Once Brothers Now Enemies

When people think of a war they think of a fight between two or more enemies. When thinking of the civil war we realize, it wasn’t a war between two or more enemies, but a war between two brothers. The civil war not only affected the soldiers that fought in it, but also the families and strangers of them. This was a war between brothers known as the South and the North. The civil started when slavery started. Due to this war, soldiers were separated from their family, they suffered from lack of clothes and wounds that ended up in amputation or diseases that ended up in death, and while war was not in progress soldiers and others had to find ways to keep busy.

When reading the book Letter From The War by James G. Basker I realized that many soldiers and their family seemed quite depressed because they were not able to see each other at all. In this book it explains how the soldiers wrote letters to their families to tell what was going on in the war at that time. From reading the letters it showed me that a lot of the soldiers who had sent letters usually died shortly after they wrote their letter them. Many soldiers and family members waited for these letters eagerly. When the soldiers or family members didn’t get their letters as soon as they expected they would be disappointed. “I still live in hopes of getting word from you. I am disappointed every day in getting a letter if you lack of paper buy it if you lack of time to write take time if you lack of envelops and cannot get them send your letter without any. If you can’t get stamps send it any how. If you wil write often I will be glad.” (Joseph Jones, James G. Basker, 9) As you can see from that quote, no matter what was going on they wanted their love ones to write.

The second thing that I wanted to talk about was that the soldiers suffered badly from lack of clothes and the wounds these soldiers suffered from. This site that I read entitled North Avenue Review tells me that it was hard for the soldiers back then. It states, “…because the government would not supply them, the solders had to find another way to get clothing. According to Shotwell, a soldier could not purchase clothing for six months due to lack of venders in the field and the small salaries made by the soldiers” (North Avenue Review, The Hidden War - Morale in the Civil War, by Carl Cox). It also tell me that when they ran out of clothes they would send letters home to ask their family to make extra garments for them. It also tells me that soldiers would barrow clothes and they would also stop to steal clothes from dead enemies. When going back to the book Letter From The War I read a letter from a guy that was writing to his mother. It said, “ I sit down to write you a few lines as I have the chance of sending it by hand there was not much news of consequence in my trip through Kentucky the only thing that happened to me was that my shoes gave out and I had to travel about five hundred miles bare foot my feet were so sore that I could hardly walk one of them had thirteen blisters under the bottom…” That could explain why a lot of people were getting their limbs cut off too. According to The Civil War Society's "Encyclopedia of the Civil War,” “Little was known about what caused disease, how to stop it from spreading, or how to cure it.” Soldiers usually died or had a limb amputated because there was no treatment. From reading this the chances of a soldier not surviving in the civil war was one out of four. From reading a site called The Civil War, it explained to me that, “The state of medical knowledge at the time of the Civil War was extremely primitive. Doctors did not understand infection, and did little to prevent it. It was a time before antiseptics, and a time when there was no attempt to maintain sterility during surgery. No antibiotics were available, and minor wounds could easily become infected, and hence fatal. While the typical soldier was at very high risk of being shot and killed in combat, he faced an even greater risk of dying from disease.”

That brings me into my next topic. While war was not in progress soldiers and others had to find things to do. When typing in the question, what did soldiers in the civil war do in their spare time? I received a really good answer. On YahooAnswers.com someone stated that, “The Civil War gets credit for giving birth to Baseball!! More so among Union soldiers than Confederates, in their spare time troops organized games of baseball…” From reading my school textbook it told me that soldiers would also talk about baseball and play cards. There was really nothing to do because war was not in progress. So they made things to do.

In conclusion I would like to say that there was many problems in the civil war. The problems started with brothers that made them enemies. The north and the south had a lot of history and finally overcame their problems. The north was basically fighting the south because the south had slaves and the north didn’t believe in slaves. They believed that if you touché free ground you were free. They fought the civil war for many years and went through many battles. The soldiers were affected as well as the citizen of these parts. Due to this war, soldiers were separated from their family, they suffered from lack of clothes and wounds that ended up in amputation or diseases that ended up in death, and while war was not in progress soldiers and others had to find ways to keep busy.If you could only imagine the torment that these soldiers went through you would realize that they really fought for our rights and we should be grateful to God for that.