Week 11 Blog Post

Week 11 Blog Post

Comments on This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust:

I thought that overall This Republic of Suffering was an excellent book. The information and sentiments expressed in the first three chapters: “Dying,” “Killing” and “Burying” were not a surprise to me. The way that both Unionists and Confederates viewed death prior to and during the Civil War seemed like a natural part of the human condition. I believe that war would have had similar effects on people generations and millennia before the 1860’s. In other words, I doubt that the Victorian philosophy of what constitutes a good life and a good death were unique to the time period (even the Christian professing would go back many centuries.) In ancient Greece and Rome, families grieved to know the fate of their loved ones in wars fought far from home. They also hoped for the return of their relatives bodies for burial. Likely also, in far flung battles, it was only the upper echelon of officers whose dead bodies were carted home. What makes Faust’s book distinctive is the individual examples and quotes she gives from the Civil War families. In several cases, she chronicles the same family throughout the stages of the book. This book functions well as a supplement to our course. It would also be equally understandable to someone who had not read much else about the Civil War.

One section that I found interesting concerned the development of embalming techniques. A sufficient level of skill was required so that physicians and other practitioners could charge top dollar for their work; therefore, making embalming available only to those who could afford to pay. The embalmers who were charged with profiteering likely thought their services were worth their fee. Considering the condition of the bodies they had to work with, not to mention the smell, I think that most embalmers probably did deserve their fee. Faust gives the example of Dr. Richard Burr who charged 100 dollars. According to Burr, he had employees to pay who “risked their lives recovering the body from near the picket line and then carrying it several hundred yards under fire.” In addition to his disinfecting and embalming services, he also paid for a coffin and shipping. (Faust, 97-98) It is definitely true that many families could not afford that kind of service which was certainly inequitable. If more families had been able to pay for embalming, there would not have been enough practitioners to handle all the deceased.

The chapter on “Accounting” was especially interesting to me since I had not previously read about the effort involved in creating our national (Union) cemeteries. I have only visited Arlington National Cemetery which has other military graves in addition to the Civil War graves. I got some sense there of the seemingly endless rows of identical tombstones. Faust noted that in the establishment of Gettysburg Cemetery during the war, William Saunders designed it so that “every grave was of equal importance.” (Faust, 100) She also emphasized that the establishment of Gettysburg Cemetery was a turning point in the war when the government began to realize that it had obligations to the dead as well as the living. She discussed Lincoln’s famous “Gettysburg Address” and enumerated many of the same points that we did in class. (Faust, 189-190)

I sympathize with the Confederate families regarding that only the Union soldiers were sought for the re-interment program after the war. I can certainly see why Southerners would be resentful that the federal government (which was supposed to be their government again) spent four million dollars relocating and reburying only Union soldiers in national cemeteries. (Faust, 236) Faust points out that John Trowbridge, a New England writer, was “horrified” that Confederate bodies had been deliberately “left to rot.” (Faust, 237) I can also understand why Trowbridge and NY governor Reuben Fenton were in the minority in the North. Many of the northern politicians and Congressmen, like John Covode, had lost sons and relatives in the war. If I had lost a child in the war, I would be bitter against the enemy. Faust stated that even the “veterans [who] were more forgiving of their former enemies” still could not imagine the southerners “who had tried to destroy the Union should be accorded the same respect as those who had saved it.” (Faust, 238) The South having to shoulder the burden of burying their dead with private donations and volunteer efforts undoubtedly affected their attitude towards Reconstruction. No doubt many historians have wondered how differently Reconstruction may have proceeded if Pres. Lincoln had not been assassinated. Given his Second Inaugural Address, I wonder if Lincoln would have included the Confederate soldiers in the re-interment into national cemeteries. I think it is likely that he would have; however, like the black soldiers, Confederate graves probably would have been segregated in their own section of each cemetery. (Faust, 236) It was heartening to read that Pres. William McKinley gave a favorably received speech to the Atlanta legislature on December 14, 1898 saying that “the time has now come in the evolution of sentiment and feeling under the providence of God, when in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you [the South] in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers.” (Faust, 269, n. 9, 322) What makes this event even more significant is that McKinley was a northern Republican who had served in the Union Army during the Civil War. No wonder the people of Atlanta were pleased. Thirty-three years after its end, Americans could finally look back in hindsight upon the Civil War and see “one nation under God” regardless of how divided it had been.

Written by Molly Kettler