Review: Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction

Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 was to be the defining moment for African Americans held in bondage. Slaves became freed people no longer forced into servitude. The Reconstruction era after the Civil War should have been a time for freed people to rebuild their lives on their terms. What many faced, however, were the vagaries of life, unknown challenges that would be life-altering and life-threatening. Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs explores the medical issues that freed people faced during and after the Civil War. For people formerly held in bondage, life after the war led to sickness, disease, and death.

Downs explores the lives of freedpeople during and after the war years through the eyes of those that endured sickness, disease, and the death of loved ones. Downs also utilizes the experiences of medical caretakers and staff of the Freedmen’s Bureau, formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, the agency employed to freed slaves and indigent whites in the aftermath of the Civil War. Down’s thesis suggests that the Civil War was the largest biological crisis of the nineteenth century. In their quest for freedom, former slaves endured diseases such as smallpox, cholera, dysentery, and yellow fever and received little help from doctors and staff of the Medical Division of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Children, women, and men often died before they could get the help they needed. These are the cases that Downs details along with data and statistics gleaned from physicians and hospitals that were underfunded and understaffed.
Downs supports his thesis by describing six areas that contributed to the devastating losses of freed people due to disease and sickness. Downs begins by looking at the political and social status of free people that led to unhealthy living environments. Downs posits that these conditions led to disease and outbreaks of illness and widespread epidemics. The second area that Downs details ask why disease broke out among unemployed freed people and why the bureau was unable to support a free labor system in the post-war south. In response to the labor crisis, The Freedmen’s Bureau establishes a Medical Division to handle the healthcare of freedpeople. Downs then transitions to a discussion on Freedmen Hospitals and the challenges faced within the structure and hierarchy of the Medical division of the Bureau. Downs feels that the hospital systems were unstructured and unable to handle the massive load of illness among freed people. Downs uses hospital records, and the lack thereof to support this discussion.

Downs then turns his attention to the smallpox epidemic of the late nineteenth century that left many dead in its wake. This discussion transitions into the fifth area that covers the outbreak of other diseases and sicknesses. Downs utilizes specific case studies of freed people and the challenges they faced in obtaining medical care.

Downs wraps up his thesis by highlighting the eventual downfall of the Medical Division of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Drawing on the autobiography of O. O. Howard, commissioner of the Medical division of the Bureau, Downs shows how the needs of the medical care of freed people transitions to state and local governments.

In the epilogue, Downs discusses the illnesses that affected Native Americans. Many of the same issues and concerns that freed people faced during Reconstruction, native Americans endured during the forced removal toward the west. Beginning with the Trail of Tears forced migration in the early 19th century through the Reconstruction, native people endured disease, illness, and death. Downs compares and contrasts the political, social, and medical issues that native Americans and freed people faced drawing parallels between the two groups.

Jim Down’s extensive research brought to life portraits of freed people who endured disease, sickness, and death in the aftermath of the Civil War and the staff and caretakers of the Medical Division of the Freedmen’s Bureau who were tasked to support free people during the Reconstruction era. Downs also reviews similar issues with poor white Americans and Native Americans and draws parallels to the issues faced by freedpeople. These case studies bring to light an area of the Reconstruction narrative often overlooked in Civil War scholarship. To truly understand how the war affected freedpeople during and after the war more attention and consideration needs more attention on all aspects of their lives, including sickness and death.


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Review: A Short History of Reconstruction

A Short History of Reconstruction by Eric Foner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is the abridged version of Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877. This version is a concise review of the Reconstruction period from roughly 1863 through 1877. Foner looks at the political and social aspects of the period, covering the presidencies of Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, and the beginning of the Hayes administration. Foner specifically reviews Reconstruction in five areas: the Black experience, the remodeling of Southern society as a whole, racial attitudes and relations, the expanded authority of the nation-state and national citizenship, and a look at how the North's economy and class structure affected Reconstruction. Although this is a shorter book than his unabridged version by about half the pages it still comes across as a thorough discussion of the era.

This is a great read and very engaging. I'll read the bigger book at some point, but this one packs a punch for what it is.

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Review: Finding Dorothy

Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a wonderfully woven tale of the life of Maud Baum, wife of L. Frank Baum. This historical fiction story closely follows the real life of Baum from her youth through the time of the premiere of the movie The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Elizabeth Letts takes the reader on a journey showing the magic that inspired the book and the movie. As a young coed, Maud meets her roommate's cousin L. Frank Baum and is enamored with his love of theatre. They soon married and spent many up and down years through plenty of good times and bad. Despite living from one financial hardship to another, L. Frank never lost his love of wonderment and eventually wrote the story that brought financial comfort, love, and magic to his family. His wife Maud was there by his side and beyond, as she made sure that his legacy, Dorothy, was taken care of after his death and in the filming of the movie. Finding Dorothy is about finding not just the character that brought to life the book and film but finding the magic in everyday life despite hurdles and hardships.

I grew up loving the Wizard of Oz books, almost to an obsession. I thoroughly loved this book and became engrossed in the story behind the story. It's a great read for anyone that loved the book series and movie.

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Review: Army at Home: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front

Army at Home: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front by Judith Giesberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a look at the effects of the Civil War on women in the North. Giesberg details six specific areas of Northern life that were indelibly changed by the war on the homefront. Areas discussed include the life of rural women who were forced to manage farms alone without husbands and sons, women and their families that were displaced when they were no longer able to make house payments and rents, women in the workplace including those young ladies who lost their lives in the Alleghany Arsenal explosion, freedwomen who began the early civil rights movement, middle-class and working women whose loyalties were divided due to oppressive working conditions and marginality, and women who were left to find and bury the men they lost on the battlefields. In the Conclusion, there is a discussion of how little women were memorialized after the war, unlike their southern counterparts. The author surmises that for the women of the north, the line was blurred between the war on the battlefields and the war raging back at home for the women left to carry on without help or hope.

I thought this was a very good read and quite eye-opening. It seems that when women of the Civil War are discussed, many people think of southern women, the "Scarlett O'Hara" romanticized ideal women depicted in so many Civil War movies and novels. This book gives an accurate portrait of the trials and tribulations of the women left to manage life on the homefront. These women were the army at home.

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Review: Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War

Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War by Catherine Clinton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of essays on different aspects of gender studies in relation to the Civil War. The topics range from abolitionist manhood, Civil War nuns, prostitution, women and children left destitute by the war, and memorialization in the South.

Dr. Catherine Clinton and Dr. Nina Silber include their own essays, as well as those by noted Civil War historians such as Jim Downs and John Stauffer. This book provides a good cursory review of issues faced by women of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.

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