Sweet Amnesia A Study of Courts Martial Proceedings and Desertion Records of the 145th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in the American Civil War

Abstract

The reality of army life began to blur as the members of the 145th mustered out of federal service in May 1865. Remembrances of the hardships they, like other veterans, endured were filtered and refined by the passing years, transforming them into sources of amusement and pride. Even the horrors of the battlefield were altered so that every man was a hero, and stories of the military prowess of the regiment often times exceeded historical fact. Perhaps this selective type of situational memory is seen in the remembrances of veterans from every war. The men of the 145th were no different from any other group of returning soldiers. The life they experienced during the war, with its drudgery and horror, was often sensationalized and sanitized in their post war writings.