Historian Lesley Gordon followed the men of the 16th Connecticut from home to war and back again and found that "the war had a very long and devastating reach."
The men of this regiment had just been mustered in and barely trained when they fought at the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day of combat in U.S. history. They rushed directly into a Confederate crossfire and then broke and ran, suffering 25 percent casualties in a matter of a few short minutes. One soldier wrote, "We were murdered."
In a later battle, nearly the whole regiment was captured and sent to the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville, where a third of them died from disease, exposure and starvation. Upon return to home, many became invalids, emotionally numb or abusive of family.
Alfred Avery, traumatized at Antietam, was described as "more or less irrational as long as he lived."
William Hancock, who had gone off to war as "a strong young man" returned so "broken in body and mind" that he didn't even know his own name.
--Old Secesh
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