South Dakota's Civil War Veterans: Trauma and the Challenge of Re-entering Society

Transcript of "In the Moment" radio interview with Kurt Hackemer:

Lori Walsh: You're listening to In the Moment on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. I'm Lori Walsh. Images of the Past has been exploring the migration and the influence of Civil War soldiers on Dakota Territory and the South Dakota of today. Who were these soldiers who sought solace and stability on the frontier? How did they shape the way a state was formed and where can we see their influence even today? You can find all that coverage on our website at sdpb.org. Search for Images of the Past. Dr. Kurt Hackemer is a Professor of History at the University of South Dakota and he's written extensively about the lives and times of Civil War veterans who came to Dakota Territory and other parts of the Western United States after the war. Kurt, welcome back. Thanks for being here.

Kurt Hackemer:  Thanks very much, Lori. It's good to be back.

Lori Walsh: This is such an interesting story, and I'm wondering where you first became connected with it.

Kurt Hackemer: Yeah, that's a great question. I've always been sort of interested in the places where I live and have lived in South Dakota for some time now. And so I've been interested in South Dakota's Civil War story. This particular story really came from some postings on the State Historical Society's website, and they had posted census results from a special census that was conducted here in Dakota Territory in 1885. And I started looking, it was a census of Civil War veterans, and I'd never seen anything quite like it before. And as I dug more and more into it, found that it was unique in the United States, and had a great story to tell.

Lori Walsh: What were some of the things that you noticed right away that made it unique?

Kurt Hackemer: Well, one of the interesting things about veterans who came West was that they didn't leave many records behind. And so historians have had to guess a bit about who they were, what it was that drew them out here, and what they did. And because they didn't leave much in terms of memoirs, what the census let me do: There are almost 6,000 soldiers in the census. So the census let me draw a statistical portrait where the data about these soldiers told a story that they often didn't leave behind themselves.

Lori Walsh: Fascinating. All right, so some of that data revealed what?

Kurt Hackemer: The thing that was the most surprising to me, and I think to a lot of Civil War historians, was the strong correlation between intense combat experience during the Civil War and the veterans who came West. So it's a bit difficult to talk about combat trauma because the 19th century medical language didn't have a way to describe it. And so what I noticed was that an abnormal percentage of veterans out here had been in units that had seen high levels of combat in the Civil War. So a little over 8% of Civil War veterans were in units like that across the country. But well over 21, 22% of those who came to Dakota Territory were in these high intensity combat units, and then-

Lori Walsh: And these are-

Kurt Hackemer: I'm sorry, go ahead.

Lori Walsh: Well, I was just going to put those two things ...

Kurt Hackemer:   …where they went and what they did.

Lori Walsh: Yeah. I was going to put those two things together. This idea that there aren't a lot of memoirs and letters and records from them. And they are also the people who were in these intense combat experiences. And we know today, these are often the people who struggle with telling their stories and revealing what they saw and heard. Do you see a correlation between those two things?

Kurt Hackemer: Absolutely I do. You know, what I found really interesting was soldiers who had experienced higher levels of combat tended to go to the newest places in Dakota Territory, the most empty places. Or they congregated in specialized colonies like we had in Gettysburg, South Dakota or Loyalton, South Dakota and places where they could talk to one another and interact with one another. But in a very quiet way. It's really interesting to see how they negotiated all of that.

Lori Walsh: Yeah. Do they have a hard time really reintegrating into ... I know we've talked with some of these features about their leadership and the groups that they formed, but often those groups were formed with other Civil War veterans or they were formed with an intent to sort of tell a story of what the war was like with each other. What kind of work were they involved in when they came here?

Kurt Hackemer: They certainly formed associations. These were men who did everything that one would expect any other settler to do who came out here, but they did form these associations, most famously the Grand Army of the Republic. But even then, what was really striking to me was there was an argument that Civil War veterans could be very vocal about their Civil War experiences. And you absolutely do not see that out here. It's really striking that the soldiers who were most exposed to high intensity combat were the quietest about it, only talked about it with fellow veterans who had experienced kind of the same thing. And that's the only people they could really talk to. They were completely ill at ease with the general population and talking about those matters.

Lori Walsh:  It's really kind of heartbreaking in some ways. You fill in those blanks in your mind based on what we know today. And there's some sad stories that we'll never hear.

Kurt Hackemer: Right. There's one of the very few soldiers who left a memoir behind, a guy named Robert Dollard, who settled in Hutchinson County. And in his memoir, he has less than one paragraph about this adjustment, but it's really fascinating if I could just read it to you briefly.

Lori Walsh: Very quickly, yeah.

Kurt Hackemer: It says, "Our return to New England and its humdrum life, I imagine, produced about the same mental condition as characterized (by) those negative inmates of Dante's Inferno who can neither get into heaven nor into hell. We were like fish out of the water. We must go somewhere to again be somebody." I think that's a really apt description of these folks. (They) went home, couldn't fit in, came West and then found each other.

Lori Walsh: Go somewhere to be somebody. Oh, Dr. Kurt Hackemer. Thank you so much for being here with us. We really appreciate that Images of the Past today.

Kurt Hackemer: Great talking to you, Lori.

Robert Dollard (1842-1912) was born in Massachusetts and was educated in that state's public schools, entering the Union army at the outbreak of the war. He was a member of the Fourth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia and was among the first to respond to the call for volunteers at the outbreak of the American Civil War, rising to the rank of major during the conflict. Major Dollard studied law and was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court of the state of Illinois in 1870 and moved to Dakota Territory in 1879, settling in Douglas County as the first settler in that county; during this time, in 1875, he married Carrie E. Dunn. Major Dollard continued in the general practice of the law for numerous years, and was elected to several local offices: became states attorney of Bon Homme County and was chosen attorney general for the provisional government in 1885; served as Territorial Legislature as a member of the Council in 1888; elected as the first Attorney-General of the State of South Dakota, serving two terms; elected to the state senate in 1892; elected to the house of representatives in 1896. (Source: Digital Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library.)

Below is an excerpt from a scholarly article written by Dr. Hackemer: “Wartime Trauma and the Lure of the Frontier: Civil War Veterans in Dakota Territory,” The Journal of Military History, 81:1 (January 2017): 75-103

"Returning home after years of wartime service was a jarring event for many Civil War veterans. Even if they enlisted or were drafted relatively late in the war, they left ordered social, political, and economic structures that defined an individual’s place in society. Despite the enormity of the war, those local structures rarely changed all that much, but the veterans certainly had. They had seen new and interesting places, had experienced a very different social hierarchy in the army or navy, and, in many cases, had participated in the organized killing of fellow human beings. In the meantime, relationships had been put on hold and their social, economic, and political progress in their local communities had been delayed, often to their detriment. They were met with mixed reactions when they came home, but whether they were warmly greeted or received with indifference, it was clear that the civilian population expected them to quietly reintegrate into society with minimal disruption. 4

Unfortunately for many veterans, unobtrusive and seamless reintegration proved far more difficult than most had anticipated. Those who returned with disabilities found it difficult to earn a living, which in turn made it difficult to resume their place in local social hierarchies. Those with the most debilitating injuries could find themselves in institutionalized settings that earned reputations as havens for drunkards and addicts. It was the able-bodied veterans who struggled in transitioning back to civilian life who were hardest to understand for those who had remained on the home front. Many could not figure out how to function in what appeared to be a boring and nondescript world, a problem that was especially acute for those whose wartime experiences included combat trauma. Some became a lifelong burden on their families, others became residents of soldiers’ homes, and still others became homeless. Tensions between civilians and veterans became worse, with many civilians viewing the veterans as a public menace. They were no longer productive members of society and had lost their prewar social authority. Veteran agitation for federal pensions exacerbated the developing gulf, with many civilians viewing the veterans as freeloaders no longer capable of contributing to the larger good. 5

 4. Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil
War (New York: Free Press, 1987), 266–72; Dixon Wecter, “The Veteran Wins Through,” in The
Civil War Veteran: A Historical Reader, ed. Larry M. Logue and Michael Barton (New York: New
York University Press, 2007), 83–85; Jordan, Marching Home, 50–52; Paul Cimbala, Veterans
North and South: The Transition From Soldier to Civilian After the American Civil War (Santa Barbara,
Calif.: Praeger, 2015), 47–51.
5. Linderman, Embattled Courage, 272–97; Eric T. Dean, Jr., Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic
Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 100–114;
James Marten, Sing Not War: The Lives of Union & Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 100–114, 201–4; Caroline E. Janney, Remembering
the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2013), 104–5; Jordan, Marching Home, 52–60, 69–71; Cimbala, Veterans North and South, 87–93.
In his “A Note on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Civil War Veterans,” Paul Cimbala cautions
historians against assigning the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) label to all forms of trauma,
and that advice has been followed here. See Cimbala, Veterans North and South, xv–xviii.