Roberts Hicks presents the post war stories of two wounded Civil War Veterans
Many Civil War books discuss the mortality due to bullets and diseases but very few explore the postwar lives of wounded warriors. Based on his new book, Wounded for Life: Seven Union Veterans of the Civil War, Dr. Robert Hicks examines two Union veterans, Thomas Hawkins and Richard Dunphy. Hawkins, an African American sergeant major, was wounded four times at two battles near the James River in Virginia and never recovered. Irish immigrant Dunphy, a sailor aboard USS Hartford, was injured by an exploding shell during the Battle of Mobile Bay and suffered the amputation of both arms. Each awarded the Medal of Honor, both men later worked, married, and had children, yet the war changed their bodies and their relationships with families and communities. Dr. Hicks looks at how they constructed new identities while living with the trauma of the battlefield.
Robert D. Hicks, PhD is an independent scholar of the history of science and medicine. Formerly, he served as director of the Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library and William Maul Measey Chair for the History of Medicine at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. He has worked with museum-based education and exhibits for four decades, primarily as a consultant to historic sites and museums. His most recent book, Civil War Medicine: A Surgeon’s Experience, appeared in 2019 by Indiana University Press. This presentation derives from his new book, Wounded for Life: Seven Union Veterans of the Civil War