The Homefront in The Civil War

By James P. Walsh

In the Civil War, much more than in any recent American war, the men in the field depended upon the people back home.

The Union Army was totally unprepared for the vast number of men it had to recruit. Barely able to supply its men for combat, the Army made no provision at all to support the soldiers' dependents. When a soldier was killed or captured, his wages ceased. When he was killed or wounded, the Army depended upon his friends or family to provide a permanent burial or adequate hospital care. Many people in Connecticut took the sad journey south to search among the corpses on the field or among the wounded in a field hospital for a son, brother, or husband.

Because the Army could do so little, the average soldier depended upon his hometown. It was usually his hometown that had gotten him to volunteer by paying him a bounty and promising to take care of his family. It was in his hometown where branches of associations, like the Christian Commission or the Sanitary Commission, got together to supply soldiers with blankets, extra food, and, in many cases, pistols, boots, or other equipment that the Army should have provided.

The people at home performed much like the men in combat. A few thought only about their own safety, some performed selfless acts of heroism, and most simply did their jobs as well as possible under difficult conditions. Many prominent citizens purchased substitutes to serve in the Army for them, a perfectly legal but a dishonorable practice. On the other hand, some of the richest women in the state spent hours making bandages or comforting the families of missing servicemen. Harriet Hawley, the wife of a general, risked her life by nursing soldiers with contagious diseases. In town after town the selectmen borrowed money and raised taxes to make sure the families of the soldiers were not reduced to absolute poverty.

Of greatest significance, the people at home never allowed the soldier cringing in a trench before Richmond, or sweltering in a camp in the Louisiana bayou, or sharpening his bayonet before a charge anywhere in the vast theater of war to think that he was alone or forgotten.

For Further Reading

The standard work on Connecticut during the Civil War is W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris, The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861-1865 (New York, 1869). Even better is John Niven, Connecticut for the Union (New Haven, Connecticut, 1965).

* Entry under revision.