The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies

by Peter S. Carmichael

Overview

How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war. Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience—the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances. Carmichael focuses not on what soldiers thought but rather how they thought. In doing so, he reveals how, to the shock of most men, well-established notions of duty or disobedience, morality or immorality, loyalty or disloyalty, and bravery or cowardice were blurred by war.

Digging deeply into his soldiers' writing, Carmichael resists the idea that there was "a common soldier" but looks into their own words to find common threads in soldiers' experiences and ways of understanding what was happening around them. In the end, he argues that a pragmatic philosophy of soldiering emerged, guiding members of the rank and file as they struggled to live with the contradictory elements of their violent and volatile world. Soldiering in the Civil War, as Carmichael argues, was never a state of being but a process of becoming.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469664033
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/01/2021
Series:	Littlefield History of the Civil War Era
Pages:	408
Sales rank:	267,329
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Peter S. Carmichael is the Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies, director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, and author of previous books, including The Last Generation.

Table of Contents

Contents

• Introduction
• 1 Comrades, Camp, and Community
• 2 Providence and Cheerfulness
• 3 Writing Home
• 4 Courage and Cowardice
• 5 Desertion and Military Justice
• 6 Facing the Enemy and Confronting Defeat
• 7 The Trophies of Victory and the Relics of Defeat
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Martha Hodes

How did Civil War soldiers face the daily pandemonium and dreariness of fighting a war? Bringing us straight into their hearts and minds, Peter Carmichael skillfully illuminates how the men continually juggled patriotism and apathy, obedience and defiance, manliness and vulnerability, zeal and exhaustion, bravery and dread, both on and off the battlefield.

Harold Holzer

The question of why men fought has long engaged students and scholars of the Civil War. Extending his attention to many untapped, unexplored aspects of the military experience—from the glorious to the ghastly—Carmichael has done a masterful job in painting a complex, and vivid portrait of the common soldier North and South. His characters test their courage on the battlefield, keep faith with the home front, test their belief in country, family, and God, and develop new communities among their brother soldiers. Carmichael has combined exhaustive research, deep analysis, and graceful writing to assemble one of the best such accounts ever produced.

Stephen Berry

In Carmichael's glorious book, Civil War soldiers find themselves, if they are lucky, in the eye of a storm, a pragmatic 'come-what-may' mental state that lasts until they are 'played out' or the war is over, and their former selves come flooding back in a process of unbecoming every bit as fraught as the process of becoming a soldier had been. This is a smart, beautiful book; it is a trenchant demand for us to return again to the study of the Civil War's common soldier; and it is a triumph.

From the Publisher

How did Civil War soldiers face the daily pandemonium and dreariness of fighting a war? Bringing us straight into their hearts and minds, Peter Carmichael skillfully illuminates how the men continually juggled patriotism and apathy, obedience and defiance, manliness and vulnerability, zeal and exhaustion, bravery and dread, both on and off the battlefield."—Martha Hodes, author of Mourning Lincoln

The question of why men fought has long engaged students and scholars of the Civil War. Extending his attention to many untapped, unexplored aspects of the military experience—from the glorious to the ghastly—Carmichael has done a masterful job in painting a complex, and vivid portrait of the common soldier North and South. His characters test their courage on the battlefield, keep faith with the home front, test their belief in country, family, and God, and develop new communities among their brother soldiers. Carmichael has combined exhaustive research, deep analysis, and graceful writing to assemble one of the best such accounts ever produced."—Harold Holzer, author of Lincoln and the Power of the Press

In Carmichael's glorious book, Civil War soldiers find themselves, if they are lucky, in the eye of a storm, a pragmatic 'come-what-may' mental state that lasts until they are 'played out' or the war is over, and their former selves come flooding back in a process of unbecoming every bit as fraught as the process of becoming a soldier had been. This is a smart, beautiful book; it is a trenchant demand for us to return again to the study of the Civil War's common soldier; and it is a triumph.—Stephen Berry, author of House of Abraham

Carmichael's deep focus on individual stories brings to life the complexity of the soldier experience better than any existing book in the field."—Lorien Foote, author of The Yankee Plague

Lorien Foote

Carmichael's deep focus on individual stories brings to life the complexity of the soldier experience better than any existing book in the field.

Editorial Reviews

Carmichael's deep description of these individuals' experiences . . . complicate[s] in compelling ways our ideas about American men at arms during the Civil War. . . . Truly eye-opening."—Journal of the Civil War Era

In eloquent and elegant prose, Peter S. Carmichael examines the experience of war for the enlisted soldiers of the Union and Confederate armies. . . . The power and beauty of Carmichael's writing come from his ability to build drama, reveal pathos, and provide texture to the war experience of his disparate group of soldiers."—Journal of Southern History

Fundamentally alters the trajectory of the literature."—Civil War Times Illustrated

Carmichael goes deeply into his sources. . . His search for authentic voices is successful. . . . [and points] his readers in interesting, sensitive directions. . . a powerful addition to getting to the 'real story.'"—Civil War Book Review

A much-needed update of the experience of the Civil War's fighting men on both sides. . . . He illustrates his main points with extensive quotations from primary sources plus a variety of contemporary illustrations that significantly add to the context. Carmichael is both an experienced author and a versatile presenter, and it shows; though the main text is just over 300 pages, his presentation has both breadth and depth. It is, in all, a major achievement."—Choice

Carmichael's work goes a long way toward helping those who might support, or participate in, future conflicts to understand how their predecessors met and overcame significant challenges when called to face their own iterations of injustice."—H-Net Reviews

Impressive, if not impeccable . . . . The War for the Common Soldier is a serious and important work."—Civil War News

It is not possible to expect anyone to write the last word on either the dark side of Civil War soldiering or the persistence model for understanding the combat experience in the Civil War, but Carmichael has given us an important new way to look at both that will serve to bridge the gap between two lines of scholarly inquiry that too often are seen as contradictory or antagonistic."—Earl J. Hess, ARMY Magazine

From the Publisher

Carmichael deserves high marks for producing a thought-provoking book on the mental machinations of combatants caught up in our nation’s bloodiest conflict.

The Annals of Iowa

Impressive, if not impeccable . . . . The War for the Common Soldier is a serious and important work.

Civil War News

If you are interested in the life of the common Civil War soldier, you will want to read this book. . . . The book brings together a number of interesting threads which make the reader contemplate the differences and the similarities between Union and Confederate soldiers.

The Journal of America’s Military Past

A much-needed update of the experience of the Civil War's fighting men on both sides. . . . He illustrates his main points with extensive quotations from primary sources plus a variety of contemporary illustrations that significantly add to the context. Carmichael is both an experienced author and a versatile presenter, and it shows; though the main text is just over 300 pages, his presentation has both breadth and depth. It is, in all, a major achievement.

Choice

Carmichael’s work goes a long way toward helping those who might support, or participate in, future conflicts to understand how their predecessors met and overcame significant challenges when called to face their own iterations of injustice.

H-Net Reviews

In eloquent and elegant prose, Peter S. Carmichael examines the experience of war for the enlisted soldiers of the Union and Confederate armies. . . . The power and beauty of Carmichael’s writing come from his ability to build drama, reveal pathos, and provide texture to the war experience of his disparate group of soldiers.

Journal of Southern History

A more thorough, nuanced, and indeed pragmatic, understanding of Union and Confederate soldiers and the world in which they thought, fought, and survived.

Journal of the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era

Fundamentally alters the trajectory of the literature.

Civil War Times Illustrated

It is not possible to expect anyone to write the last word on either the dark side of Civil War soldiering or the persistence model for understanding the combat experience in the Civil War, but Carmichael has given us an important new way to look at both that will serve to bridge the gap between two lines of scholarly inquiry that too often are seen as contradictory or antagonistic.

ARMY Magazine - Earl J. Hess

Carmichael’s deep description of these individuals' experiences . . . complicate[s] in compelling ways our ideas about American men at arms during the Civil War. . . . Truly eye-opening.

Journal of the Civil War Era

Carmichael goes deeply into his sources. . . His search for authentic voices is successful. . . . [and points] his readers in interesting, sensitive directions. . . a powerful addition to getting to the ‘real story.’

Civil War Book Review

Carmichael’s magnificent work . . . [is] certainly one of the most significant recent contributions to the historiography. . . . In a dense, but highly readable account that brings a surprisingly fresh perspective to a frequently overlooked aspect of Civil War studies, Carmichael defies often prevailing generalizations of soldiers north and south that tend to predominate in the literature, reminding the reader that a tendency to oversimplification distorts the reality on the ground.

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