on the Confederate lines. As the war progressed, the frequency of combat escalated with no reduction in intensity. Nearly a year to the day later, the Vermont Brigade faced the task of defending a crucial intersection on the Wilderness Battlefield.
I am killed! John C. The victory gave the Union control of the critical supply line of the entire Mississippi River.
And the Confederacy was split. Fighting at the battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 3, July , : Lee again invaded the Union in the summer of in hopes that he could beat the Union on its own soil, threaten Washington, D. With Virginia devastated by the war, he also desperately needed supplies for his soldiers. George Meade , who caught up with them in Pennsylvania and confronted the Confederates at Gettysburg , in what was one of the most fateful battles in history.
Initially, the Confederates drove Union troops from fields west and north of the town, but they failed on the second day to break the Union line. After two hours of shelling, Confederate Gen. George Pickett led two brigades in an assault on the Union position. Lee was forced to retreat and abandon his invasion.
The battle was a crushing defeat for the Confederacy, and losses were devastating on both sides. Union casualties numbered 23,, while the Confederates lost some 28, men. Demoralized, Lee offered his resignation to President Jefferson Davis , but was refused. The Battle of Gettysburg took on even more significance in November , when President Lincoln traveled to the site and delivered the Gettysburg Address.
In the famously short but powerful speech, Lincoln honored the sacrifice of the soldiers who died there and redefined the war as a struggle for the nation. July 22, : Near the end of the war, a trio of Union armies, led by Gen.
William T. Sherman converged upon Atlanta , where they were met outside the city by a desperate Confederate counterattack that failed.
Finally, on September 1, Confederate Lt. The capture of Atlanta crippled the Confederate war effort. For Lincoln, who faced a difficult election in against one of his former generals, George B. McClellan , the victory provided a lift at the polls, helping him win and pursue the war to its conclusion.
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