Stragglers and Insanity: The Civil War’s Heavy Psychiatric Toll

ECW welcomes back Christy Perry Tuohey.

“But the [American Civil] War was different, its toll much heavier and longer lasting than any previous experiences of most men of that generation. In their letters and diary entries, Civil War soldiers testified to the reality that the conflict was extraordinarily horrible, different from anything they had ever witnessed.”

— Dillon Carroll[1]

“Sir: I have the honor to invite your attention to one of the most peculiar cases I have ever witnessed in the hospitals of our Army.”

–Surgeon John Kirker[2]

In his letter to medical director A.B. Campbell, dated December 2, 1864, Surgeon John T. Kirker, in charge of the U.S. Army General Hospital at Wheeling, West Virginia, described a young man, about 25 years old and wearing a Union uniform, who “wandered into our hospital a few days ago, evidently insane, and has ever since been detained as a patient, under the close surveillance found necessary in this peculiar case, and he is now here.” [3]

Kirker wrote that the patient’s handwriting was fairly good, and that the man presented himself as someone with “a liberal German education.” The soldier said his name was George Andermott and told the doctor that he was in the Rebel army, enlisted in Georgia, and deserted from a Missouri regiment. Kirker asked Campbell whether Andermott was a “proper patient in an Army hospital.”[4] The letter made its way to Surgeon General Joseph Barnes, who referred it to the adjutant general’s office, which returned it to Campbell with a note asking if “this man cannot be disposed of in accordance with the enclosed order.”[5] The order referred to was Special Orders No. 82, August 28, 1864, pertaining to Confederate deserters.

That order reads in part: “Hereafter deserters from the Confederate Army, who deliver themselves up to the United States forces, will, on taking the oath that they will not again take up arms during the present rebellion, be furnished subsistence and free transportation to their homes, if the same are within the lines of the Federal occupation.”[6]

Surgeon Kirker replied that he did not think Andermott could be treated simply as a deserter. “The man is mentally disqualified for taking the oath of allegiance; indeed he is now [not of sound mind] to such a degree that very slight persuasions would induce him to swear anything, either for or against the Government.” The surgeon also noted that Andermott was in his present state unemployable and had to be watched constantly for fear of doing harm to himself or others. “He gives the officers and nurses a great deal of trouble, both by his uncleanly habits and the viciousness of his disposition. He is a strong muscular man, and when once aroused is a very dangerous creature to have among sick and wounded men.”^[7]

The information about Andermott was sent to Surgeon Charles H. Nichols, who oversaw the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. (the institution’s name changed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in 1916). Nichols agreed to admit Andermott, writing “the necessity of ridding the Hospital of so dangerous an inmate appears to be sufficient justification for the issuing of such an order.”^[8] According to the book The U.S. Army Medical Department, 1818-1865, the Army paid insane asylums for temporarily housing military patients.^[9]

Modern researchers have found evidence that the type of warfare that developed during the Civil War may have contributed to more incidences of mental illness among troops than soldiers in previous wars may have experienced. In the book Providing for the Casualties of War: The American Experience Through World War II, author Bernard Rostker writes:

“In earlier wars, armies spent most of their time foraging for food and shelter and searching for the enemy and little time actually fighting. During the Revolutionary War, neither side fought during the winter, limiting the duration of campaigns to the milder months. Closed formations, inaccurate weapons of limited range, and brief and infrequent encounters characterized premodern warfare. All these conditions served to reduce the susceptibility of troops to manifestations of combat stress.”^[10]

Rostker points out that improved transportation meant soldiers could fight for longer periods of time and have food and other supplies brought to them close to battlefields. More lethal rifles replaced muskets, increasing the danger of sniper attacks. Campaigns, particularly in the South, could be waged year-round, and open formations and fluid battles meant greater chaos and terror.^[11]

Less than one-sixth of 1 percent of Union soldiers serving in the Civil War were diagnosed with a neuropsychiatric impairment, but many cases went likely unrecorded and “dealt with in ways that we would today consider totally unacceptable.”^[12]

Modern historians have found symptom patterns among Civil War veterans that match up with diagnoses from later wars, such as combat fatigue, battle shock, combat stress reaction, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Post-battle behaviors observed after the fighting at Antietam labeled as many as a third of Confederate soldiers who fought there as stragglers, which sounds as if the troops lagged or strayed from their regiments. But late anthropologist and chief of military psychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research David Marlowe observed that stragglers were not simply wandering.

“Stragglers were described as sitting under trees, trembling, clutching their rifles, staring into the middle distance, jumping at any loud noise, the startle response that is today usually considered diagnostic of a combat stress reaction.”^[13]

Surgeon Kirker described Andermott as a straggler. Because so many Confederates were labeled as stragglers behaving strangely after Antietam, and because Andermott self-described as a Confederate, this may have led the medical officers to believe he was a Rebel deserter. Records show Private George Andermott, birth name Georg Andermadt, was a native of Germany, born in 1840, and a member of Company C, 15th Missouri Volunteers, a Union regiment. No evidence has been found that he ever served in a Confederate regiment.

U.S. Army nurse and superior of the Wheeling Sisters of St. Joseph Mother Mary de Chantal wrote in her journal about a train trip to Washington on February 6, 1865 “accompanied by an orphan child, an insane soldier and guard.” In the Morning Report of Sick and Wounded of the U.S.A. General Hospital, Wheeling, West Va., dated February 7, 1865, George Andermott, whose diagnosis was “insanity,” was listed as “Taken to Mil. Insane Asylum near Washington, D.C.”^[14]

Surgeon Kirker wrote on February 7 that “the order of the Adj’t Genl of the Army has been promptly complied with, and the man [Andermott] forwarded as directed under proper guard.” Andermott was admitted to the government asylum February 8, 1865, suffering from what was called “chronic dementia.” He remained at asylum until his death in 1879.^[15]

The Civil War brought some progress in mental illness treatments. Some 19th-century practitioners who studied and treated mentally ill Civil War soldiers began to define insanity in new ways. Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, known as the father of American neurology, investigated battle wound-related nerve damage and its relationship to psychiatric diseases. His findings challenged existing psychiatric therapies that focused on character and spiritual development. Dubbed ‘moral theory,’ these types of interventions emphasized the type of institutional confinement Andermott experienced. As the 20th century dawned, neurological and pharmacological advances widened the range of treatments available to combat survivors.^[16]

Christy Perry Tuohey is an author and a 30-plus-year veteran of newsrooms and classrooms. She was a TV news reporter, anchor, host, writer and producer in markets including Charleston/Huntington, WV; Charlotte, NC; Columbus and Cleveland, OH; and Syracuse, NY. She has written for a number of print and digital publications. In the 2000s, she taught journalism classes at Syracuse University. Her most recent book, A Place of Rest for Our Gallant Boys: The U.S. Army General Hospital at Gallipolis, Ohio, 1861-1865, was published by 35th Star Publishing (Charleston, WV). She is currently researching the Union Civil War hospitals of western Virginia/West Virginia with funding provided by the West Virginia Humanities Council.

 

Endnotes:

[1] Dillon J. Carroll, Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness and Civil War Soldiers, (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2021), 28.

[2] Kirker to Campbell, December 2, 1864, Letters Received by the Adjutant General, 1861-1870, NARA Record Group 94, ID# 300368 (hereafter Adjutant General Letters).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Breck to Campbell, December 27, 1864, Adjutant General Letters.

[6] Special Order 82, August 28, 1864, The War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Vol. 42, Part 2, 555.

[7] Kirker to Campbell, December 2, 1864, Adjutant General Letters.

[8] Nichols to Breck, January 14, 1864, Adjutant General Letters

[9] Mary C. Gillett, The Army Medical Department, 1818-1865 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1987), 230.

[10] Bernard Rostker, “The Civil War,” Providing for the Casualties of War: The American Experience Through World War II, (RAND Corporation, 2013), 96.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid, 97.

[13] David H. Marlowe, “Modern War: The American Civil War,” Psychological and Psychosocial Consequences of Combat and Deployment With Special Emphasis on the Gulf War, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001), 19.

[14] Morning Report of Sick & Wounded, USA General Hospital, Wheeling, WV, February 7, 1865, Post/Central Hospital, Wheeling, West Virginia, Civil War Records, A&M 3289, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, West Virginia.

[15] Note written by Surgeon John T. Kirker, Acting Assistant Surgeon of Wheeling U.S. Army General Hospital, Adjutant General Letters.

[16] A.S. Luchins, “Moral treatment in asylums and general hospitals in 19^th-century America,” The Journal of Psychology, November 1989, Vol. 123, No. 6, 585-607.