Care for Wounded
and Disabled Soldiers
DHist - Grades 8-10 History Unit
How the Civil War Transformed Disability: Lesson 2
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This curriculum unit is made possible in part by a grant from Mass Humanities, a state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provided funding through the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC).
Question Focus
Citizen volunteers assisting the wounded in the field of Battle - Antietam. [1862].
What are your questions about the care of wounded and disabled soldiers?
Before the Civil War,
in 1854, Congress passed a law championed by Dorothea Dix to sell federal land to pay states to build asylums for poor people with mental illness.
Worcester State Hospital
Before the Civil War, President Pierce denied that the Federal Government has any responsibility to care for individual needs.
"I can not find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner* of public charity throughout the United States.”
May 3, 1854.
*(An “almoner” is someone who gives money to the “deserving” poor.)
American Civil War - 1861-1865
What was the experience of wounded and disabled soldiers?
American Civil War - 1861-1865
How many soldiers were affected by the war?
What was the scale of the problem?
How significant was the problem?
What was the response to this problem?
Scale of Civil War Casualties
Total enlistment, 1861-1865:
Casualties (total of both sides):
After losing the First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, the Union Army left many wounded on the battlefield because it was unprepared to move or care for them.
“It is said, upon proper authority, that ‘our army is supplied’… how this can be so, I fail to see.”
Reformers take up the cause.
Buildings of the Great Central Fair, in aid of the U.S. Sanitary Commission.
Philadelphia
June 1864.
Library of Congress.
When the Army could not care for its wounded, doctor Elizabeth Blackwell organized New York women to provide care. Other reformers such as Dorothea Dix, Samuel Gridley Howe, Louisa May Alcott, and Red Cross founder Clara Barton organized the U.S. Sanitary Commission to raise private money and to set up hospitals and care.
At 32, Louisa May Alcott volunteered as a nurse during the Civil War in 1862. The next year, she wrote about her experience in a best-selling book, Hospital Sketches.
“The sight of several stretchers, each with its legless, armless, or desperately wounded occupant, entering my ward, admonished me that I was there to work, not to wonder or weep; so I corked up my feelings, and returned to the path of duty.”
American Civil War - 1861-1865
Write a prediction in 2-3 sentences:
What are their stories?
Where do they go?
What were the long term impacts of the Civil War on veterans? On the nation?
U.S. Veterans’ Pensions
Total enlistment during war:
U.S. Government Pensions paid: