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Some saloons opened near the entrance to the National Soldiers' Home, taking advantage of many veterans' drinking problems. Saloonkeepers encouraged veterans to run up their bar tabs, especially after "Pension Day," when the men left the Home with a few dollars in their pockets.

to the asylum for insane veterans in Washington. John Van Gent, "being a constant drinker," jumped out of a two-story building on Spring Street (just north of the home), suffered a compound fracture of both bones in his lower right leg, had it amputated, and died of infection a week later. Walking home late one night after spending the evening drinking on National

A hearing into the death of Henry Ives, a veteran inmate with a weakness for liquor, revealed a pattern of behavior all too common for the veterans in Milwaukee. Ives had spent a Friday afternoon in late March drinking at a nearby saloon named Brady's. Returning to the home for supper, he later went back to drink some more. Once during the long evening he started to walk

geon would later call his "recent debauch." During the day he took several doses of chloral hydrate-prescribed by the surgeon to steady his nerves-and ate a hearty supper. Shortly afterwards, however, he fell into a fit and died before a doctor could be summoned.

The postmortem found a damaged heart, congested liver and spleen, an ulcerated

and inflamed stomach, and "very much congested" kidneys. Surgeon John S. Page concluded unequivocally that he had died of "muscular exhaustion of the heart" brought on by "chronic Alcoholism." Corroborating testimony came from Henry Somers, a guard, who claimed that Ives "had frequently been arrested for drunkenness." The brief investigation included testimony from the surgeon and the assistant surgeon, the provost sergeant and the keeper of the guard house, and two fellow veterans; it concluded that Ives had drunk himself to death. Both of the other veterans questioned were also being held for drunkenness. The friend who had left him at Brady's admitted that he had "been in the GuardHouse, with Ives, several times before”— once for more than two weeks-for drinking offenses. The other rather forlornly reported that he had still been drunk when Ives died and went on to describe his own Friday evening: "I met some old friends; and drank too much; and, then, left the Home; without permission; and, then, got drunk again."

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The Board of Managers for the National Homes rarely confronted the veterans' drinking directly, and the issue of alcohol use at the homes only occasionally appeared in the hundreds of pages of published minutes from their regular meetings. But the managers could not completely ignore such a major problem, and at least an outline of a policy emerged. For instance, temperance was to be encouraged, but not required, among inmates. In 1872 the board announced that furloughs would be "refused to inmates addicted to intemperance" and declared one Milwaukee saloon off-limits to inmates in 1889. In 1886 the board shrugged off a protest by the Women's Christian Temperance Union about beer being sold at one of the branches. Four years later, the managers responded more fully to a similar petition. Beer would continue to be sold at the National Homes, they firmly stated, because the profits paid for entertainment and recreation facilities in the homes, because it provided an outlet for men on the grounds rather than in nearby bars, with "excellent results...both as to the morals and the discipline of the men,” and because it resulted

in the men saving a much greater portion of their pension money. Although they never seemed enough to satisfy Milwaukee teetotalers—newspaper debates broke out in the Milwaukee Sentinel over the sale of beer at the home in 1879 and in 1901– temperance efforts were certainly encouraged. In 1903, for instance, the Protestant chaplain at the Northwestern Home reported total membership of over 170 veterans in two temperance societies, while the priest ministering to the home's Roman Catholics "gave the pledge of total abstinence" to 26 inmates. He also assured the board that he “occasionally admonished them in my sermons to shun saloons and the use of alcoholic liquors.” The effectiveness of such temperance efforts is, of course, hard to measure, but the less than two hundred temperance men claimed by the chaplains represented less than 10 percent of the total membership of the home at the time. Most old soldiers were no more vulnerable to heavy-duty moralizing than they had been as young soldiers; Civil War armies were hardly models of temperance, despite the thousands of pamphlets distributed to them by the American Temperance Union, the American Tract Society, and the Christian Commission.24

The policy regarding disciplinary issues related to alcohol was one of firm lenience and understanding. Even the militant Women's Christian Temperance Union favored rehabilitation and sympathy for victims of alcohol, and most physicians had come to accept alcoholism as a disease. Heredity, a weak moral backbone, and the social and psychological pressures arising from the rapid modernization of the United States continued to be blamed for the apparently rising number of drug and alcohol addicts (sensationalistic estimates reached a million by 1900). Yet the medical community instinctively turned to the idea that addiction-to opium, heroin, alcohol, sex, tobacco-was a curable pathology.25

Perhaps wisely, the Board of Managers left the development of appropriate courses of treatment for alcoholic veterans up to physicians in the several homes who were to “use such remedies as they, in their professional opinion, may deem proper.” In the sometimes terse notes they kept when

ever a veteran was admitted to the hospital, surgeons at the Northwestern Branch seemed to refer to "alcoholism" as a temporary condition. Rather than a chronic, even permanent disease, it appears as a shortterm infection, like a cold, that once the effects wear off, is gone. Although the surgeons sometimes failed to conceal their distaste for the behavior of their patients, they did seem to treat alcohol abuse as a medical condition rather than a moral failure. Withdrawal symptoms were treated with small doses of whiskey, bromide solutions, morphine injections and, as in the Henry Ives case, chloral hydrate (itself a rather addictive narcotic). Some men were put on special diets; others no doubt were treated to motivational lectures. Edward Simpson was brought to the hospital at least twiceonce from a "low dive" and on another occasion from the county jail. Interrogated by the surgeon, he soon claimed to realize, according to the surgeon's notes, "that he is not of much account."

"26

In addition to the sometimes idiosyncratic treatments by local surgeons, the Northwestern Branch experimented with institutional therapies in the mid-1890s, with much apparent success. In 1894 the governor of the home, Cornelius Wheeler, devoted a full page of his brief report to the Board of Managers to "Temperance." He boasted that "the Home seems almost a model community when . . . contrasted, with its character" three years before. Wheeler had reason to be happy, for the number of disciplinary cases at the home had plummeted from over five thousand in 1890-1891 to less than sixteen hundred for the 1893-1894 fiscal year. He obviously believed that at least part of the reduction was due to the establishment of a "Veteran Keeley League" at the home and of a Keeley Institute in a separate building on the grounds. Nearly four hundred members had paid a total of more than sixty-five hundred dollars out of their pensions for the treatment.27

The Keeley Institute at the Milwaukee Home was only one of dozens of Keeley franchises established around the country. Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who built the original institute in Dwight, Illinois, in the 1880s, had developed a treatment for all kinds of

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addictions in the 1860s and

1870s. First marketed as a home remedy, the Keeley cure became part of a much more comprehensive several-week-long course of treatment consisting of kind words, openness, sympathy-and frequent injections of Keeley's secret cure: the "Double Chloride of Gold" formula.

Keeley had spent years developing his formula. While serving as an army surgeon at Jefferson Barracks during the Civil War, the hard-drinking soldiers under his care had inspired him to investigate the causes of inebriety, and he eventually came to believe that he could find a cure. In the 1870s he came up with the medicine injected into and swallowed by thousands of patients all over the country. He never divulged the exact nature of the cure, other than to affirm that gold was the key component. Keeley claimed that his "simple and mild, but thoroughly effective" treatment had proven "uniformly and almost miraculously successful," with only 5 percent of his patients backsliding into addiction, although Governor Wheeler of the Milwaukee Home admitted the much higher rate of nearly 30 percent. Keeley's secrecy and extravagant claims made his "cure" rather controversial. A hint that the Board of Managers may have had some doubts about the use of the cure at the National Homes appeared in their minutes late in 1894, when they passed a motion to "strike out certain lines touching the cure of drunkenness in the various Branches." The institute may also have created hard feelings among the hundreds of inmates who refused to take part. When an old sailor named Michael Butler was brought into the guardhouse for being "drunk & disorderly," he called the attendant "a Keely [sic] Son of a Bitch & other vile names.""

Keeleyism at the Northwestern Branch soon faded from memory, although the struggle with demon rum for the souls of Civil War veterans continued for decades.

Why did veterans seem so vulnerable to alcohol? The common practice of using morphine and opiates to relieve the pain and suffering of egregiously injured or ill soldiers has frequently been blamed for the rise of addicts in American society after the Civil War. Indeed, even civilians could become addicted to narcotics because they consumed so many prescribed and overthe-counter cures containing opium and morphine derivatives. Severely wounded veterans-just the kind who were most likely to end up in the National Home system, especially before age was accepted as a "disability" late in the century-may well have been more likely to succumb not only to narcotics but also to alcohol. A cursory look at the records kept by the surgeon examining men requesting admission to the home shows the severity of many of their wounds. Although a few reported fairly minor disabilities (cases of rheumatism in a joint or two, the loss of a finger, stiffness), and some had managed to hurt themselves falling into latrines, getting kicked by mules, or being poked in the eye by a tree branch during a night march, chilling reminders of the lethality of Civil War battlefields fill the surgeon's records. From only two pages, recording the applications for admission from a single week in October 1867, comes echoes of the great battles of the war: a soldier who lost his

right arm at Chancellorsville, another who lost

his right leg below the knee at Cold Harbor, a man who left an arm at Pleasant Hill, another who was partially paralyzed at Chickamauga.29

But not every painfully crippled veteran became an alcoholic, and obviously, not every man with a drinking problem suffered from daily physical pain. But they may well have suffered from a different kind of pain. Elizabeth Corbett maintained that the monotony of life at the home caused them to seek release in the bottle. An element of desperation in the lives of some of the veterans emerges from the slivers of evidence that have survived. It can be seen in Hannibal Hopkins, who got into trouble nineteen times in two years and received sixty-five days punishment in the guard house-at least twice, he begged to be put in the guardhouse after "suffering from a debauche." Between the parades and the GAR meetings, between the infrequent celebrations and the occasional touring company of actors or singers, their lives were empty and lonely. It was easy to take comfort from a bottle, but there was, of course, little comfort to find there. One was more likely to end up, like Mahlon C. Lichty, "drunk and loafing in [the] depot"; to become a nuisance to your barracks mates, like William Maroney, who uttered "in an aggravating manner the word 'rats' when his comrades pass[ed] by him"; or, like Simon O'Kane, who had twice in a twoweek period in 1891 requested to be locked in the guardhouse so he could sober up, end it all by committing suicide.30

Ironically, the pension system implemented by the federal government between 1865 and the turn of the century attempted, in the words of a recent study of the issue, to "reconstruct" families in the Union. It did so by establishing pension eligibility based on patterns of familial dependence: orphans, widows, and parents could

collect pensions if the men who would normally have supported them were unable to do so. Yet the system of National Homes established to care for and honor the veterans who had sacrificed the most removed

them from their families and eliminated the possibility of having families. Already less than whole because of their disabilities, they were further emasculated by their dependence, their isolation, their useless

ness. They became ghosts, brushed off and lined up and applauded on Memorial Day or the Glorious Fourth but forgotten during the rest of the year.31

31

1998 by James Marten

Notes

The author wishes to thank Maureen Farmer, Chief of Library Services, Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, Milwaukee, WI, for her help and encouragement.

'Elizabeth Corbett, Out at the Soldiers' Home: A Memory Book (1891), pp. 27-34, 235-236; The Soldiers' Home (ca. 1891), Cornelius Wheeler Papers, Milwaukee County Historical Society, Milwaukee, WI.

2 Corbett, Out at the Soldiers' Home, pp. 38, 102-103, 103-104, 100-101, 78-79, 18, 60-61.

3 Margaret Ann Mott, "Lydia Ely Hewitt and the Soldiers' Home," Historical Messenger 22 (September 1966): 101–111.

Richard Severo and Lewis Milford, The Wages of War: When America's Soldiers Came Home-From Valley Forge to Vietnam (1989), pp. 130-131, 138–141, 176; Larry M. Logue, To Appomattox and Beyond: The Civil War Soldier in War and Peace (1996), pp. 85-89; Stuart McConnell, Glorious Contentment:The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865-1900 (1992), p. 23. For the debate over the nature of the aid to be extended to disabled soldiers, see Judith Gladys Cetina, "A History of Veterans' Homes in the United States, 1811-1930," (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1977), pp. 61-83.

" Patrick J. Kelly, Creating a National Home: Building the Veterans' Welfare State, 1860-1900 (1997), pp. 77-88; Robert J. Neugent, "The National Soldiers' Home," Historical Messenger 31 (Autumn 1975): 88-91; “Domiciliary Building History," Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Administration Medical Center Collection, Milwaukee County Historical Society. For the sharp-if brief-controversy over closing the Wisconsin Soldiers' Home in favor of the National Home, see Milwaukee Sentinel, May 31, June 9, 11, 12, 13, 1866. Congress changed the name of the institutions from “Asylum" to "Home" in 1873. Milwaukee Sentinel, Mar. 1, 1873.

"Neugent, "National Soldiers' Home," pp. 91-96; 125th Anniversary Historic Walk (1992).

'Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (1992), pp. 140-141. Nearly thirty states also established homes for Union veterans, subsidized in part by federal funds. By 1910, 31,830 veterans—about 5 percent of those still living-lived in federal or state homes.

" Milwaukee Sentinel, Dec. 26, 1870; Annual Report of the Northwestern Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, 1874 (1875), pp. 1-4; Annual Report of the Northwestern Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, 1875 (1876), pp. 1-3; Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 14, 1878,Aug. 10, 1881,Aug. 4, 1885, and Mar. 14, 1887. The Sentinel regularly provided detailed summaries of the annual reports issued by the home.

9 Milwaukee Illustrated (1877), pp. 28-31; Milwaukee Sentinel, Sept. 16, 1869, and Oct. 28, 1888.

10 Milwaukee Sentinel, Nov. 27, 1870, Dec. 24, 1868, Feb. 14, 1878, and July 15, 1871; Annual Report . . . 1875, pp. 7-8; Milwaukee Sentinel, Dec. 23, 1878; The Soldiers' Home, p. 8; Annual Report ... 1874, p. 6.

"Milwaukee Sentinel, July 18, 1872, Aug. 4, 1870, July 16, 1886, June 17, 1869, Aug. 1, 1872, July 1, 1875, and July 14, 1877; "Domiciliary Building History," Zablocki VA Medical Center Collection; Milwaukee Sentinel, Aug. 5, 1872, and July 31, 1873; National Soldiers' Home Near Milwaukee (1881); Milwaukee Sentinel, July 17, 1871.

12 John Dugan and Henry C. Miller Files, in Sample Case Files of Members, Records Relating to the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers and the National Homes Service, Veterans Administration, 1866-1937, Records of the Veterans Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration-Great Lakes Region, Chicago, IL (hereinafter cited as cited as NAGL).

RG

13 John Dugan to Gen. M. R. Patrick, June 15, 1885, in Dugan File, ibid.

14 "Record D, National Home N.W.B.," Zablocki VA Medical Center Collection, pp. 231, 333; see, for example, Hospital Record, Northwestern Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, vol. 5, p. 508, Records of the Public Health Service, RG 90, NAGL.

15 Hospital Record, vol. 1, pp. 106 and 86; vol. 4, p. 5; and vol. 1, p. 127, ibid.

16 Elizabeth Corbett to Enos Comstock, Sept. 8, 1943; Comstock to Corbett, Aug. 28, 1943, both in Elizabeth Corbett Papers, Milwaukee Public Library, Milwaukee, WI; Corbett, Out at the Soldiers' Home, pp. 74-75, 156-157, 186-191; Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin, Drinking in America: A History (rev. ed., 1987), pp. 103-104; Milwaukee Sentinel, June 29, 1884.

"Kelly, Creating a National Home, pp. 175-178; Wright's Milwaukee County and Milwaukee Business Directory, 1896 (1896), pp. 323-329; Descriptive Book, Robert Chivas Post No. 2, Records of Milwaukee, WI, GAR Posts, 1865-1943, Milwaukee County Historical Society; "Record D," p. 729, Zablocki VA Medical Center Collection; Hospital Record, vol. 1, p. 56, RG 90, NAGL.

18 Milwaukee Sentinel, Aug. 10, 1881, and Mar. 14, 1887; “Record D," pp. 1-10, 547-556, 681-690, 3, 4, Zablocki VA Medical Center Collection.

19

George S. Dickinson to Col. C. F. Brown, May 2, 1889, George S. Dickinson File, Sample Case Files, RG 15, NAGL; “Record D,” pp. 550, 177, 731, 179, 254, 883, 552, Zablocki VA Medical Center Collection. 20 "Record D," p. 819, Untitled Ledger Book, ca. 1912, p. 122, and Northwestern Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, General, Special, and Circular Orders, 1908, Zablocki VA Medical Center Collection; James Ford File, Sample Case Files, RG 15, NAGL.

21 A sampling of the hospital records revealed 83 out of 591 cases related to alcohol. Hospital Record, vol. 1, pp. 1-155; vol. 4, pp. 1-78, 281-290, and 391-400; and vol. 5, pp. 1-10, 101-110, 201-210, 301-310, 401-410, and 501-510, RG 90, NAGL.

22 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 8, 126, and 135; vol. 5, p. 205.

23 Henry Ives File, Sample Case Files, RG 15, NAGL.

24 Minutes of the Proceedings of the Board of Managers of the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (n.d.), vol. 1, pp. 170; vol. 2, pp. 279, 102, 328; vol. 3, pp. 91-92; J. C. Furnas, The Life and Times of the Late Demon Rum (1965), pp. 209-210. For the local controversy over temperance at the Milwaukee branch, see the Milwaukee Sentinel, Mar. 17 and 24 and Apr. 2, 3, 4, and 5, 1879, and June 30, 1901.

25 Lender and Martin, Drinking in America, pp. 116-122; H. Wayne Morgan, "Introduction," to Yesterday's Addicts: American Society and Drug Abuse, 1865-1920 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), 9-10, 16-23; David F. Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (expanded ed., 1987), pp. 73-77.

26 Hospital Record, vol. 4, p. 12, 449; vol. 2, pp. 712, RG 90, NAGL. 27 Report of the Board of Managers of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (1894), pp. 208-209.

28 Lender and Martin, Drinking in America, pp. 123-124; Samuel Hopkins Adams, The Great American Fraud (1907), p. 121; Proceedings of the Board of Managers, vol. 2, pp. 599; “Record D," p. 548, Zablocki VA Medical Center Collection.

29 David T. Courtwright, “Opiate Addiction as a Consequence of the Civil War," Civil War History 24 (June 1978): 101-111; Courtwright, "The Hidden Epidemic: Opiate Addiction and Cocaine Use in the South, 1860-1920," Journal of Southern History 49 (February 1983): 63-65; “Surgeon's Daily Records, 1867-1877," pp. 29, 11, 24, 16-17, Zablocki VA Medical Center Collection.

30 Corbett, Out at the Soldiers' Home, pp. 74-75; “Record D," pp. 1, 330, 686, 730, 183, 187, Zablocki VA Medical Center Collection.

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Often

ften researching a family member's Civil War military service can be a double-edged sword. Many researchers have the expectation that their ancestor's military service was honorable-highlighted by famous battles, displays of courage under fire, and medals earned. Unfortunately, what some genealogists find is that their ancestors' military service was not as courageous and honorable as stories passed from generation to generation would have them believe. Although many love to romanticize the American Civil War, much happened that soldiers would not brag about to their families. Army life was hard, and desertion, insubordination, cowardice under fire, theft, murder, and rape were not uncommon. Evidence of such behavior in the Union army can be found in entry 15, Court-Martial Case Files, 1809-1894, Record Group 153, Records of the Judge Advocate General (Army). This series includes proceedings of general courts-martial, courts of inquiry, and military commissions. A general court-martial is the highest military tribunal convened to try violations of military law. A court of inquiry is an investigative body that lacks the power to impose punishments. And military commissions are special courts established under martial law for the investigation and trial of private citizens.

When researching a soldier who served in the Union army, begin with his compiled military service record. These carded records often mention a crime such as desertion or absence without leave as well as reference to a corresponding general order, special order, or general court-martial order. Orders are arranged by type, year, and then number. Printed copies of general orders and special orders can be found in Record Group 94, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780's-1917. General court martial

orders are located in Record Group 153. These orders provide basic information such as the date, location of the trial, charge(s) brought against the accused, finding of the court, and sentence. The order also specifies whether the sentence was approved or disapproved by a higher authority.

To identify proceedings of a specific court-martial, researchers need to consult registers reproduced on National Archives Microfilm Publication M1105, Registers of the Records of the Proceedings of the U.S. Army General Courts-Martial, 1809-1890. The index shows the name of the accused, his rank, regiment, company, the president of the court, the judge advocate, and when and where the court convened. There are six indexes that cover the period 1861 to 1865. The case files include records of general courts-martial, courts of inquiry, and military commissions. Included are documents describing the organization and personnel of the courts; charges and specifications; pleas and arraignments of the defendants; papers and exhibits submitted for the consideration of the courts; proceedings, findings, and sentences of the courts; reports of the reviewing authorities; statement of action by the secretary of war and the President; and related correspondence. Case files are arranged by an alphanumeric filing scheme. For 1861-1865, court-martial case file numbers begin with II and run through OO (NN751 for example).

A series of court-martial case files (1861-1865) that were lost during the Civil War were later recovered by the Judge Advocate General in the early 1890s. These files are arranged numerically and are not included in the registers reproduced on microfilm publication M1105. The only index to this series is in the Old Military and Civil Records section of the National Archives.

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