This dissertation is a history of emotionally and psychologically damaged Civil War veterans. Only one monograph has been published on this subject, and it argued that mentally ill Civil War soldiers probably had PTSD. My dissertation examines the experience of war, how soldiers coped, the effect the war had on mental institutions and physicians, what soldiers and doctors thought about mental illness, the long-term effects on family and how the war ultimately influenced psychiatry. I argue that to cope with the trauma of war soldiers turned to a variety of coping mechanisms, including humor, religion, camaraderie, and alcohol. Mentally ill Civil War soldiers were sent to insane asylums, which altered these facilities, so much so, that St. Elizabeths Hospital became the de facto treatment facility. I also explore what Civil War Era Americans thought about mental illness in the years before modern psychiatry. Psychologists believed most cases of mental illness during the war were caused by disease, not by fighting in the war. Soldiers believed that mental illness was the result of being broke down or played out, broad terms that conveyed physical and mental exhaustion from soldiering. The families of these men took the logic even further, frequently arguing the war was responsible for mental illness. After the war, psychologists took cues from these groups, and began to argue the war or army life as responsible for some cases of mental illness among veteran patients. Finally, neurologists in Europe and the United States began to theorize in the 1890s that trauma could damage the psyches of veterans.