Invisible Wounds - (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War) by Dillon Carroll (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Dillon J. Carroll's Invisible Wounds examines the effects of military service, particularly combat, on the psyches and emotional well-being of Civil War soldiers-Black and white, North and South. Soldiers faced harsh military discipline, arduous marches, poor rations, debilitating diseases, and the terror of battle, all of which took a severe psychological toll. While mental collapses sometimes occurred during the war, the emotional damage soldiers incurred more often became apparent in the postwar years, when it manifested itself in disturbing and self-destructive behavior. Carroll explores the dynamic between the families of mentally ill veterans and the superintendents of insane asylums, as well as between those superintendents and doctors in the nascent field of neurology, who increasingly believed the central nervous system or cultural and social factors caused mental illness. Invisible Wounds is a sweeping reevaluation of the mental damage inflicted by the nation's most tragic conflict"--

Book Synopsis

Dillon J. Carroll's Invisible Wounds examines the effects of military service, particularly combat, on the psyches and emotional well-being of Civil War soldiers--Black and white, North and South. Soldiers faced harsh military discipline, arduous marches, poor rations, debilitating diseases, and the terror of battle, all of which took a severe psychological toll. While mental collapses sometimes occurred during the war, the emotional damage soldiers incurred more often became apparent in the postwar years, when it manifested itself in disturbing and self-destructive behavior. Carroll explores the dynamic between the families of mentally ill veterans and the superintendents of insane asylums, as well as between those superintendents and doctors in the nascent field of neurology, who increasingly believed the central nervous system or cultural and social factors caused mental illness. Invisible Wounds is a sweeping reevaluation of the mental damage inflicted by the nation's most tragic conflict.

Review Quotes

"Invisible Wounds is important for how it offers both a big-picture synthesis of soldiering while also making original contributions at the intersection of soldiering, medicine, and institutional histories of the long Civil War era. . . . Carroll has produced an excellent, wide-ranging, and compelling monograph on the invisible wounds of Civil War soldiers. It is an accessible book that specialists, nonspecialists, and upper-level undergraduate students could all engage with in different and productive ways."--American Historical Review

"Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness and Veterans of the American Civil War is a diligent, creative, and inclusive study of the effects of the violence and chaos of the Civil War. Effectively integrating gender, race, and sectional differences, Carroll applies keen insights and patience to this sprawling story of trauma, science, community, and memory."--James Marten, author of The Children's Civil War

"Invisible Wounds has much to recommend. It artfully uses asylum records, soldiers' letters, and diaries to examine mental illness from the perspectives of both doctors and patients. It also is unafraid to engage with modern medicine and put it in conversation with Civil War-era understandings of mental illness. . . . Deeply researched, Invisible Wounds paints a gruesome picture of how the Civil War left a lasting mark on the minds of the men who fought in it. Its brisk, accessible writing style would make it appropriate for undergraduate and graduate classrooms, where it is bound to prompt discussion and debate."--Journal of Southern History

"Dillon Carroll has greatly enhanced our understanding of the psychological and emotional fallout of military service during the American Civil War. Building on burgeoning scholarship that focuses on the physical and mental disabilities of Civil War soldiers and veterans, Carroll deftly and sensitively explores the lives of Union and Confederate servicemen and the impact of their experiences on their psyches. In vivid detail and lively, compelling prose, Carroll forces us to take seriously the very high personal cost of the American Civil War, which, in many cases, was devastating and forever changed the lives of the combatants. Carroll persuasively shows, through gripping accounts of human struggles, that psychological ruin was just as much a legacy of the Civil War as financial and physical ruins. The book is timely, important, and essential reading for anyone seeking a complete history of the American Civil War."--Diane Miller Sommerville, author of Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War-Era South

"Many Civil War soldiers returned home in 1865 wounded in mind as well as body, faced with a difficult readjustment to civilian life. Most succeeded, but some did not, succumbing to what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. Invisible Wounds is a valuable and readable study documenting the range of these maladies. But Dillon Carroll also maintains that the vast majority of soldiers developed mechanisms to cope with potentially debilitating wartime experiences and to sustain productive postwar lives."--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

About the Author

Dillon J. Carroll is a history instructor at Butte College in Oroville, California. He holds a doctorate in history from the University of Georgia.