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The 19th century was a time of great change for the American economy and demographic. The decades long suffering brought about by the Civil War had innumerable and far reaching consequences for the American psyche. Four long years of fighting, one of the most significant causes of postbellum suicide, had inflicted approximately 1.5 million casualties (dead and wounded) on the population and was also the catalyst for decades of subsequent suffering. Many poor souls who struggled with the obstacles of daily living lost hope and killed themselves. Others who suicided themselves suffered from mental illness or succumbed to a life of “soul crushing” despair with the most devastating and unalterable solution. Alcohol and drug addiction also goaded citizens in physical or emotional pain to end their lives. Suicide did not discriminate, it impacted all classes of postbellum American society.
The first signs of change towards suicide survivors can be seen in the 18th century when European legal systems began to abolish punitive measures, but the prevailing attitude towards suicide in 19th century America was still heavily influenced by the religiosity of the population. The Second Great Awakening had provided Americans with Protestant guidelines that dictated behavior and gender roles, as well as numerous axioms for a moral and productive life. Suicide was viewed as a sinful waste of God’s greatest gift and survivors often faced being stigmatized with the “stain” of suicide on their family name. The soul of the deceased was declared to be damned with no chance of ascending into heavenly bliss. Prayers and memorial masses for suicide victims were forbidden.[1] Survivors often hid the circumstances of death or resorted to the explanation of insanity as motive.[2] In spite of the terrible stigma that was attached to suicide, the unimaginable post war suffering, for both Northerners and Southerners, drove many war-weary men and women to take their own lives. It is noteworthy to mention that the research of Dr. David Silkenat concludes that religious prejudice against suicide does not appear to have prevented Southern white suicides from being buried in consecrated ground, a long held European tradition.[3]
In the 1860s the field of psychiatry was still developing and the mental suffering of wartime victims had never been examined. The Civil War had such a tremendous impact on the entire population that it is difficult to measure the scope of depravation and suffering. However, based on primary source records, we can obtain accounts of what wartime survivors experienced. Southern men and women not only suffered the loss of a generation of young men, but also witnessed the collapse of their entire social structure. It is difficult to imagine the psychological impact of such a swift societal collapse. Given the Southern culture was not as resilient or diverse as the industrialized North, the psychological pain of men and women who were forced to restructure their lives according to an entirely new set of norms and standards must have been staggering.
Among those who suffered most acutely were veterans. The affliction we know today as PTSD had not yet been acknowledged as an illness. Dr. Edward Jarvis, in his 1851 address to the Massachusetts Medical Society, blames the fright and fear of males on what he terms “malignant passions.”[4] This belief in the moral cause of emotional stress would persist well into the 20thcentury. Another notable primary source is an article by Dr. Jacob M. DaCosta published in 1871. Dr. DaCosta details all the symptoms of what he terms “irritable heart” among Civil War veterans.[5] The myriad of symptoms is staggering and Dr. DaCosta attributes them all to cardiac disturbance and states the cause was often a congenital defect. The article appears to lack any empathy or understanding of the psychological symptoms that veterans were experiencing and this is notable when attempting to understand the medical community’s refusal to acknowledge the fragile emotional state of their soldiers. With no psychological recourse, it is easy to understand why these suffering men would turn to suicide. An interesting article written in May 2011 by historian Col. R. Gregory Lande examines Civil War veteran suicides and concludes that it was “a trend” that gathered momentum and quickly became an epidemic.[6]
Primary source obituaries are somewhat scarce. The prevailing sensibilities of the era often prevented newspapers from providing details of what was usually called a “tragic death” or “terrible misfortune.” There were, of course, exceptions. The Chicago Tribune printed a short but tragic account of William Trupp, a member D Company 16th Illinois cavalry, who had suicided in January of 1866 by pulling the trigger of a shotgun with his toe. The account also mentions how his discharge papers were found in his pocket.[7]
Alcoholism frequently played a role in veteran’s suicides. The New York Times published an 1865 account of James Johnson, a wounded Union soldier who was recovering at Centre Street Hospital in New York City from wounds he had received seven months earlier at the Battle of Wilderness (Locust Grove, Virginia). Johnson left the hospital and became extremely intoxicated. His still warm body was found hanging in a nearby shed.[8] Statistics for the Union Army of the Potomac state that in June of 1862, the rate of severe alcoholism was 5.3 cases per 1000 men.[9]
Opium addiction was another reason both men and women suicided. During and after the Civil War, opiates were used extensively by physicians to treat a variety of ailments from syphilis to TB.[10] The opioid derivatives morphine and laudanum were readily available and women began to self-medicate, utilizing them for anxiety and depression. The use of alcohol was associated with male culture and Southern women in particular relied much more heavily on narcotics.[11] While it is difficult to ascertain how many opioid deaths were intentional, the burdens of poverty, widowhood, and grief surely contributed to postbellum women’s distress. The 1868 primary source work, The Opium Habit by Horace B. Day, outlines the daily struggle of the 19th century addict. Day specifically addresses the plight of those men who returned home addicted due to war injuries and how difficult life can become for a chronic addict. He devotes a chapter to the addicts struggle to overcome the physical craving for the drug and how the inability to stop using often means the afflicted will eventually turn to suicide as a way out.
African Americans were not immune to the “suicide mania” that affected postbellum America but it seems to have impacted only a small fraction of the free Black community. Dr. Silkenat’s text offers some very interesting explanations for this phenomenon. He states the lack of written records are due to white newspapers racist journalistic policies, many Black newspapers had high ethical standards and would not print suicide notices, and the limited archival retention of Black newspapers has thwarted research.[12] Secondly, Silkenat speculates that Black families felt an intrinsic sense of shame and dishonor and went to great lengths to conceal the suicide of a loved one.[13] This attitude of shame and guilt among African Americans represents a shift in the Black psyche. Prior to Emancipation, slave suicides were viewed by Blacks as an act of defiance.[14] Postbellum heavily religious African American communities embraced the new belief that freedom was to be celebrated through a life well lived in the service of God and community. An article from The New York Times dated November 28, 1865 examines the suicide of Lieutenant Samuel H. Jorden, an African American who served in the First Colored Heavy Artillery. This piece is a unique look at Black suicide and was most likely written because Lt. Jorden was an educated man who left a suicide note detailing his “family troubles” and how he felt “at times entirely out of my right mind.”[15]
Social class was no protection against psychological suffering. Dr. Eugene Grissom, a veteran of the Confederacy, was head of North Carolina state asylum from 1868-1889. Grissom’s institution was intended for the indigent but became filled with “college professors, merchants, and the children of planters.”[16] The journal of Mrs. Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas is another well detailed primary source document that provides a view of the depravation that occurred in the South, even for those at the very top of society. The hardships of the Civil War were keenly felt by the large Thomas family and Mrs. Thomas’ journal chronicles the rapid collapse of the wealthy Southern plantation class. This work recounts the emotional and physical toll that Southerners had to endure both during and after the war, a toll which drove many to suicide. One consistent theme is the hatred Thomas feels towards the “Yankees”, “Negroes” and “everything connected with them.”[17] By the time of her husband’s post war mental breakdown, Mrs. Thomas had gone from being one of the wealthiest women in the entire South to being forced to earn her living as a teacher.
In the wake of the Civil War, the citizens of the United States would be forced to cope with the intense psychological suffering that accompanies a calamity of this magnitude. Suicide was seen as the solution to end all the hopelessness and despair. Men and women saw self-destruction as the alternative to a bleak future. Suffering, both physical and emotional, was highly personal and depended on the location, economic status, and race of the afflicted person. The secondary source text, Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War-Era South by Dr. Diane Miller Sommerville argues that Southern suffering was the most severe. The decimated Confederacy was left with virtually nothing and many Southerners simply could not function in such greatly altered and unfamiliar circumstances. However, primary source newspapers show that suicide was in no way exclusively a Southern affliction. Northerners were also greatly affected by the demands of “The Great Rebellion.”
For the next several decades America’s suffering would continue. Men and women profoundly damaged by this terrible war would chose to put an end to their lives rather than face the dismal prospect of daily living in a world that did not provide them with any peace or joy. The trauma and depravation that resulted from the Civil War had so irreparably damaged the American psyche that suicide became commonplace.
Footnotes
[1] Marzio Barbagli, Farewell to the World: A History of Suicide (Revised and updated English edition. Cambridge, UK; Polity, 2015), 37.
[2] JG Cvinar, “Do Suicide Survivors Suffer Social Stigma: A Review of the Literature.” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care (41 (1): 14–21. doi:10.1111/j.0031- 5990.2005.00004.x. 2005) 15.
[3] David Silkenat, Moments of Despair: Suicide, Divorce, and Debt in Civil War Era North Carolina (1st ed. Chapel Hill N.C: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 13.
[4] Edward Jarvis. “Causes of Insanity: An Address Delivered before the Norfolk (Mass.) District Medical Society, May 14th, 1851, and Communicated for the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.” (The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 45, no. 15,1851): 299.
5 Jacob M DaCosta. “On Irritable Heart: A Clinical Study of a Form of Functional Cardiac Disorder and Its Consequences.” American Journal of the Medical Sciences 61 (January 1871):17.
6 Gregory Lande. “Felo De Se: Soldier Suicides in America’s Civil War.” Military Medicine 176, no. 5 (2011): 535.
[7] J.V. Phillips. “Suicide of an Illinois Soldier.” Chicago Tribune Jan 11, 1866. https://umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/suicide-illinois-soldier/docview/175631631/se-2?accountid=12299.
[8] “SUICIDE OF A SOLDIER.” New York Times, Feb 26, 1865. https://umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/suicide-soldier/docview/91966025/se-2?accountid=12299.
[9] Christopher B. Frueh and Jeffrey A. Smith. “Suicide, Alcoholism, and Psychiatric Illness Among Union Forces During the U.S. Civil War.” Journal of Anxiety Disorders 26, no. 7 (2012): 771.
[10] Diane Miller Sommerville. Aberration of Mind Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War–Era South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 221.
[11] Sommerville. Aberration of Mind, 224.
[12] Silkenat, Moments of Despair, 40.
[13] Silkenat, Moments of Despair, 40.
[14] T. L. Snyder. “Suicide, Slavery, and Memory in North America.” The Journal of American History (Bloomington, Ind.) 97, no. 1 (2010): 41.
[15] “Coroners’ Inquests.: SUICIDE OF A RETURNED SOLDIER AT THE FRANKFORT HOUSE EXPLANATORY LETTER.” New York Times (1857-1922), Nov 28, 1865. https://umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-
16 Silkenat, Moments of Despair, 9.
17 Thomas Ella Gertrude Clanton and Virginia Ingraham Burr. The Secret Eye: The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848-1889. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 275.
Works Cited
Primary:
Clanton, Thomas Ella Gertrude, and Virginia Ingraham Burr. The Secret Eye: The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848-1889. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
“Coroners’ Inquests.: SUICIDE OF A RETURNED SOLDIER AT THE FRANKFORT HOUSE EXPLANATORY LETTER.” New York Times (1857-1922), Nov 28, 1865. https://umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical newspapers/coroners-inquests/docview/91922524/se-2?accountid=12299.
DaCosta, Jacob M. “On Irritable Heart: A Clinical Study of a Form of Functional Cardiac Disorder and Its Consequences.” American Journal of the Medical Sciences 61 (January 1871): 17-52.
Day, Horace B. 1868. The Opium Habit. Luton, Bedfordshire: Andrews UK Ltd. Accessed September 17, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Eggleston, George Cary. A Rebel’s Recollections. 3d ed. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889.
Jarvis, Edward. “Causes of Insanity: An Address Delivered before the Norfolk (Mass.) District Medical Society, May 14th, 1851, and Communicated for the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.” The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 45, no. 15 (1851): 289–305.
Phillips, J. V. “Suicide of an Illinois Soldier.” Chicago Tribune (1860-1872), Jan 11, 1866. https://umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/suicide-illinois-soldier/docview/175631631/se-2?accountid=12299.
“SUICIDE OF A SOLDIER.” New York Times (1857-1922), Feb 26, 1865. https://umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/suicide-soldier/docview/91966025/se-2?accountid=12299.
Secondary:
BÄHR, ANDREAS. 2013. “Between ‘Self-Murder’ and ‘Suicide’: The Modern Etymology of Self- Killing.” Journal of Social History 46 (3): 620–32. doi:10.1093/jsh/shs119.
Barbagli, Marzio. Farewell to the World: A History of Suicide Revised and updated English edition. Cambridge, UK; Polity, 2015.
Ball, Howard. At Liberty to Die the Battle for Death with Dignity in America New York: New York University Press, 2012.
Battin, M. Pabst. The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Cvinar JG. 2005. “Do Suicide Survivors Suffer Social Stigma: A Review of the Literature.” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care 41 (1): 14–21. doi:10.1111/j.0031-5990.2005.00004.x.
Frueh, B. Christopher, and Jeffrey A. Smith. “Suicide, Alcoholism, and Psychiatric Illness Among Union Forces During the U.S. Civil War.” Journal of Anxiety Disorders 26, no. 7 (2012): 769–775.
Hendin, Herbert. Suicide in America.New and expanded ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.
Kemp, Donna R. Mental Health in America: A Reference Handbook,Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007.
Lande, R Gregory. “Felo De Se: Soldier Suicides in America’s Civil War.” Military Medicine 176, no. 5 (2011): 531–536.
Lester, D. “Suicide in America: A Nation of Immigrants.” Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior 27, no. 1 (1997): 50–59.
Murphy, Antonia. Out of This World: Suicide Examined First edition. Boca Raton, FL: Routledge, 2018.
Silkenat, David. Moments of Despair: Suicide, Divorce, and Debt in Civil War Era North Carolina 1st ed. Chapel Hill [N.C: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
Snyder, T. L. “Suicide, Slavery, and Memory in North America.” The Journal of American History (Bloomington, Ind.) 97, no. 1 (2010): 39–62.
Sommerville, Diane Miller. Aberration of Mind Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War–Era South Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
Wickham, Parnel. “Idiocy in Virginia, 1616–1860.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80, no. 4 (2006): 677–701.
I pledge ……………