Defining the reasons why someone would complete suicide in the 19th century is difficult, said Diane Sommerville, Professor of History at Binghamton University. Most of the men and women didn’t leave notes, so historians rely on newspaper reports or recorded witness testimony.
One of the most interesting patterns Sommerville found in her research, she said, is the number of Confederate soldiers who completed suicide before they even got to the battlefield.
“To me, that didn’t mesh with my understanding of what war trauma was about,” she said during a “Behind the Lines” interview with Katie Brackett Fialka. “War trauma is about being in battle and being scared and seeing horrific things, and then becoming traumatized. And that’s not what was happening.”
In her book “Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War Era South” (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Sommerville explains the phenomenon of anticipatory fear reaction and how that may have played a role in the suicide deaths of these individuals. Watch the video for the full interview.
