The Civil War shattered both the flesh and psyche of thousands of soldiers. Brian Craig Miller shows how the hospital emerged as the first arena where southerners faced the stark reality of what amputation would mean for men and women and their respective positions in southern society after the war.

BRIAN CRAIG MILLER is an associate professor of history at Emporia State University. He is the forthcoming editor of the journal Civil War History and the author of John Bell Hood and the Fight for Civil War Memory and The American Memory: Americans and Their History to 1877.