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For Union, Not for Glory: Memory and the Civil War Volunteers of Lancaster, Massachusetts

1994; Kent State University Press; Volume: 40; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cwh.1994.0008

1533-6271

Teresa A. Thomas,

American History and Culture

For Union, Not for Glory: Memory and the Civil War Volunteers of Lancaster, Massachusetts Teresa A. Thomas "... and our young men of education and wealth were hurrying to and fro through our North and endeavoring to recruit companies and regiments for the war."1 These words open John Emerson Anderson's reminiscences of the Civil War and are key to understanding how that war was understood and later memorialized by the people of Lancaster. Anderson, perhaps inadvertently , identifies the recruiters as men of a class apart—"young men of education and wealth"—who were organizing the Union regiments for war. He is a potential recruit, but he notes the social distance between himself and those who would lead him into battle. Col. Thomas Livermore recalled in 1886 that "The American soldier did not fight for glory; he fought to keep the Union whole."2 Actually, while many volunteered to save the Union, others volunteered to abolish slavery, vent sectional rivalries, revenge the attack on Fort Sumter or the mob attack on the 6th Massachusetts Regiment in Baltimore, or merely escape the boredom of small-town life and the farm. Livermore was right in one sense; the ideal of glory was not their initial motivating force. But the concept of glory was used both during and after the war for a number of purposes: to encourage enlistments, to justify the sacrifice of so many, and to assuage the pain of the survivors. In retrospect the war became glorious. 1 Reminiscences of John Emerson Anderson, Civil War Papers, box 1, folder 7, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. 2 Col. Thomas Livermore, "The Union Soldier, Col. Livermore's Lowell Institute Lecture. The Makeup of the Northern Armies and the Spirit Which Animated Them—Anecdotes of the War Time," Daily Advertiser. Mar. 9, 1886 (newsclipping no. 292), in "Brief Memoranda of our Martyr Soldiers who fell during the Great Rebellion," Scrapbook by Henry I. Bowditch, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. Civil War History, Vol. XL, No. 1, © 1994 by The Kent State University Press 26CIVIL WAR HISTORY Union volunteers like Anderson grew to see their experience in war as part of a pivotal event in American history, an event as important as the Revolution had been. Upon their return to Lancaster they were confronted by a civilian society that not only told them that their experience was important but demanded an account of it—or in the case of the deceased—created one. Recently historians have reexamined volunteers and the Civil War combat experience. W. J. Rorabaugh found that early volunteers came from a class of clerks, farmers, and skilled workers who enlisted to overcome a sense of "blocked aspirations." Gerald Linderman has studied the combat experience of the Union soldier and found that the concept of courage taken into battle was altered by experience. According to Linderman, when the soldier returned to civilian society he was confronted with a group that still retained the original concept he had rejected. Linderman further argues that veterans retreated from their memories of combat into a "hibernation" that lasted until 1880. After this point, a "revival" of public interest in the war coincided with increased enrollment in the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR).3 This essay examines how soldiers and others in Lancaster remembered the war over time. The class divisions that were present in 1861 determined in large part the rank and service of an individual, and in turn the education level and experience of the soldier also affected his perception of the war and how he converted that memory in peacetime. It is important to consider how these soldiers and officers were educated and from which social class they emerged. The infantry volunteers came largely from the farming and mechanic classes.4 They were the product ofthe village schools that offered a plain New England education. Their moral philosophy was largely bred from New England Congregationalism, whether Unitarian or Trinitarian, a Bible-grounded Protestantism. The officer classes in Lancaster attended the Lancaster Academy, a private school, and went on to Harvard College. These were the members of an elite who had availed themselves of the best education possible. Often their families were involved in the...