Madness, Malingering & Malfeasance: The Transformation of Psychiatry and the Law in the Civil War Era
by R. Gregory Lande
Category: History

In Madness, Malingering, and Malfeasance, R. Gregory Lande describes the struggle of the medical and legal professions and the U.S. government to cope with insubordination, substance abuse, and crime in the Civil War-era military. During the American Civil War, as in all wars, soldiers were wounded not just physically but emotionally as well. Good men traumatized by the violence of war were sometimes driven to their mental limits, while criminals and troubled individuals who had joined the ranks of the citizen armies found themselves in a more rigid environment in which to commit their transgressions. In the Civil War military, justice was swift and harsh and forgiveness difficult to come by. Citing numerous period documents, Dr. Lande demonstrates that the scientific understanding of mental illness and substance abuse was in its infancy during the mid-nineteenth century. He chronicles cases in which soldiers' mental afflictions or problems with severe alcohol abuse contributed to their misconduct, soldiers such as Leroy Shear, a.k.a. "Lorenzo Stewart," whose arrest after deserting from two different Union units resulted in an even more serious crime. Once charged with disobeying orders or committing a crime, soldiers faced an uncertain fate. While the requirements of military law have always differed from those of civilian law, Civil War troops did not have access to legal counsel unless they could afford to hire a lawyer themselves. The sad result was that many mentally ill, incompetent, and poor men were imprisoned for long periods or even put to death. Though a more sophisticated abuse developed after the war in the emerging field of forensic psychiatry, it would take many years for American society to reform the treatment of those deemed "criminally insane." Madness, Malingering, and Malfeasance shows that the effects of war unfolded in numerous compelling, tragic, and shocking events beyond the battlefield. It is an important contribution to the growing literature on the medical-legal aspects of the Civil War era.