America
the Changed
The massive number of casualties from the Civil War
changed American Culture not only on an individual level, but also a national
level. In the book This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil
War, Drew Gilpin Faust focuses her attention on the subject of death, and the
country’s attempt to assign meaning to the casualties of the Civil War. The
scale of death experienced during the Civil War not only changed traditional
mourning practices, but also affected many American’s faith in God and popular
ideas of the afterlife; This "harvest of death" ultimately shaped
government policy permanently, changing its relationship with American
citizens, all of which was reflected in the popular culture of the time.
“Mortality defines the human condition.” [1] Americans
were no stranger to death during the middle of the nineteenth century. They had
idealized concepts of death at the time. The idea of the Good Death centered on
family and home; individuals died surrounded by family, friends and sometimes
clergy, who would witness last words and be able to assess the future state of
people. “These last moments…would epitomize [their]… spiritual condition.”[2] These Christian beliefs had become a general
cultural belief about how to “do” death. However, the Civil War began to
challenge these traditions and beliefs as men died on battlefields far from
home, alone or surrounded by strangers, with no family to witness their “Good
Death.” Often fellow soldiers would attempt to act as surrogate family and pass
on last words by letter to families. “Sudden death represented a profound
threat to fundamental assumptions about the correct way to die.”[3]
Many soldiers killed were thrown into mass graves marked unknown. This resulted
in a loss of a sense of closure previously provided by nineteenth century ars
moriendi and it not only affected individuals but the entire nation as well.
American culture began to reflect this in popular songs such as an “ANSWER TO:
Let Me Kiss Him for His Mother” which “expressed gratitude” to the nurses caring
for the injured, “sought to reassure” the family at home and provide some
measure of peace.[4]
However, despite
these efforts at condolence, Americans still struggled to assign meaning to the
casualties. The Civil War remains statistically the bloodiest war in American
history. The staggeringly high percentage of death does not include civilian
casualties from violence, starvation, and disease, as there was no accounting
system in place for this. In just four years, the death toll reached over
620,000 casualties or 2% of the American population.[5] Many
Americans turned to their faith for strength, but even religious beliefs were affected
by the Civil War. Faust maintains that from traditional ideas concerning heaven
and hell, a new “modern notion of heaven” had begun to emerge, however it had
not been a complete “transition… as the Civil War opened.”[6]
These ideas “intensified as war made questions” about an afterlife more relevant,
especially as men died so far from home without benefit of the ritual of a Good
Death.[7]
During the war, both sides justified the killing and
death by claiming God was on their side. After the war’s end, only the North
was able to reconcile their loss by placing Northern soldiers death’s as the
ultimate sacrifice for preservation of the nation. For the soldiers of the
South and their families, there would be no easy meaning in their dead.[8] The
“carnage” of the Civil War threw nineteenth century America into a “crisis of
belief that propelled many Americans to redefine or even reject their faith in
a …deity.”[9] New
technology of warfare often made men unrecognizable which challenged
traditional beliefs that a man must be whole in order to be resurrected. [10] The
use of makeshift and sometimes mass graves along with the brutality and killing
of fellow man, created for many Americans difficulty in reconciling what makes
man different from animal.[11] According
to Faust, the massive amount of death in the Civil War required the
“transformation of heaven into an eternal family reunion” an idea not only
adopted by Christians but by Jews as well.[12]
Faust cites mid-nineteenth century songs, literature,
speeches, sermons and poetry to illustrate how Americans reacted to and tried
to cope with these new questions regarding death. Within the popular culture of
the time, authors like Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville reflected the growing
sentiment many Americans held, in terms of religious doubt. [13] Books
such as Visions of Heaven for the Life on
Earth by Robert Patterson and The
Gates Ajar reflected changing ideas of heaven and hell. [14]
Poems by Walt Whitman served the function of “cultural work of mourning- on
behalf of the nation.”[15] Some
people turned to Spiritualism, made “attractive” by the promise of contact with
a loved one whose body might never be recovered.[16]
Many of these concerns regarding a loved one’s absence from home at time of
death and desire to find meaning in the soldier’s death through religion or
spiritualism, also resulted in more practical cultural changes.
During the Civil War, American culture was changed as government
and individual soldiers entered into a partnership of sorts in which
“citizenship represented a contract… both assumed certain rights and duties…
for which either could be called to account.”[17] Initially, the conditions of the war made it
difficult to provide careful interment and documentation of the dead.
Eventually, procedures began to reflect growing changes in accounting and in
1864, Congress passed a bill to create new “principles” for taking care of the
dead.[18]
Although the amount of casualties often made it impossible to carry these
duties out, it showed an effort by the government to respond to the growing
concerns of the general population regarding the bodies of loved ones. After
the war, the United States federal government passed a bill that “legally
signaled its acceptance of responsibility for those who had died in its
service.”[19]
Not only were permanent National Cemeteries established, but a massive reburial
effort was undertaken.[20] A
“national project of memorialization” became a way to “reunite” the states; all
could serve, as Walt Whitman said, “the dead, the dead… South or North, ours
all.”[21] The
“Four years of Civil War propelled a remarkable shift in attitudes and behavior
in accounting for the dead,"[22]
and with these efforts, citizens were recognized as the “literal lifeblood of
the nation.”[23]
“We still live in the world of death the Civil War
created.”[24]American
culture and American attitudes had no choice but to change as a result of the
massive death toll of the Civil War. As individuals tried to find meaning in
the death and destruction, mid-nineteenth century popular culture reflected
these struggles. New government policies solidified these changed attitudes on
a national level. By no means was it an easy or even complete transition, however
in the end, not just individuals were affected, rather the entire nation had
been irrevocably changed.
[1]Drew
Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering:
Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage Books/Random House,
Inc.2008), xi
[2]Faust,10
[3] Faust,18
[4] Faust,13
[5]Faust,266
[6] Faust,178,179
[7] Faust,179
[8]Faust,192
[9]Faust,210
[10]Faust,184
[11] Faust,210
[12]Faust,180
[13]Faust,207
[14]Faust,187
[15]Faust,161
[16]Faust,181
[17]Faust,229
[18]Faust,135
[19]Faust,234
[20]Faust,
235
[21] Faust,269
[22] Faust,135
[23]Faust,269
[24] Faust,271
