Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War

Abstract

Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War is a fascinating new look into Civil War soldiers' postwar adjustments to returning home. Jordan notes that what little work currently exists focuses too narrowly on the veterans' "fraternal rituals, their infamous pension lobbying, and their reunions, parades, and monuments" (3). Jordan identifies Gerald Linderman (Embattled Courage) and his assertion that Union soldiers paid "as little heed as possible to the memories of the war" as representative of the existing historiography on the subject, a notion which he counters: "Afflicted with guilt, sorrow, and purposelessness, Union soldiers considered homecoming a task as onerous and demanding as any military campaign" (3).