In the 19th Century some historical roles were reversed. For instance: the United States — and not a Middle Eastern country — had an industrial Civil War in progress, killing soldiers and uprooting civilians. A million-and-a-half military casualties occurred in less than five years in the USA, including men dead in battle and those suffering wounds or afflicted by serious disease. Those interned in prisoner-of-war death-camps belong to this list, alongside others missing-in-action. Include 50,000 civilian deaths and at least 200,000 displaced Southern non-combatants (the group to which our subject belongs); and millions of black slaves released into a dubious freedom, many ending up prematurely dead, incurably ill or held in refugee camps, and we get a more concrete sense of the chaotic mess which existed in North America at the time. And we have not mentioned the countless widows and orphans created by the war.