Wartime Trauma and the Lure of the Frontier: Civil War Veterans in Dakota Territory

This paper quantitatively analyzes an 1885 Dakota Territory census to draw larger conclusions about Civil War veterans who migrated to the frontier. A sample of almost 6,000 veterans suggests that a significant percentage experienced some degree of wartime trauma, needed to reestablish themselves socially and economically, and took advantage of what financial security they had when homesteading newly opened territory. They were more likely to move to newly opened counties by themselves rather than with comrades from the war, relying on prior relationships only when moving to more established regions of the frontier where those associations might prove useful.