Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War

by Brian Matthew Jordan Narrated by John McDonough

Overview

A groundbreaking investigation examining the fate of Union veterans who won the war but couldn't bear the peace. For well over a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a landmark work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative. These veterans- tending rotting wounds, battling alcoholism, campaigning for paltry pensions- tragically realized that they stood as unwelcome reminders to a new America eager to heal, forget, and embrace the freewheeling bounty of the Gilded Age. Mining previously untapped archives, Jordan uncovers anguished letters and diaries, essays by amputees, and gruesome medical reports, all deeply revealing of the American psyche. In the model of twenty-first-century histories like Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering or Maya Jasanoff 's Liberty's Exiles that illuminate the plight of the common man, Marching Home makes almost unbearably personal the rage and regret of Union veterans. Their untold stories are critically relevant today.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

11/10/2014
Civilian Americans have always had difficulties acknowledging and dealing with the problems soldiers face in their transition from warriors to veterans, and the Civil War was no exception. As historian Jordan demonstrates in his engrossing debut outing, for the men of the Union Army, the war didn’t end with Appomattox. Picking up at that point, where most studies of the Civil War conclude, Jordan challenges scholars like Gerald F. Linderman who maintain that “Billy Yank” eagerly suppressed his wartime experiences and embraced peacetime. Jordan convincingly shows that from the time of Lee’s surrender, veterans found themselves still bound to the war, struggling with its meaning and trying to make sense of their military service. Even as the majority of the public wanted to put the war aside, former soldiers participated in anniversary events and reunions, subscribed to the growing number of veterans’ newspapers, and joined the veterans’ organization called the Grand Army of the Republic. To preserve and disseminate their memories, veterans wrote and published regimental histories, personal memoirs, and war sketches. They did all this while coping with the consequences of their service: unemployment, alcoholism, and physical injuries and disabilities, including amputated limbs. Jordan’s thoughtful, well-researched book exposes the under-acknowledged realities faced by Civil War veterans—with disturbing echoes in the modern era. Illus. (Jan.)

Civil War News - Jeffry D. Wert

"A somber portrait of the reality of Union veterans’ postwar lives. . . . Theirs is a story that had to be told, and Brian Matthew Jordan tells it very well. The research is impeccable, and the writing finely crafted. . . . Highly recommended."

Wall Street Journal - Randall Fuller

"A rich trove of journals, letters and published accounts reveal[s] the enormous toll that the Civil War took on its participants. . . . Books like [Marching Home] contribute to a much broader cultural narrative."

Gary W. Gallagher

"A far darker narrative of veterans profoundly and permanently alienated from a civilian public that neither understood nor properly acknowledged their wartime sacrifice. . . . Powerful."

Emerging Civil War

"[A] wonderful antidote for the fog of romanticism that clouds the public’s memory of the Civil War…. Jordan’s book is an important contribution to the scholarship of the life of Union soldiers after the war. It is honest and cynical, poetic and disturbing. Here is a brutal reminder of the realities of war and life after war. As we cope today with the many former soldiers of modern wars and their struggles against Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other maladies, it is good to be reminded—as Lincoln did in 1864—that we have an obligation to ‘bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Foreign Affairs - Walter Russell Mead

"Readers of this clearly written and exhaustively researched book will come away with a deeper appreciation of the sacrifices soldiers make; many living veterans will thank Jordan for his attention to an often neglected but important aspect of U.S. military history."

James Oakes

"Billy Yank’s Civil War did not end with Appomattox. Rather, as Brian Matthew Jordan shows in his literate, beautifully crafted book, the homeward journey of the Union soldier was a long and bitter one. Racked by painful recollections of the battlefield, unprepared for the ways of civilian life, and greeted with suspicion wherever they went, the shell-shocked veterans lived out their lives unable to let go of the memories of a war that their neighbors seemed determined to forget. Framed as a Homeric odyssey, Jordan’s tale of the Union soldier combines unflinching honesty with generous humanity."

Allegra di Bonaventura

"An eloquent elegy to the “Boys in Blue,” Jordan’s Marching Home follows the Union Army veteran from armistice through the enduring psychic and political civil war that came after. Sensitively written and impeccably researched, Jordan’s inspiring debut animates the struggles of countless “Billy Yanks” to secure recognition, compensation, and basic human dignity until the death of the last survivor in 1956. It will stand as an important contribution to the history of the American veteran."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Frank Reeves

"[Marching Home] provides us with yet another cautionary tale from the Civil War—that the pain of war endures long after the stacking of arms or the signing of an armistice. A fact that those who clamor for U.S. military intervention in every conflict too often forget."

Jeffry D. Wert - Civil War News

A somber portrait of the reality of Union veterans’ postwar lives. . . . Theirs is a story that had to be told, and Brian Matthew Jordan tells it very well. The research is impeccable, and the writing finely crafted. . . . Highly recommended.

Library Journal

11/15/2014
With forceful arguments and compelling prose, Jordan (Civil War-era studies, Gettysburg Coll.) turns conventional wisdom on the postwar world upside down by showing that poverty, alcoholism, sickness, mental illness, public neglect, and even contempt marked the lives of returning Union soldiers. Jordan argues that rather than understanding veterans' needs, too many civilians insisted they get on with their lives. Civilians rushed toward reconciliation with Southerners to patch up the Union and focus on "progress," while Union veterans insisted the nation not forget the causes and costs of the war and give soldiers and emancipated slaves their due. In their memoirs, monuments, veterans' organizations, and lobbying for benefits, the veterans refused to concede their history to those who wanted to romanticize the war and forget what the soldiers had sacrificed. Jordan overstates historians' supposed neglect of the issue, the indifference of Northern civilians to the veterans' plight, and the extent of veterans' inability to adjust to "coming home." However, the author has written a brilliant and bracing study of Civil War soldiers' efforts to adapt to a peacetime environment that had no place for them and even considered them a burden on public resources. VERDICT This work speaks to our day as we struggle to understand and do justice to veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan and make the country accountable for the promises made to those who served. [See Prepub Alert, 7/21/14.]—Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

Kirkus Reviews

2014-11-05
This Civil War history begins where most end, showing what happened to the men who fought to preserve the Union.Jordan's (Civil War Studies/Gettysburg Coll.) book is about the postwar tribulations of Billy Yank. While the civilian population had had enough of war, those who fought for the North were unwilling to forgive and forget, and they marched in Washington a few weeks after Robert E. Lee surrendered and Abraham Lincoln was murdered. Two million boys in blue had fought in the war, and more than 800,000 were mustered out in six months—more veterans than the country had ever known. In a nation that evidenced little appreciation beyond bombast for their sacrifices, there was no national welfare policy, network or veterans' service. The Yanks had difficulties getting home. Many had lost limbs, and many were unemployable and fell victim to alcoholism. Illness, poverty and suicide were endemic badges of service. Like soldiers throughout history, they treasured mementos of battle. More than warriors of the past, they united in the postwar fight for recompense and respect. They returned to battlefields like Gettysburg and prison camps like Andersonville and erected monuments to mark their presence. They created newspapers, wrote memoirs and histories, and established benevolent organizations—the most effective of which was the Grand Army of the Republic. They campaigned for decent pensions and federal "asylums" to house those who were impoverished and disabled. Jordan doesn't need to emphasize the obvious contemporary parallels. Assiduously researched—half the volume is occupied by a bibliography and copious notes—his book is entirely founded on the words of those who fought, extracted from letters, recollections and reflections. The boys in blue who rallied around the flag are gone, but in Jordan's history, their words survive. A useful history of how "the terror of this unprecedented war long outlived the stacking of arms at Appomattox."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170840854
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	01/26/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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