Alice Munday, MS3  “Such is War”: Union Surgeon George M.
Trowbridge and the Personal Perils of Slavery and Race in the
American Civil War  One of the most permanent effects of the
American Civil War (1861-1865) was the 1865 13th Amendment that
gave 10 million slaves their freedom. While most of the Union
soldiers did not enlist to end slavery, after time, they began
to witness the nefarious traits of slavery themselves while
seeing the humanity of the thousands of slaves that fled to
freedom in their Union lines. This exposure to freedmen changed
many soldiers’ perspectives on slavery and African Americans as
a whole. Our research on the nearly 200 sagacious letters George
M. Trowbridge, an Assistant Surgeon in the 19th Michigan
Infantry, wrote to his wife from 1863-65 exposes the
complexities and the evolution of one soldier’s ideas about
slavery, race, education and the war’s aims.  While anti-slavery
from the time he joined the war, Trowbridge goes from being
provincial and almost indifferent towards Afri