“How Long Will It Be before I Can Clasp My Wife and Little Ones to My Breast!” The Civil War as a Crisis in Fatherhood

In this paper, I examine Union and Confederate correspondence between soldiers and their wives and children to better understand the psychological and emotional tolls of soldiering upon family men.  Roughly one quarter of all Union soldiers had families at the time of their enlistment, compared to close to 50% for Confederates.  These men were thrown into a crisis as they attempted to both materially provide on meager soldier’s pay as well as govern a household in absentia.  While some historians have suggested that many men simply gave up or turned control over their wives, I have found many who did not.  Instead, these men display increasing bouts of paranoia, feelings of abandonment, dislike of the service, and loss of control.  Their homecomings, for those who survived the war, were mixed, with the joy of a reunion with loved ones being marred by attempts to reassert patriarchal authority over the household.  

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