The Post-War Lives of Amputee Civil War VeteransPresented by Dr. Allison M. Johnson, Department of English & Comparative Literature
Wednesday, February 19, 2025 | 12-1 p.m. | Virtual Only
In August 1865, Ora D. Walbridge sat down with a pen in his left hand to produce a specimen of his best business penmanship. Three years earlier, a gunshot had left Walbridge’s right arm paralyzed. When he submitted his penmanship specimen, he joined a unique group of Civil War veterans: the self-proclaimed “Left-Armed Corps.” This talk examines the lives of these veterans in the decades following the conflict to highlight the lasting resonance of missing limbs during national reconciliation. Demographic and biographical information provides insights into how the veterans’ lives were shaped by their service and their wounds.
Allison M. Johnson is an associate professor of English at San José State University. Before joining SJSU, she was a lecturer at UCLA, where she earned her PhD, and UCSB. She is the author of “The Scars We Carve: Bodies and Wounds in Civil War Print Culture” (LSU 2019) and the editor of “The Left-Armed Corps: Writings by Amputee Civil War Veterans” (LSU 2022). Her work has also appeared in the “Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction” and “American Studies Journal.”
