Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

On June 11, 1865, an Iowa adjutant named Taylor Peirce wrote a letter to his wife, Catharine, and their three children in Des Moines. At the age of 42, Peirce was ancient by Army standards. Nearly three years of campaigning and picket duty, from the rifle pits of Mississippi to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, had exacted great physical costs. Peirce had been deafened “by the concussion of artillery” at Port Gibson and had injured his spine at Third Winchester; enemy lead then grazed him at Cedar Creek. And that was to say nothing of the more mundane afflictions – the throbs, aches and hemorrhaging bowels – that beleaguered many Civil War soldiers. Still, what disturbed Peirce most were anxieties about returning home.

“Now that the war is over,” he wondered, would he “be in a situation to enjoy what I have striven for?” Earlier that week, awaiting his discharge papers in an Army camp near Hamburg, S.C., the soldier had toiled to the point of fatigue on a history of his service in the 22nd Iowa Volunteer Infantry. Contemplating how Army life had compressed a lifetime of excitement, difficulty, danger and privation into just three years, he was deeply skeptical whether he could return to civilian society. “I am much troubled about what to do for a living,” he wrote candidly. “The army … has awakened feeling[s] in me that are incompatible with a live of Ease and qui[e]t.”

Peirce was hardly alone. Throughout the spring of 1865, Union soldiers indelibly stained by combat began to think more seriously about all that their return north toward home entailed.

In a blizzard of letters to his sweetheart, Rachel, a Pennsylvania cavalryman named Samuel Cormany warned that he was now “inclined to be short, quick-tempered.” Cataloging his behavioral irregularities, which included succumbing to whiskey’s temptations on more than one occasion, he wondered how he would “overcome all evil” to once again become an ideal romantic partner.

From Louisville, Ky., on the Fourth of July, an apprehensive 15th Corps soldier alerted his family that they would “scarcely recognize” him. “I am a veteran,” he explained, “not merely by name, but also by looks.”

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Such apprehensions were magnified when the soldiers recalled that they were returning to a civilian society that had rioted, resisted and reached no agreement about the meaning of the war. “[Do the] Copperheads still hold up their heads or do they look like whipped cuss?” Peirce demanded to know, unsure about how he might relate to those who had derided his cause and dodged the draft. Would he be greeted with thanks and acknowledgment? Would he find an audience willing to accept the truth of his war stories? And alongside concerns about his personal welcome, how would civilians reckon with the Union’s triumph on the battlefield? Would they honor the cause, or would the demands of sectional reconciliation overwhelm it? Would the rebels, who had inflicted so much pain and suffering, Peirce asked, “be again permitted to rule”?

The rumors that surged through the ranks in April, May and June of 1865 hardly inspired confidence. “I suppose that some of the people up there are very sorry to think the war is so near over,” one New York soldier began. “I see that some of them have the idea that the soldiers are a lot of drunken, demoralized, degraded beings and are unfit to be admitted into civilian society.”

And more than a few civilians concocted frauds to take advantage of returning soldiers, who, while battle-hardened, were often relatively flush with back pay and naïve about what to do with it. The New York intellectual Vincent Colyer, one of a tiny handful of Northern thinkers genuinely interested in the “problem” of reintegrating blue-coated veterans, printed up handbills bemoaning the swindlers who stood ready to filch freshly paid bounty money.

The war revealed one more cruel irony to Union soldiers as the irregular cracks of musketry during the last, desultory engagements replaced the roar of battle: Billy Yank’s triumph had suppressed the rebellion, but his feat only raised maddening new questions – both personal and political – about the “peace” that would follow. The system for reintegrating and caring for veterans was not yet in place, and no one knew if the supports that did exist could handle the weight of such a massive demobilization.

We should take seriously the foreboding and angst, fear and betrayal that oozed from soldiers’ pens as this war came to a close. And then we should remember that although our nation now recognizes the plight of returning soldiers as a major social problem, we still lack collective, national rituals of reintegration and recognition.

Related Civil War Timeline An unfolding history of the Civil War with photos and articles from the Times archive and ongoing commentary from Disunion contributors. Visit the Timeline »

Taylor Peirce finally arrived in Davenport, Iowa, on July 29, 1865, after an onerous seven-week march that alternated between blistering sun and driving rain. He found temporary employment purchasing livestock for a Des Moines butcher shop, but it was unsatisfying labor. Between 1866 and 1870, he operated a “stationary engine,” though his war wounds “became so troublesome” that he could no longer work. “It is an annoyance for any one to converse with me,” he lamented in an affidavit requesting a federal pension in 1881. “Therefore I remain out of employment.” Peirce staggered on for two more decades, finally succumbing to exhaustion.

While the birth of another child after the war brought him joy, his worst fears about life after Appomattox were largely realized. Reconciliation triumphed and his health deteriorated. “I don’t believe he has had a day since he come home,” his daughter wrote near the end of his life, “without more or less suffering.”

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Sources: Taylor Peirce Pension File, National Archives; Richard L. Kiper, ed., “Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor: The Civil War Letters of a Union Soldier and His Wife”; James Mohr, ed., “The Cormany Diaries: A Northern Family in the Civil War”; letter from an unidentified 15th Corps soldier, July 4, 1865, Carol M. Newman Library, Special Collections, Virginia Polytechnic Institute; letter from an unidentified soldier to Mary Ashley, May 7, 1865, Carol M. Newman Library, Special Collections, Virginia Polytechnic Institute; Brian Matthew Jordan, “Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War.”

Brian Matthew Jordan is the book review editor for The Civil War Monitor.

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