Historians have estimated that just under 30,000 Union soldiers lost a limb during the war, with over 21,000 surviving the operation. What would happen to men like Lenoir who returned from the war missing an arm or a leg? In part to help men like Lenoir, a flourishing prosthetics industry rose during the war to meet this need. A limp or an amputation could be evidence of moral degeneration as well as physical harm. To Americans living in the late nineteenth century, disability could be a window into character. His fear was justifiable-Lenoir lived in a culture that valued the whole body as a mark of manliness. Instead, Lenoir confided: вЂњbefore all these things I thought sadly of women for I was not old enough to have given up the thought of women.вЂќ Lenoir was justifiably afraid that his injury would leave him crippled, unloved, and alone. Yet, these activities did not occupy his foremost thoughts. Then I thought of skating, swimming, and partridge hunting,вЂќ Lenoir wrote afterwards. вЂњFirst I thought of my favorite sport of trout fishing, which I would have to give up. As he lay writhing in the dirt, his mangled leg leaking blood into the grass and bullets spraying the soil around him, his mind filled with the thoughts of things his disability would deprive him of.

Help us preserve some of the prosthetic limbs in our collection by supporting our вЂњArm and a Leg CampaignвЂќДЄt the Battle of Ox Hill on August 31, 1862, Walter Lenoir, a thirty-nine-year-old North Carolinian was struck by a MiniГ© ball in the right leg. After the Amputation Posted on: February 23rd, 2017

Civil war hospital crutches