To Protect the Home: How the Civil War Impacted Notions of Manhood in the North

Abstract

The following thesis will attempt to explore the reconstruction of masculinity in the North during the Civil War through an examination of civilian interactions with guerrilla soldiers during Quantrill's Raid. an examination of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, and through an analysis of Walt Whitman's poetry written during the war. Because America had not encountered many large-scale military conflicts in its previous decades of existence, the Civil War caused the Union to reshape its notions of masculinity because of the implications of victory and the consequences of battle on such a large scale. Other scholars of the Civil War have implied that enlistment was simply another path to manhood. and that other paths to manhood remained open; I contradict them and instead assert that, at least for the duration of the Civil War, enlistment became the only way for men to assert their masculinity. Additionally, soldiers defined their masculinity through more than just their behavior; Union soldiers· bodies also became proof of their manhood as they sustained permanent disabilities after the war was over, distinguishing them from the rest of the civilian population and providing permanent proof of their wartime experiences. Furthermore, the Civil War also gave African American men their first opportuniry to claim their manhood by allowing them lo enlist in the army, rescue their families from the war, and escape from slavery forever. Therefore, this thesis will argue that masculinity was shaped by more than just the behavior of the white soldiers who participated in the war; readers will come to understand how the body also became a marker of masculinity through an examination or Walt Whitman's poetry, and thcy will also come to understand how African American men asserted their masculinity for the first time in American history.