Doug Stout
Guest Columnist
In the book Marching Home, Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, by Brian Matthew Jordan, the author researched what happened to the Union soldier after the Civil War.
Veterans were looked upon as fanning the flames of war with their memories. Soldiers who had spent time in rebel prisons were accused of lying about how bad the conditions were in order to sow discord against the south. When soldiers related their stories of battle, they were accused of waving the bloody shirt, wanting vengeance for those that died in battle. The widespread consensus was the war was over; stop talking about it. However, veterans could not forget what they had experienced, and they did not feel that the public should forget the dead or the sacrifices of the veteran that was made to unite the country and end slavery.