Ohio History Journal

LAWRENCE A. KREISER, Jr..

A Socioeconomic Study of Veterans

of the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry

Regiment After the Civil War

 

 

 

In the closing days of the Civil War, Major General William Tecumseh

Sherman declared to Union soldiers preparing to muster out his belief that,

"as in war you have been good soldiers, so in peace you will make good citi-

zens."¹ Many scholars neglect the second half of Sherman's appeal, general-

izing about the adjustments that soldiers made to peacetime society rather

than examining in detail how they made this transition.²    This is unfortunate

because the change of men from soldiers to civilians was enormous in num-

bers alone. Of a total Northern population in 1860 of twenty-two million,

nearly two million men served in the Federal army. In Ohio, out of a prewar

population of 2,400,000, nearly 304,000 men served in the military.³

Hundreds of thousands of Northern soldiers were demobilized at the conclu-

sion of the war and had to readjust to civilian society. Their war-related expe-

riences exercised a profound influence on how they resumed their places in

civilian society.⁴

In recent years, military historians have gained a greater understanding of

the civilian society from which soldiers are drawn.⁵     This understanding is

 

Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr., is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, University of

Alabama.

 

1. Quotation in Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Experiences (New

York, 1988), 207. Portions of this paper were presented at the 1995 Society for Military

History Conference, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The author would like to thank David Skaggs,

Bowling Green State University; Harold Selesky, The University of Alabama; Robert Gerber,

the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Memorial Foundation; and Alicia Browne for their com-

ments and help with this essay.

2. Maris A. Vinovskis, "Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War? Some Preliminary

Demographic Speculations," in Toward a Social History of the American Civil War:

Exploratory Essays, ed., Maris A. Vinovskis (New York, 1990), 1-3.

3. E.B. Long, The Civil War Day by Day (New York, 1971), 701; Frederick Dyer, A

Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, vol. I Number and Organization of the Armies of the

United States (reprint, New York, 1959), 11.

4. Stuart McConnell, Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865-1900

(Chapel Hill, 1992), 15-16; Vinovskis, "Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War?" 21;

Marcus Cunliffe, Soldiers & Civilians: The Martial Spirit in America 1775-1865 (Boston,

1968), 429.

5. Some of the best works on the relations between soldiers and civilian society during the

war are: Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Baton

Rouge, 1952); Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the

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172                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

less certain when scholars examine how soldiers return to, and influence, so-

ciety.⁶ Such an analysis for the Civil War is hindered by the very reluctance

of soldiers to comment upon their postwar experiences. Many veterans, if

they chose to write after the war, believed that only their wartime service

would be of interest to readers. Others, in an effort to repress the horrors of

combat, chose to talk about their experiences only with those who also

served.⁷ As we in a post-Vietnam and Persian Gulf society are reminded,

however, wartime service is a very formative occurrence that frequently results

in long-term psychological influences.⁸

The experiences of sixty-one men from the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry

Regiment are employed in this study to suggest some of the ways that the

Civil War affected the postwar lives of former soldiers. The key element in

this analysis is a comparison of the socioeconomic positions of these men in

1860, before they went to war, with their status ten years later. Such a com-

parison can determine how and why veterans of the regiment adjusted to the

changes brought about in Ohio by the Civil War and the ongoing industrial

revolution.⁹

Several socioeconomic factors are examined in this work. The marital sta-

tus and family size of veterans are examined to see if the war interrupted or de-

layed the life course of soldiers. Occupation is studied to examine what em-

ployment opportunities were available in Ohio to veterans after 1865 and to

determine if soldiers resumed their prewar careers or entered new professions.

Ethnicity and military rank also are analyzed to study how these factors influ-

enced postwar occupational success.

The 103rd was recruited during summer 1862 primarily from Cuyahoga and

Lorain Counties. The regiment was assigned to the Army of Kentucky in

October 1862 and transferred to the Army of the Ohio in June 1863, where it

served until the end of the war.    The 103rd saw     significant action at

Knoxville, Tennessee, in November 1863 and during the Atlanta Campaign

in 1864. Out of a total enlistment of 1,036 volunteers in 1862, the unit suf-

fered forty battle fatalities, fifty-two men wounded in action, and seventy-three

 

 

American Civil War (New York, 1987); Philip Shaw Paludan, "A People's Contest": The

Union and the Civil War, 1861-1865 (New York, 1988); Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair The

Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York, 1993).

6. Richard Severe and Lewis Milford, The Wages of War: When America's Soldiers Came

Home-From Valley Forge to Vietnam (New York, 1989), 266-71.

7. Linderman, Embattled Courage, 266-71.

8. Herbert Hendin and Ann Pollinger Hass, The Wounds of War: The Psychologic Aftermath

of Combat in Vietnam (New York, 1984); Josefina J. Card, Lives after Vietnam: The Personal

Impact of Military Service (Lexington, Mass., 1983); Jessica Wolfe, Pamela J. Brown, and John

M. Kelley, "Reassessing War Stress: Exposure, and the Persian Gulf War," The Journal of

Social Issues, 49 (1993), 15-31.

9. James M. McPherson, Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York,

1982), 583-85; Harold G. Vatter, The Drive to Industrial Maturity: The U.S. Economy, 1860-

1914 (Westport, Conn., 1975), 43-56.

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103rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment After the Civil War                         173

 

deaths from disease. These casualty figures place the 103rd slightly below the

average percentage of troops lost by Ohio regiments.10 After participating in

the last stages of Sherman's Carolinas Campaign, the unit's survivors were

mustered out in June 1865 near Raleigh, North Carolina.11

The methodology employed in this study involved the random sampling of

the 1,000 volunteers of the regiment in 1862.12 These men were organized

into three categories based upon their final military rank achieved during the

war. Three categories of military rank were employed: commissioned officer

(colonel, major, captain, and lieutenant), noncommissioned officer (sergeant

and corporal), and enlisted personnel (privates). Every other name was taken

from this list and searched for in the 1860 manuscript census of population

for Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties. If a soldier died during the war either

from disease or as a result of battle, the name immediately following his was

selected. The marital status, family size, place of birth, occupation, and

wealth for each individual found was recorded. The same process for the

individuals taken from the 1860 census was repeated in the 1870 census. The

initial sample totaled 417 soldiers. Sixty-one of these men, or 15 percent of

the sample, were found in both the 1860 and 1870 censuses and comprise the

database employed in this project. 13

Those analyzed in this study represent a cross section of the soldiers in the

103rd. The men in the database reflect the wartime service of the majority of

the soldiers in the regiment-they joined the 103rd at its organization and

survived the war with only minor physical wounds, if any. All of the mem-

bers of the database enlisted in the regiment during summer 1862, similar to

the great majority of the men in the unit. The average age of the soldiers in

the data base in 1862 was twenty-six, compared with an average age in the

regiment of twenty-five.14 Seventy-six percent of them resided in Cuyahoga

County, compared to 75 percent of the soldiers in the regiment. Additionally,

62 percent of the soldiers in the database were enlisted men, compared to 70

 

 

10. William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 1861-1865 (Albany, 1893),

526, 528. Overall, 5.1 percent of soldiers from Ohio died as a result of combat (either in battle

or from wounds) while the 103rd lost 3.8 percent of its men from enemy action. Nearly 9 per-

cent of soldiers from Ohio died as a result of disease, compared to 7 percent of the men in the

103rd.

11. "103rd Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry," in Personal Reminiscences and Experiences:

Campaign Life in the Union Army, from 1862-1865 (reprint, New York, 1984), 390-444;

Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Her Generals, and Soldiers, vol. 11 The

History of Her Regiments and Other Military Organizations (Cincinnati, 1872), 172-74.

12. Roderick Floud, An Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Historians, 2nd ed.,

(London, 1979), 169-82.

13. In order not to distort the comparison of the socioeconomic status of veterans in 1860 as

compared to 1870, only soldiers who lived away from their parents' place of residence during

both of these years were included in the database.

14. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank, 303. The average age of the men in the database is higher

than that of all Union soldier. Slightly over one-half of all Federal soldiers were under twenty-

five years of age.

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174                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

percent of the men in the regiment. The soldiers that comprise the database,

however, do not represent all of the men who served in the 103rd. Nearly

one-half of the 140 men discharged from the unit for medical reasons or dis-

abilities were searched for in the 1860 and 1870 censuses, but none of them

could be matched in both years. Thus, the postwar effects of severe disease

and physical wounds are beyond the scope of this study.

Military service during the Civil War interrupted the life course of members

of the 103rd. Slightly under 60 percent of the men in the database were mar-

ried in 1860, with an average family size of two children. After the war, vet-

erans' marriage rates increased dramatically, while their family size remained

stable. Over 60 percent of the unwed soldiers in 1860 married by 1870, but

the average family size of all married men remained at two children, below the

national average of four children.15 The war caused soldiers to delay any im-

mediate plans or thoughts about marriage.    One soldier, Private Harlan

Chapman, expressed such thoughts, writing to his fiancee shortly after his en-

listment that, "it made my heart ach to leave you but all of the young men of

our town was enlisting.^"16 The stability in family size before and after the

war resulted because many soldiers were away from their wives for extended

periods during the war and those who wed after the conflict were married for

less than five years.

Occupation was the next factor examined to study how successfully soldiers

made the transition from wartime to civilian employment. Many soldiers in

the regiment expressed an eagerness near the end of the war to return to their

homes, but few specified their future plans. While waiting to muster out,

Sergeant Chauncey Mead wrote to a friend, "I don't have anything to do but

hunt and fish but for all that I am getting mighty anxious to get home."¹⁷

Another man recorded in his diary in May 1865, "expect to go home soon and

then my days here will end and I will be determined to dig for a livelyhood for

the remainder of my days."¹⁸ An analysis of soldiers' postwar occupations

helps to reveal whether these men resumed interrupted jobs or made a fresh

start by entering into new employment opportunities.

The prewar occupations of soldiers analyzed in this study provide a strong

reflection of the types of jobs that comprised the North's and Ohio's economy

 

 

 

 

 

15. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Series A 255-63, "Selected Characteristics of Households:

1790-1957, 11 in Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington,

D.C., 1960), 16.

16. Harlan P. Chapman to Mary Pitkins, December 16, 1862. in the Harlan P. Chapman

Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society Library, Cleveland, Ohio; hereafter cited as

WRHS. All quotations in this paper are presented in their original form.

17. Chauncey Mead to Kate Litzel, June 8, 1865. Chauncey Mead Letter Collection, photo-

copies, WRHS, hereafter cited as 103rd MF.

18. Henry A. Mills, May 13, 1865, Henry A. Mills Personal Journal, microfilm, WRHS.

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103rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment After the Civil War                175

in 1860 (see Table 1). The five occupational classifications used throughout this study are: white collar, such as teachers, manufacturers, and salesmen; skilled laborers, such as craftsmen and construction workers; unskilled labor- ers, such as unskilled industrial workers and apprentices; agricultural, such as farm owners and farm laborers; and unknown, for men who had no occupation listed in the census.19 Veterans of the 103rd made a successful transition to civilian life.    The postwar period represented for them a new beginning, in financial terms, without an extended period of dislocation. Between 1860 and 1870, the aver- age assets (or the sum of soldier's property owned and personal wealth) of men in the regiment increased by over two and one-half times, from $434 to $1,187 (see Table 2).20 The average wealth of Ohioans in 1870 was between     19. The occupational classifications employed in this study are derived from James Q. Graham, Dennis Kelly, and Paul D. Yon, Project Heritage: Wood County, Ohio, Index of the 1860 Federal Manuscript Census (Bowling Green, 1978), 22. 20. Throughout this study, wealth statements for 1870 are adjusted for inflation, by using the consumer price index, to represent 1860 real dollars. This was determined by dividing 1870 wealth figures by 1.45, the quotient of the average price of consumer goods in 1870, $135, di- vided by the average price of consumer goods in 1860, $93.

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176                                                            OHIO HISTORY

 

$550 and $1,300, indicating that veterans of the 103rd ranked near the top of

this bracket.²¹

The rise in wealth among veterans of the regiment was accompanied by

postwar occupational changes. Skilled laborer became the most prevalent oc-

cupational category among veterans in 1870, as opposed to the agricultural

jobs that had dominated the regiment in 1860. Soldiers' shift away from

farming and toward skilled labor occupations corresponds to a similar trend in

Ohio between 1860 and 1870, as the state became increasingly industrialized

and urbanized during and after the conflict.²² Members of the 103rd adjusted

to this shift in employment patterns at a greater rate than the other citizens of

Ohio: 54 percent of the men in the regiment were employed as either skilled

or unskilled laborers after the war, compared to 50 percent of the state's popu-

lation.²³

Private Jessie Walton and Corporal Edward Linder's experiences after 1865

typify the ability of veterans to adjust to the changing employment opportu-

nities available in postwar Ohio. Walton remained a private throughout the

war while Linder was promoted to corporal in October 1862. Prior to their

enlistments, Walton was a farm laborer with no assets while Linder owned

his own farm worth $500. After the war, Walton became a wholesale dealer

with nearly $700 in assets and Linder became a skilled laborer with $1,925 in

assets.²⁴ The ability of these men to undertake new jobs in the business and

retail sector of the economy, jobs that were not widely available in Cuyahoga

and Lorain Counties in 1860, point out how veterans could become success-

ful in newly developing sectors of the economy.25

There are several explanations for the shift to skilled labor occupations

among soldiers in the 103rd. Many Northerners in 1861 believed the "Free

Labor" ideology of the Republican Party, or that the triumph of the federal

 

 

 

 

 

21. Data take from Plate XXXIII, "Wealth," in Statistical Atlas of the United States, Based

on the Results of the Ninth Census 1870, U.S. Bureau of the Census (Washington, D.C., 1874).

22. Data taken from U.S Bureau of the Census, Table XCVL, "Manufacturers by Totals of

States and Territories," in A Compendium of the Ninth Census 1870 (Washington, D.C., 1870),

796; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Series A 195-209, "Population of States, by Sex, Race,

Urban-Rural Residence, and Age: 1790 to 1970," in Historical Statistics of the United States:

From Colonial Times to the Present (Washington, D.C., 1976), 33.

23. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Table XXX, "Selected Occupations with Age and Sex and

Nativity," in A Compendium of the Ninth Census, 752.

24. Walton and Linder's assets in 1860 are taken from U.S. Bureau of the Census, "Eighth

Census of the United States, Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties, Ohio, 1860." Their assets in 1870

are taken from U.S. Bureau of the Census, "Ninth Census of the United States, Cuyahoga and

Lorain Counties, Ohio, 1870," and adjusted for inflation to represent 1860 real dollars by using

the consumer price index.

25. William R. Coates, A History of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland (Chicago,

1924), 505; G. Frederick Wright, A Standard History of Lorain County, Ohio (Chicago, 1916),

283.

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103rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment After the Civil War              177

government during the Civil War would achieve social mobility for laborers and protect their economic and political liberties. Such a belief may have drawn veterans into labor occupations after the war.26 Or, these men may   26. Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party be- fore the Civil War (New York, 1970), 1139; Thomas R. Kemp, "Community and War: The Civil War Experience of Two New Hampshire Towns," in Toward a Social History of the Civil War, 67; Earl J. Hess, Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union (New York, 1988), 5-7.

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178                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

have been following what historian Stephan Thernstrom, in his study of so-

cial mobility in a nineteenth century city, terms the "ideology of mobility."

Thernstrom argues that many Americans believed they could achieve socioe-

conomic success by moving into new types of business jobs that, although

not necessarily well-paying, at least offered the potential for advancement.²⁷

Such a decision would have been an especially interesting choice for veterans

of the 103rd because men in skilled labor positions possessed a lower average

wealth in 1870 than veterans in agricultural occupations. The increased op-

portunities to move into labor occupations may have attracted veterans to en-

ter into these jobs, however, because, while they were in the military,

Cleveland grew into an important manufacturing and industrial center in

northern Ohio.²⁸

The adaptation of members of the regiment to the changes in employment

patterns also reflects the influences that military service had on these men.

Many of them started new careers after 1865 because their military service

took them away from their previous occupations. Private Perry Mapes re-

called how the excitement of military life appealed to him more than remain-

ing at home to work on his family's farm.29 Sergeant Chauncey Mead wrote

to his fiancee that after an initial sampling of Army life, he and the other men

in his company regretted "they did not enlist sooner."³⁰ To these men, the

chance to enter a new phase in their lives by joining the military looked bet-

ter than remaining either at home or in their prewar occupations.³¹

Military service exposed soldiers in the 103rd to a wider world. Private

Thomas Williams believed that his wartime service broadened his mental

horizons. He recalled that he:

 

like thousands of others, was a farmer boy, born and raised on a farm and knew

nothing of this great world of ours, outside of two or three counties in the neigh-

borhood of his home. At that time I thought I knew it all, but at this point in life I

look back to that time, and wonder how it was that the army mule did not eat me up

when the vegetation was scarce, as I was so green.32

 

 

27. Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City

(Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 68-70.

28. Coates, A History of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, 504-12.

29. Perry Mapes, "Personal Experiences Before and During the Civil War," n.d.. typewrit-

ten, 11-13, WRHS.

30. Chauncey Mead to Kate Litzel, September 27, 1862, Chauncey Mead Letter Collection,

photocopies, WRHS.

31. Glen H. Elder, Jr., "Military Times and Turning Points in Men's Lives," Developmental

Psychology, 22 (March 1986), 238. Elder argues that military service alters the life course of

veterans because this experience "opens up new options and experiences, from exposure to

competent male models to the discipline of group effort and social responsibility and the wider

perspective associated with travel."  Elder also asserts that military service represents a

"pronounced break in the lifetime a discontinuity between past and future."

32. Thomas H. Williams, "Recollections of Army Life, as Seen by a Private Soldiers," in

Personal Reminiscences and Experiences, 93.

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103rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment After the Civil War                      179

 

Life on the farm after the war may not have satisfied the taste for excitement

that soldiers developed while in the military. Although Army life often was

mundane, the exhilaration of combat could not be replicated on farms. The

energy and excitement of growing Ohio cities increasingly beckoned veterans

seeking new jobs and potential adventures.³³

Place of birth was the next factor examined to determine whether the in-

creased postwar prosperity of men in the regiment applied equally to soldiers

of foreign and native birth. The tensions and prejudices against white, for-

eign-born ethnic groups that had troubled the country during the 1850s de-

clined after the war. A more tolerant North, however, did not always translate

into increased economic opportunities for foreigners at a local level.³⁴

Foreign-born soldiers, the majority of whom were natives of either Ireland

or Germany, experienced a significant increase in assets between 1860 and

1870, although they still fared worse than native-born men (see Table 3).35

Foreign-born soldiers achieved their greatest financial success after the war in

labor related occupations, but they were much less successful at entering and

succeeding in white-collar occupations. Their inability to enter these profes-

sions may have been because they did not have access to the same contacts, or

today what we think of as networks, as did native-born veterans. They there-

fore did not have equal opportunities to move into these jobs. This lack of

mobility also was because nativism, although declining after 1865, did not

disappear entirely.³⁶

Captain George Brady and Private Robert Crawford provide examples of

how foreign-born veterans, as opposed to native-born ones, increased their

wealth after the war but missed out on opportunities to move into

white-collar occupations.   Both Brady, who was born in Ireland, and

Crawford, who was born in the United States, worked in skilled laborer occu-

pations before the war. Neither man was listed in the 1860 census as pos-

sessing any assets, but both men experienced a significant increase in wealth

after the war-Brady possessed total assets of $480 while Crawford possessed

$2,750.³⁷ But Brady had remained a skilled laborer, while Crawford became a

county official, a white-collar occupation, in Cuyahoga County. Although

 

 

 

 

33. James I. Robertson, Soldiers Blue and Gray (Columbia, 1988), 8.

34. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New

Brunswick, 1985), 13-19; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 130-37.

35. The place of birth and total percentage of foreign-born men in the database are: Ireland

8 (50 percent); Germany 5 (38 percent); England 1 (6 percent); and Canada 1 (6 percent).

The average age of these men in 1862 was twenty-five years old, compared to an average age

among the native-born soldiers in the database of twenty-six years old.

36. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 28.

37. Brady and Crawford's assets in 1870 are taken from the U.S. Bureau of the Census,

"Ninth Census of the United States, Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties, Ohio, 1870," and adjusted

for inflation to represent 1860 real dollars by using the consumer price index.

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180                                           OHIO HISTORY

both men increased their assets, Crawford, because he was native born, may have possessed the connections that Brady lacked to move into a job with a higher social status. There are several reasons why foreign-born veterans advanced economically after 1865. Labor struggles in America and Ohio during the late 1860s, a product of industrialization, created an alliance among workers of different ethnic backgrounds in their attempt to achieve better working and living con- ditions. Steven Ross, writing on nineteenth-century industry and labor rela- tions in Ohio, asserts that workers of different ethnic groups were united in their efforts to better their standards of living because of memories of com- mon wartime service. Despite ethnic differences, soldiers understood during the war that they were participating in a common cause. After 1865, the shared wartime efforts of foreign and native-born veterans, now turned work- ers, helped them to win increased levels of pay and economic mobility, al- though at unequal rates.38   38. Steven J. Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (New York, 1985), 209.

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103rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment After the Civil War                    181

 

Foreign-born veterans also benefited from an assimilation process during

their military service. Foreign soldiers learned a great deal about American

society and culture while in the Army. Many of them had not been away

from their homes for long periods of time since their arrival in America, and

their service in the 103rd took them over relatively wide expanses of the

country. They lived and fought alongside their native-born comrades, in the

process undergoing what historian Ella Lonn, in Foreigners in the Union

Army and Navy, terms "Americanization."³⁹ As a result, foreign-born sol-

diers found less overt discrimination in their home communities after the war.

This allowed them, similar to Captain Brady, to achieve greater economic as-

sets, but without necessarily experiencing an increase in their social status.⁴⁰

Military rank was the last variable analyzed to determine postwar economic

success. Reid Mitchell contends in Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations

and Their Experiences that the experience of war psychologically transformed

men and altered their personal identities.⁴¹ Service in various leadership posi-

tions, along with their wartime experiences, transformed soldiers in the 103rd

and influenced their economic status after 1865. The men in this paper were

organized into three categories based upon their rank at the end of military

service. These three categories are:  commissioned officers, noncommis-

sioned officers, and enlisted men.

Military rank was a significant factor in determining the financial status

that veterans of the 103rd achieved by 1870. Men who rose in rank during

the war developed confidence and leadership skills that enabled them to take

advantage of new postwar employment opportunities and to improve their fi-

nancial positions (see Table 4).⁴² First Lieutenant William Hall worked as

an unskilled industrial laborer, with no assets, prior to his enlistment in the

103rd. Hall was promoted from first sergeant to second lieutenant in October

1863 and from second to first lieutenant in August 1864. After the war, Hall

worked as a skilled craftsman in Cuyahoga County, accumulating total assets

of $1,925 by 1870.⁴³ Men such as Hall who rose in rank displayed in the

postwar economy the same sorts of ability and ambition that made them suc-

cessful during wartime.

 

 

 

 

39. Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Union Army and Navy (reprint; Baton Rouge, 1985), 209.

40. Vinovskis, "Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War?" 29; Michael H. Frisch, Town

into City: Springfield Massachusetts, and the Meaning of Community, 1840-1880 (Cambridge,

Mass., 1972), 123-29.

41. Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers, 56-89.

42. On the need for Civil War officers to demonstrate their leadership capabilities to gain the

respect of the soldiers under their command, rather than relying only on their rank, see

Linderman, Embattled Courage, 43-60.

43. Hall's assets in 1870 are taken from U.S. Bureau of the Census, "Ninth Census of the

United States, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 1870," and adjusted for inflation using the consumer

price index to represent 1860 real dollars.

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182                                             OHIO HISTORY

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103rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment After the Civil War                    183

 

Men promoted to commissioned officers also took advantage of the prestige

that accompanied their wartime positions to better their financial standing.

Officers were regarded, and treated, differently from enlisted troops during the

war. The regimental surgeon, Luther Griswold, wrote to his wife in 1862

that, "my intercourse is with men of the best order of talents ... There is a

romance in the whole thing exceedingly captivating to me and I do not won-

der that men (officers I should say) become captivated with the army. I do not

see anything I confess very captivating to the private soldiers."⁴⁴ Officers

gained from their military rank the social prestige that, when combined with

demonstrated leadership abilities, enabled them to improve their economic sta-

tus upon returning to civilian society.⁴⁵

All of the men in the 103rd did not undergo a rise in wealth after the war.

By 1870, the assets of soldiers who were demoted from noncommissioned of-

ficers to privates decreased by 46 percent. Private John Wiley was a farmer

before the war with total assets of $2,100 in 1860. He mustered into the reg-

iment as a sergeant and was reduced to a private in August 1864. Wiley re-

turned to his farm after the war and his assets declined to $900 by 1870.46

Veterans such as Wiley who were demoted in rank demonstrated a lack of ini-

tiative and leadership ability during the war that carried over into their postwar

civilian careers. They also may have been labeled with a social stigma that,

in contrast to the social prestige of officers, hindered their opportunities for

social and economic advancement.⁴⁷

In general, soldiers in the 103rd made a successful transition to civilian so-

ciety after the conclusion of the Civil War. Veterans were attracted to, and

succeeded in, the labor professions that increasingly dominated Ohio's econ-

omy. Foreign-born soldiers improved their financial situations after 1865, al-

though they did not achieve the wealth and status of their native-born com-

rades. This suggests that during the war, foreign-born soldiers gained enough

national and local goodwill to enable them assimilate, at least economically,

more easily into their hometowns. Finally, men promoted in rank displayed

the same initiative and ability after the war that they demonstrated during the

conflict to improve their socioeconomic status. Conversely, soldiers reduced

in rank suffered from a lack of initiative and ability, and perhaps a social

 

 

 

44. Luther D. Griswold to Jerusha Griswold, October 2, 1862, Luther D. Griswold Letter

Collection, WRHS.

45. On the close social connection between soldiers and civilian society, see Robertson,

Soldiers Blue and Gray, 122-29; and Reid Mitchell, "The Northern Soldier and His

Community," in Toward a Social History of the American Civil War, 80-88.

46. Wiley's assets in 1860 are taken from U.S. Bureau of the Census, "Eighth Census of the

United States, Lorain County, 1860." His assets in 1870 are taken from U.S. Bureau of the

Census, "Ninth Census of the United States, Lorain County, 1870, and adjusted for inflation by

using the consumer price index, to represent 1860 real dollars.

47. Mitchell, The Vacant Chair, 26-31.

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184                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

stigma, that limited their chances for advancement in post-war society.

The conclusions drawn in this study do not prove absolutely the relation-

ship between military service and various socioeconomic trends in nine-

teenth-century American society, but the data do suggest that military service

during the Civil War influenced the status of Union veterans between 1860

and 1870. More small-unit studies are needed to clarify the broader implica-

tions of Civil War service on former soldiers and the society to which they re-

turned in 1865. Similar investigations also are needed for the veterans of

America's twentieth-century conflicts, such as the influence of the G.I. Bill

on World War Two veterans and the readjustment of soldiers who fought in

Korea, the United States first war with limited national war aims. Once the

influence of wars on the lives of veterans is further examined, scholars can

more accurately determine the long-range affects of military service.

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