Joshua Howell: Representing Reality during the Civil War

On September 14^th, 1864, Union Colonel Joshua Blackwood Howell breathed his last, succumbing to his injuries in Petersburg, Virginia. Described by a contemporary as someone who possessed, “in a strikingly supreme degree, all those social qualities which adorn life,” Joshua Howell, in death, came to represent much of the fate that befell soldiers who fought on both sides during the Civil War, and the million or so who died. This exhibit seeks to examine how Joshua Howell, a Union colonel born in New Jersey and fighting for Pennsylvania, does and does not exemplify the struggles that soldiers faced outside of the confines of war. This exhibit is divided into three overarching themes: The Good Death, The Homefront, and The Bureaucracy, and looks at how each of these themes shaped Joshua Howell and his fellow soldiers, in life and in death. The Good Death, a set of antebellum attitudes towards death and the afterlife, were severely tested by the scope of death unleashed by the Civil War. For the first time, Americans of all regions and groups were suffering and dying far from home and from the norms of prior generations. Joshua Howell, in keeping a notebook on his attitudes towards death and Christianity, reflected the fears of his peers that they would face eternal suffering for dying “wrong.” However, for Joshua Howell, as a well-off military leader, and his family had a different relationship with The Good Death, as his family was allowed a grand funeral, while other soldiers died anonymously and alone on battlefields. The Homefront represents the divide between those fighting the war and those wives, parents, children, etc. Soldiers of all ranks and regions used letters to connect with those back home, to bring them into the suffering they were facing, and to pine for a better and different tomorrow. Joshua Howell was no exception, with his rich letters to his wife Katherine and vice versa, where they reflect on their separation, a new phenomenon for many Civil War marriages. Finally, after soldiers like Howell laid down their lives, their widows and those left behind had to contend with The Bureaucracy, which was frequently stifling them from the recognition they and the deceased deserved, and further separating them from The Good Death. Katherine Howell and other widows was forced to reckon with a pension process that invalidated their connection to the dead. In the end, while Joshua Howell’s experiences do not exactly mirror those of every other soldier, they provide common themes and experiences that demonstrate to us over 150 years later what life was truly like for soldiers when the bullets stopped flying, and they were forced to contend with reality. This presentation is based on an online exhibit I created to incorporate a variety of mediums to tell the story of Joshua Howell and reality during the Civil War. These mediums included photographs, a painting, a cartoon, and letters, government records, and a scrapbook from his personal archives.