Booknotes: Hearts Torn Asunder

New Arrival:
• Hearts Torn Asunder: Trauma in the Civil War’s Final Campaign in North Carolina by Ernest A. Dollar, Jr. (Savas Beatie, 2022).

Arguably no other individual has been more influential than Mark L. Bradley in shaping our modern understanding of the details and meaning of both the final military operations in North Carolina and the Confederate surrender at Bennett Place. Following Bradley's The Battle Of Bentonville: Last Stand In The Carolinas (1996) and This Astounding Close: The Road to Bennett Place (2000) has been two decades of popular and academic book publishing the totality of which has finally accorded 1865 events in North Carolina their proper historical context and due. Additionally, Bradley's Bennett Place volume did much to spark previously neglected attention toward documenting the conflict's major 1865 Confederate surrenders beyond Virginia's iconic ceremony, and ensuing work from others has done much to revise popular understanding of the war's end as being much more than 'Appomattox and the rest.' Ernest Dollar's Hearts Torn Asunder: Trauma in the Civil War’s Final Campaign in North Carolina now adds another layer to this literature.

From the description: "The war’s final campaign in North Carolina began on April 10, 1865, one day after Lee’s surrender. More than 120,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were still in the field bringing war with them as they moved across the state’s verdant heartland. General William T. Sherman was still out to destroy the South’s ability and moral stamina to make war. His unstoppable Union troops faced General Joseph E. Johnston’s demoralized but still dangerous Confederate Army of Tennessee. Thousands of paroled Rebels, desperate, distraught, and destitute, added to the chaos by streaming into the state from Virginia. Grief-stricken civilians, struggling to survive in a collapsing world, were caught in the middle. The collision of these groups formed a perfect storm long ignored by those wielding pens."

Dollar examines the impact of these events through, among other lenses, our modern understanding of post-traumatic stress's effects on the psyches of both military service members and civilians affected by war's devastation. More from the description: Dollar's Hearts Torn Asunder "explores the psychological experience of these soldiers and civilians during the chaotic closing weeks of the war. Their letters, diaries, and accounts reveal just how deeply the killing, suffering, and loss had hurt and impacted these people by the spring of 1865. Dollar deftly recounts the experiences of men, women, and children who endured intense emotional, physical, and moral stress during the war’s dramatic climax. Their emotional, irrational, and often uncontrollable reactions mirror symptoms associated with trauma victims today, all of which combined to shape memory of the war’s end."

A major theme of the book seems to be that this collective trauma was a driving force behind neglected writing about these events and their wider remembrance. "Once the armies left North Carolina after the surrender, their stories faded with each passing year. Neither side looked back and believed there was much that was honorable to celebrate. Hearts Torn Asunder recounts at a very personal level what happened during those closing days that made a memory so painful that few wanted to celebrate, but none could forget."