Holmes’ front: constructing a new face of battle for America’s Civil War

ABSTRACT

In his seminal study of the changing nature of warfare between Agincourt and the Somme, military historian John Keegan proposed that future historians might consider combatants’ emotions in their assessments of the impact and nature of conflict. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of the history of emotions as an analytical approach, but rarely, if ever, is this directed toward the study of military history, far less the history of insurgencies and counter-insurgencies. This paper examines America’s civil war (1861–1865) as a case study of the ways in which an emotional history approach might illuminate not the physical experiences of but rather the immediate and longer-term reactions to counter-insurgency conflict through a focus on one specific individual, the future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. It proposes that Holmes, whilst not a man of the ranks, nevertheless can reveal the wider ramifications of civil war and its emotional impact, both individually and culturally. As a relatively limited internecine war, one not fought by professional armies but by volunteer forces, America’s civil war highlights the ways in which the soldier’s response points us toward the kind of emotional revolution that has, to date, mainly been located within the European nations.

KEYWORDS:

• American Civil War
• emotional history
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• veterans
• volunteers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Cain, “A ‘Face of Battle’ Needed”; and Keegan, Face of Battle, 36.

2. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities; and Keegan, Face of Battle, 17.

3. Foster, “What’s Not in a Name,” 416–7, 421–2; Rafuse, “Confederate Insurgency”; Storey, “I’d Rather Go to Hell”; and Armitage, “Secession and Civil War,” 43–4.

4. Keegan, Face of Battle, 1, 31; and Parish, American Civil War, 285.

5. Keegan, Face of Battle, 17; McPherson, What They Fought For, 4; and Gallagher, The Union War, 61.

6. Editors, Battles and Leaders, Vol. 1, x; and Keegan, Face of Battle, 55–6.

7. Holmes to Laski, 28 July 1927, in Howe (ed.), Holmes-Laski Letters, II, 966; Scott, “Essay on Chivalry,” II, 261; and Holmes to Baroness Moncheur, quoted in Wilson, Patriotic Gore, 747.

8. Baker, Justice from Beacon Hill, 22–3; Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 3; and Ayers, Presence of Mine Enemies, 150–1.

9. Baxter, Statistics, Medical and Anthropological, lxxv; Crosby, “Surgeon’s Report,” 187; Bonura, Under the Shadow of Napoleon; Lee, “Le Culte de Napoléon,” 148–49; Forrest, Napoleon’s Men, x; and Berkovich, Motivation in War, 3–5.

10. Foote, Gentlemen and Roughs, 4; Linenthal, Changing Images of the Warrior Hero, 51–2; Kammen, Season of Youth, 100; Snyder, Citizen-Soldiers, 86; and Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, 2.

11. Holmes, “Reflections on the Past and Future,” 163.

12. Novick, Honorable Justice, 38; and McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 329.

13. Holmes to mother, 1 May, 8 September 2023 September 1861, in Howe, Touched With Fire, 3–4, 5, 11–12.

14. Holmes to mother, 23 October 1861, in Howe, Touched With Fire, 13, 18.

15. Holmes Diary No 2., in Howe, Touched With Fire, 23, 27.

16. Wongsrichanalai, Northern Character, 2–3, Passim; Holmes Diary No 2., in Howe, Touched With Fire, 25; Bryant quoted in Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 80–1; and Putnam, William Lowell Putnam, 9.

17. Cain, “‘A Face of Battle’ Needed,” 26–7.

18. Keegan, Face of Battle, 165.

19. Foote, Gentlemen and Roughs, 3, 86; Wongsrichanalai, Northern Character, 159; Keegan, Face of Battle, 167; and Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 18–22.

20. Harper’s Weekly, “New England Never Runs,” 9 November 1861; Holmes to Pollock, 28 June 1930 in Howe (ed.), Holmes-Pollock Letters, II, 269–70.

21. Holmes to parents17, 18 and 22 September 1862, in Howe, Touched With Fire, 63–7.

22. Holmes, Snr., “My Hunt,” 738–9, 741.

23. Ibid., 743–4, 746, 769.

24. New York Times, 20 October 1862; Holmes, Snr., “My Hunt,” 743–44.

25. Bellamy, “An Echo of Antietam,” 381; and Morse, Life and Letters, I, 43–4.

26. Holmes to Amelia (sister), 16 November 1862; to mother, 12 December, in Howe, Touched With Fire, 71, 73, 74–5.

27. Holmes to mother, 14 December 1862; to father, 29 March 1863; to parents, 3 May 1864; Diary 7 May 1864, in Howe, Touched With Fire, 78, 91, 103, 108.

28. Holmes Diary, 12 May 1864; to parents, 16 May 1864, in Howe, Touched With Fire, 117–9, 121–2.

29. Holmes to parents, 16 May; 30 May; 7 June 1864, in Howe, Touched With Fire, 123, 135, 142–3.

30. Holmes, “Memorial Day Address, May 30 1884”; and Holmes, “Memorial Day Address, 30 May 1895,” 80–7, 87–95.

31. James, “A Most Extraordinary Case,” 466; Novick, The Young Master, 98–9; Edel, The Untried Years, 232; and Halperin, “Henry James’s Civil War,” 28.

32. Holmes, “Memorial Day Address, 1884,”, 15.

33. Holmes, “Memorial Day Address, 1895,” 73–4, 78, 80–1; Keegan, Face of Battle, 61; and Kagan, Eye of Command, 89.

34. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 1–2; and Livingston in Eustace et.al. “AHR Conversation,” 1488.

35. Reddy, Navigation of Feeling, x, 143.

36. Reddy in Eustace et.al. “AHR Conversation,” 1497; Reddy, Navigation of Feeling, x; Watson, “Disintegrating Emotions,” 663; and Janney, Remembering the Civil War, Passim.

37. Holmes, “Memorial Day Address, 1884”, 13; and Holmes, Collected Legal Papers, ix.

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Notes on contributors

Susan-Mary Grant

Susan-Mary Grant is Professor of American History at the University of Newcastle. She is the author of North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (2000); The War for a Nation: The American Civil War (2006); A Concise History of the United States of America (2012); and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: Civil War Soldier, Supreme Court Justice (2016). She is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society.