"I Am Not So Patriotic as I Was Once": The Effects of Military Occupation on the Occupying Union Soldiers during the Civil War

Alex Reeves

4/12/13

The article that I read came as something interesting as it has to deal with the mind set of union troops in areas where there was not fighting and was based on their moods of the occupation of the South.  In which the subject of this article is North Carolina.  To be exact New Bern this is on the coast of North Carolina and was crucial to the blockade of the South.  It was taken quite early in the war and was maintained in Union possession until the war ended.  Through this piece I found that many of the themes from which the soldiers write to home is sometimes shocking and not expected.  From the beginning you get a theme of a shock factor that the author builds up to.  To begin you have the Union soldiers itself many of the men that were so proud to be serving to preserve the Union.  But became quite discouraged with themselves and the country when their role in the war was to occupy and keep the peace in the towns taken by the Union.

 There is truly ignorance to the union soldier as they enter the South and what they expect to see.  Their racism towards the slaves didn’t come as a shock due to the fact that it was a popular thought of the time.  But the ways they were treated by white Southern women is a theme that cannot be passed up.  Dr. Weise has lectured on the Southern way of thinking that a man is the master of his realm and that the national government in eliminating slavery would then be taking that mastery from those white southern men.  I do not argue with that statement but in fact indorse it after reading the article.  As women of the South then began to harass Union soldiers.  They did everything to make the Union soldier as uncomfortable as possible.  But another major reason to this as the author points out is to show their disgust in their men giving the town to the Union and not fighting with honor to defend their own mastery.

Truly this article gives the ups and downs of those Union soldiers that were not in battle and had the job of policing.  Their mindsets came into factor and none of those soldiers as they reflect through their writings after the war can say that they don’t have a changed mind set.

Judkin Browning. ""I Am Not So Patriotic as I Was Once": The Effects of Military Occupation on the Occupying Union Soldiers during the Civil War." Civil War History 55, no. 2 (2009): 217-243. http://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed April 12, 2013).