Originally aired on November 28, 1997 - In part 170 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses a major problem during the years of the American Civil War.
#170 – Homesickness
One will not find the major sickness in Civil War armies listed in medical dictionaries. It does not have a long Latin name. No medications have yet been developed for it. Despite the fact that a complete cure is easily possible. The illness so prevalent among Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks was homesickness.
A hospital steward in the 49th New York wrote his wife shortly after reaching the front lines in Virginia. “My health is good with the exception of homesickness, a disease I am thinking will never be cured. Though in my case I hope it will not assume that malignant type that will unfit me for duty.”
Those soldiers of the 1860s were young. Being so, large numbers of them had used terrible capacity for loneliness. In addition, they lived in a highly sentimental age in which absence made the heart sick.
A young Tennessean wrote his wife from camp, “If I could get one kiss from you it would be more pleasure to me than everything here.” Another private from the Volunteer State confessed, “When I think of my native home in a moment I seem to be there, but alas, recollection soon hurries me back to despair. Oh tell me yet I have a home.” One Southern cavalryman expressed his feeling succinctly, “I think if this war ended,” he said, “I would be the happiest man living.”
Nostalgia is always the great enemy of soldier morale. Keeping a man busy is the best treatment for homesickness. That was difficult in the Civil War. Forty nine of every fifty days was spent in the inactivity and boredom of camp.
Most soldiers of blue and gray were away from home for the first time. The only contact with loved ones back home was by mail. Delivery of letters was tenuous at best. As a result, absence from home produced a pain that at first was acute and then ultimately chronic.
The longer a soldier stayed in the army the worse homesickness tended to become. In December, 1862, an Illinois infantryman wrote his wife, “I am not homesick by a great ways, but I would not care if this war would end tomorrow. One does not know how sweet home is ‘til he goes through the roughs of a soldier life. You must not think I am despondent for I ain’t, but I would take a discharge if one was given to me.”
Another mid-western soldier new to the ways of war declared in a letter, “I used to talk about being away from home when I was there, but little did I know what it was ‘til now. I have often dreamt that I was at home and how nice it was, but lo and behold, when I wake up I am in this blamed tent.”
During the last autumn of the war a lonely Confederate told his sweetheart, “that a letter from her would cure the bad attack of blues he had. If I was where I could not hear from you,” he added, “it don’t seem to me like I could stand it for you are my daily study.”
Alabama soldier John Cotton spoke for many men on both sides in the Civil War with this 1862 observation, “I never knew what pleasure home afforded to a man before, if it were not for the love of my country and family and the patriotism that burns in my bosom for them I would be glad to come home and stay there, but I know I have as much to fight for as anybody else.”
Cotton went home in the autumn of 1865, after a long confinement as a prisoner of war. He was one of the lucky participants in the Civil War. Love of home and family had made him a soldier. Dreams of home and family sustained him in the field. Returning home safely was his greatest dream come true. It is the kind of feeling most of us experience on Thanksgiving Day.
