Broke Down Bodies, Broke Down Minds: Using Emotions and Medical History to Understand General Ill Health in Civil War Veterans

Civil War veterans applying for disability pensions on the grounds of a general loss of health or vigor often faced substantial obstacles to their claim. Several soldiers wrote to the pension office in the 1880s to complain that, despite proving that they lost their health in the war, the Pension Office either refused their claim or paid at a much lower rate than a soldier wounded in battle. These veterans often described themselves as “all broke down.” In their letters and applications, they complained of both specific somatic complaints like irritable heart/Da Costa’s Syndrome and more general symptoms like fatigue, pain, and shortness of breath. This period also saw asylums admitting veterans driven to insanity by their “ill health.” Neither medical history nor emotions history can fully account for the fluid relationship between a veteran’s physical and mental health in the late 19^th century.

“Broke down” did not correspond to a 19^th century medical category and was not often used by doctors. However, soldiers, their caretakers, and the press regularly used the phrase to describe a general loss of vigor after returning from service. This paper will draw on insights from trauma studies and disability studies, including the foundational work of Eric Dean, as well as the work of historians, like Martha Hodes, working in emotions history. It will also reference archival evidence from Civil War pension applications and examinations, records from St. Elizabeths [sic] Hospital, and personal letters and diaries, to evaluate the ways in which “all broke down” served as a conceptual bridge between the physical and emotional pain of returning from war. Finally, the paper will suggest an approach to studying the possible somatization of emotions in the decades before Freud and modern psychiatry.