1. PTSD-Suffering Civil War Veterans Helped Make the Wild West so Wild
For a while in the 1980s and 1990s, the trope of the PTSD-suffering Vietnam War veteran was so common in movies and TV that it became a cliché. Like all wars, the US Civil War must have produced its fair share of traumatized veterans. However, that was in the days before PTSD – or psychology for that matter – were well understood. As a result, Civil War veterans dealing with psychological trauma were usually on their own, left to deal with their issues as best they could – or not. The results could be seen after the war, when America relentlessly pushed its frontier westward in pursuit of Manifest Destiny.
Unsettled frontiers attract a disproportionate number of single young men, eager for adventure and new horizons. They are often rowdy, rambunctious, restless, and absent the social restraints typically imposed by families and neighbors in more established communities, frequently lawless. Many of them were Civil War veterans, still young in years although aged beyond measure by what they had witnessed and experienced. PTSD amongst their numbers accounts for at least some of what made the Wild West so wild and crazy. Indeed, some of the wilder and most famous of the West’s outlaws, such as Jesse James and his brother Frank, were molded in their early years by their wartime experience as combatants.
_________________
Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
American Battlefield Trust – Battle of Chancellorsville Facts & Summary
American Battlefield Trust – The Death of John Sedgwick
Catton, Bruce – Bruce Catton’s Civil War: Three Volumes in One (1984)
History Collection – Forgotten Battles of the American Civil War
College of St. Scholastica – Ulysses S. Grant Information Center: Up Close and Personal
Downtown West Chester – WC History: The Youngest Soldier to Die in Battle
Find a Grave – Charles Edwin “Charlie” King (1849 – 1862)
History Collection – Weird Foods and Methods People Used to Survive During the Civil War
Foote, Shelby – The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 2, Fredericksburg to Meridian (1963)
Keesee, Dennis M. – Too Young to Die: Boy Soldiers of the Civil War (2001)
Loring, William Wing – A Confederate Soldier in Egypt (1884)
History Collection – Myths of the American Civil War
National Museum of the United States Navy – Powder Monkeys and the American Civil War
Providentia – Soldier’s Disease
Sears, Stephen W. – To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign (1992)
United States Navy Memorial – Aspinwall Fuller
History Collection – Photographs from the Battlefields of the Civil War
Warfare History Network – Grierson’s Raid: Wrecking the Railroad With the Butternut Guerrillas
