During the Civil War the Union army established the Invalid Corps — more properly known as the Veteran Reserve Corps — so that soldiers who were partially disabled could serve the cause in a non-combat support capacity. Needless to say, young men who were disinclined to take part at the front did their best to get a medical exemption so that they could serve with the Invalids.

When I was searching for a photo for the top of this post, I discovered that many of the websites that discuss the Invalids have succumbed to the disease of Presentism and slathered the topic with suffocating layers of political correctness. An ideological template has been placed over many of the descriptions, assigning the “differently-abled” soldiers of the Invalid Corps the status of victims so that they can take their rightful place in the hierarchy mandated by identity politics. And whatever you do, don’t call them cripples!

I hardly need to tell you that Americans in the 1860s had no truck with such bizarre notions. They could laugh at the cripples from time to time without any self-consciousness or sense of guilt.

When I was a kid, my favorite Civil War song was “The Invalid Corps”. I went hunting for YouTube versions of it, and found quite a few of them. It was a Northern tune, but the unreconstructed Confederate sympathizers of the 2nd South Carolina String Band don’t seem to have any objection to performing it. Here’s their spirited rendition of “The Invalid Corps”:

I happened upon an interesting story about a combat engagement in which the Invalids actually had to participate, the skirmish at White House Landing in 1864, between the Confederate Cavalry under Wade Hampton and the Union Veteran Reserve Corps under Col. Charles Johnson. The landing at Belle Plain was where the Union supplies for the Peninsula Campaign came in. It’s on the Pamunkey River above West Point, Virginia (where the Pamunkey and the Mattaponi combine to form the York River); I know the area slightly from my time at William and Mary.

There’s more extensive information about White House Landing here.

The full lyrics to the song are below the jump.

The Invalid Corps

by Frank Wilder

I wanted much to go to war and went to be examined,
The surgeon looked me o’er and o’er, my back and chest he hammered.
Said he, “You’re not the man for me. Your lungs are much affected!
And likewise both your eyes are cocked and otherwise defected!”

Chorus:
So now I’m with the Invalids, and cannot go and fight, sir!
The Doctor told me so, you know. Of course, he must be right, sir!

While I was there a host of chaps for reasons were exempted.
Old Pursy, he was laid aside; to pass he had attempted.
The Doctor said, “I do not like your corporosity, sir!
You’ll breed a famine in the camp wherever you might be, sir!”

[Chorus]

There came a fellow, mighty tall; a knock-kneed overgrowner.
The Doctor said, “I’ve got no time to take and look you over!”
Next came along a little chap, who was about two foot nothing.
The Doctor said, “You’d better go and tell your mammy you are coming!”

[Chorus]

Some had the Tickerdolerreau, some what they call “Brown Critters.”
And some were lank and lazy too; and some too fond of bitters.
Some had “Cork Legs,” and some “One-eye,” with backs deformed and crooked.
I’ll bet you’d laugh till you had cried to see how “cute” they looked!

[Chorus]