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The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home, by Reid Mitchell
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In many ways, the Northern soldier in the Civil War fought as if he had never left home. On campsites and battlefields, the Union volunteer adapted to military life with attitudes shaped by networks of family relationships, in units of men from the same hometown. Understanding these links between the homes the troops left behind and the war they had to fight, writes Reid Mitchell, offers critical insight into how they thought, fought, and persevered through four bloody years of combat.
In The Vacant Chair, Mitchell draws on the letters, diaries, and memoirs of common soldiers to show how mid-nineteenth-century ideas and images of the home and family shaped the union soldier's approach to everything from military discipline to battlefield bravery. For hundreds of thousands of "boys," as they called themselves, the Union army was an extension of their home and childhood experiences. Many experienced the war as a coming-of-age rite, a test of such manly virtues as self-control, endurance, and courage. They served in companies recruited from the same communities, and they wrote letters reporting on each other's performance--conscious that their own behavior in the army would affect their reputations back home. So, too, were they deeply affected by letters from their families, as wives and mothers complained of suffering or demanded greater valor. Mitchell also shows how this hometown basis for volunteer units eroded respect for military rank, as men served with officers they saw as equals: "Lieut Col Dewey introduced Hugh T Reid," one sergeant wrote dryly, "by saying, 'Boys, behold your colonel,' and we _beheld_ him." In return, officers usually adopted paternalist attitudes toward their "boys"--especially in the case of white officers commanding black soldiers. Mitchell goes on to look at the role of women in the soldiers' experiences, from the feminine center of their own households to their hatred of Confederate women as "she-devils."
The intimate relations and inner life of the Union soldier, the author writes, tell us much about how and why he kept fighting through four bloody years--and why demoralization struck the Confederate soldier as the war penetrated the South, threatening his home and family while he was at the front. "The Northern soldier did not simply experience the war as a husband, son, father, or brother--he fought that way as well," he writes. "That was part of his strength. The Confederate soldier fought the war the same way, and, in the end, that proved part of his weakness." The Vacant Chair uncovers this critical chapter in the Civil War experience, showing how the Union soldier saw--and won--our most costly conflict.
- Sales Rank: #1168727 in Books
- Published on: 1995-07-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .46" w x 5.32" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 240 pages
From Kirkus Reviews
An insightful glance at the unique cultural and social milieu of the Union soldier. Relying extensively on diaries, letters, and other primary sources, Mitchell (History/University of Maryland; Civil War Soldiers, 1988) discusses how the Union soldier understood his military experience. Antebellum ideology used the family as a metaphor for one's country, emphasizing the ``Republican Mother'' who educated her sons as self-sacrificing patriots; thus, ``the centrality of home and the family made them central to the Northern soldier's understanding of the Civil War.'' Soldiers--serving under officers who often came from the same town and who were thought of as equals--regarded their generals as fathers, their officers as elder brothers, and the war itself as a family quarrel. That men soldiered with lifelong neighbors and friends meant that the Union soldier brought the value of the home front into battle with him, giving war a sense of purpose: It also frequently weakened military discipline. Mitchell discusses in depth the Union soldier's distinctive view of manhood; his complex relationships with white Southern women--and with black soldiers, who were generally excluded from the American ``family''; his peculiar brand of religion; and his attitude toward death in battle. Mitchell sees as significant the Union focus in the late Civil War against Confederate civilian society, a focus that weakened the Southern soldier's will to resist: Observing that the Union soldier's strength was that he fought the war with home in mind, he notes that ``the Confederate soldier fought the war the same way, and, in the end, that proved part of his weakness.'' An eloquent revival of the simple verities of a vanished era- -idealism, patriotism, small-town parochialism, sense of family and manhood, and fear of failing in the eyes of one's community--that drove the soldier of the North. (Twenty-five halftones) -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"A tidy and compact study....Offer[s] refreshing insight into an understanding of how the north persevered in its struggle toward ultimate victory and who the South's resolve to resist eventually disintegrated....The Vacant Chair reflects the kind of solid scholarship the Civil War era needs."--Journal of American Culture
"The book is full of well-chosen anecdotes, character sketches and vignettes which give the war a peculiar immedicay to the reader. One cannot help but feel personally involved....[T]his is an excellent book."--KLIATT, November 1995
"Many excellent anecdotes....Truly fascinating."--The New York Times Book Review
"This sensitive, incisive work comes closer than anything I have read to exploring what the Northern soldier believed he was fighting for and why he was ready to die for the Union."--George M. Fredrickson, author of White Supremacy and The Inner Civil War
"Reid Mitchell breaks new ground in this imaginative contribution....Combining the insights of psychology, women's history and social history, The Vacant Chair accomplishes the difficult. It offers new perspectives on an old topic. Soldiering expands beyond shouldering a rifle and following the colonel's order in Mitchell's excellent volume."--Jean Baker, author of Mary Todd Lincoln
About the Author
About The Author:
Reid Mitchell is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and is the author of Civil War Soldiers, which was a main selection of the History Book Club and an alternate selection of the Book of the Month Club.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Personal experiences in a time of turmoil
By A Customer
The Vacant Chair adds a personal element to the dates learned in history class. The words and feelings expressed by soldiers recounts a time lost - dedication to an ideal, and courage. Families during the Civil War lived day to day wondering if loved ones were alive, and Mitchell captures their turmoil and hope through the letters and thoughts of soldiers and their families. Although the book focuses on the Northern soldier, one can imagine similar sentiments from both sides. An excellent addition to the history buff's library.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Understanding the Northern Soldier
By Arador
In this book Mitchell looks at the Northern soldier during the Civil War. He uses journals and letters to let the soldiers, nurses, and family members speak for themselves. He really gets inside the heads of the men who fought for the Union. His chapters cover motivations for enlistment, war experiences, encounters with Confederate soldiers and civilians, and how Northerners coped with death. Northern soldiers joined the army to preserve the Union, to fight beside their friends, and protect their families. Many young men considered the war to be their "coming of age" experience. Enlistment was viewed as masculine duty; the army was often considered to be one big family.
Northerners struggled with seeing the South for the first time; Yankees felt like they were in a foreign country. They often derided the lack of industry and the South's laziness (in their opinions) due to reliance on slave labor. Some Northerners became abolitionists as a result of army service, they saw the effects of slavery for the first time in person and were appalled by the horrible conditions they saw on plantations.
In the South, family livelihoods were torn apart by the invading armies, slavery was unraveling before their very eyes, and the government was unable to support the army and the citizens. Often the family back home would encourage soldier's to desert to keep them safe. Many Confederates soldier's thought the war would never end, and eventually they gave up on the Confederate cause, because their families were more important to them. In the end the North's determination to win, the necessity to preserve the Union, their views of domesticity and patriotism, and the support of the home community and family gave them the strength to endure.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Provocative societal -- not military -- history
By HH
In this book, Reid Mitchell provides an insightful look into the mind of 19th-century American society. "The Vacant Chair" deals with men on both sides of the Missouri Compromise line but concentrates on the North. Mitchell's objective is to explain how "the centrality of home and the family to northern culture made them central to the northern soldier's understanding of the Civil War" (p. xiii). Mitchell illustrates this fusion of war, home, and family in a variety of ways. He contends that although northern men understood the basic ideological issues involved in the war, they also regarded the Union as a kind of extended family that tied them to both generations past and generations yet to come, and they were obligated to preserve that family. In this metaphor, they viewed southerners as wayward children who had rebelled against parental government and against God. The rebels had to be punished, but then welcomed back into the family, a reunification symbolized by the marriage of northern veterans with southern belles. Northerners also viewed the Union army, and especially their regiment, as an extension of their community, an impression reinforced by constant communication between home and battlefront. Their military unit became a substitute family in which officers assumed paternal roles over their "boys," helping them make the transition from youth to manhood and citizenship.
Mitchell is most insightful in searching for soldiers' ideas about gender. War, as always, made men out of boys, and Mitchell explores what becoming a man meant to the young recruits. At the same time, he discusses concepts of femininity and shows how soldiers attempted to make up for the absence of women, particularly mothers, in their lives. Nurses provided some of the nurture the men craved, but their officers, in addition to providing paternal guidance, also supplied some emotional support. Mitchell has a revealing analysis of the complex reaction of northern soldiers to southern women, who in their behavior seemed to violate most concepts of proper femininity. His explanation for why northern male anger toward southern white women rarely took the form of rape is quite provocative.
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