“I Shall Get So Decayed with Laziness”: The Ideology of the Broke Down Veteran in Miss Ravenel’s Conversion

Abstract

“I Shall Get So Decayed with Laziness”: The Ideology of the Broke Down Veteran in Miss Ravenel’s Conversion Ashley E. Bowen (bio) The American Civil War unmade the soldier’s body both literally and figuratively.1 New weaponry tore through flesh, camp diseases ravaged nearly everyone at some point, and poor nutrition slowed or prevented the body’s recovery. Although many soldiers underwent amputations during the war, 60,000 by most estimates, a much greater number returned from the Civil War with bodies that looked normal, or were at least whole and minimally scarred, but nevertheless broken. For them, bodies broken by war meant far more than scars. When they complained of feeling “broken down,” veterans referred to an expansive category of bodily experiences that encompassed both physical complaints (e.g. heart palpitations, diarrhea, tremors, weakness, fatigue, and more) and their emotional responses to the ways those complaints limited their lives. As historian William Etter observes, “all those who fought in the Civil War experienced, whether directly or as witnesses, the destruction of any conventional understanding of physical normality.”2 For veterans who were able to return to their prewar careers, some found that, as they aged, their bodies deteriorated much more rapidly than those who had not served.3 For [End Page 679] veterans who could not reenter the workforce, the inability to provide for a family and the threat of poverty weighed heavily. Private Joseph Work, for example, a volunteer with Co. I, 12th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry, received a pension for his heart condition nearly twenty years after it appeared. Just before the Battle of Gettysburg, Work’s heart had given out. He experienced pain in his chest, exhaustion, and serious heart palpitations.4 Although his physician claimed in 1870 that he “never has anything now that reminds him of his former trouble,” Work’s own assertions about his health indicate that he suffered a great deal for decades.5 In 1880, Work applied for and received a pension on the grounds of his cardiac condition. His application, coupled with supporting affidavits from coworkers and neighbors, explained that Work never managed a full day’s labor after the war. A neighbor told the Pension Office in 1881 that Work spent “a great deal on medicine” and used “some kind of inhaling apparatus which helps him a bit.” According to Work’s application, supported by the testimony of others, even the slightest exertion left him prostrate and in pain. For the next thirty-five years, Joseph Work received payment for his wartime injuries, but the chest pain and difficulty breathing never fully left him.6 American popular culture struggled to reconcile the myth of the citizen-soldier, made physically stronger and more emotionally resilient from his service, with the reality of actual veterans who came home ill, disabled, or dependent on their spouses or other family members. War-broken bodies challenged deep cultural assumptions about masculinity, family structure, and the value of work. The presence of crippled and ill men in public life, coupled with advances in medicine and an expanding bureaucratic state, created a moment when the meaning of the infirm white male body was in flux. But the social framing of ill or disabled bodies has never been neutral.7 This is especially [End Page 680] true of ill and disabled soldiers because the broken veteran’s body is both an object of pity and a symbol of national sacrifice. At the Civil War’s close, this dual role became particularly charged as families, communities, and the nation unavoidably confronted numerous broken soldiers returning home. Americans negotiated the meaning of the sick white soldier in medicine, government, their own families, and in popular culture. Specific negotiations differed contextually, but all were concerned with containing or neutralizing the problems created by men who could no longer work—the activity from which all other social positions in the family, community, and culture grew. Soldiers regularly applied for pensions on the grounds that injuries or illnesses sustained in the war rendered them unable to earn a living or support their family. Anxieties about the dependent veteran animated many of these negotiations while, at the same time, the veteran...