This Republic of Suffering

by Drew Gilpin Faust

  17. See Gregory Coco, Killed in Action: Eyewitness Accounts of the Last Moments of 100 Union Soldiers Who Died at Gettysburg (Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1992); Gregory Coco, Wasted Valor: The Confederate Dead at Gettysburg (Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1990); Warren B. Armstrong, For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998).

  18. “Reminiscence of Gettysburg,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 2, 1864, p. 235. On photographs see Steve R. Stotelmyer, The Bivouacs of the Dead: The Story of Those Who Died at Antietam and South Mountain (Baltimore: Toomey Press, 1992), p. 6; Godey’s Lady’s Book, March 1864, p. 311; Mark H. Dunkelman, Gettysburg’s Unknown Soldier: The Life, Death, and Celebrity of Amos Humiston (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999); William Stilwell to Molly, September 18, 1862, in Lane, ed., Dear Mother, p. 186.

  19. Clara Barton, Lecture Notes [1866], Clara Barton Papers, LC.

  20. Elmer Ruan Coates, “Be My Mother Till I Die” (Philadelphia: A. W. Auner, n.d.), Wolf 115; “Bless the Lips That Kissed Our Darling: Answer to: Let Me Kiss Him for His Mother” (Philadelphia: Auner, n.d.); J. A. C. O’Connor, “Bless the Lips That Kissed Our Darling” (New York: H. De Marsan, n.d.), Wolf 115. See also George Cooper, “Mother Kissed Me in My Dream” (Philadelphia: J. H. Johnson, n.d.), Wolf 1468. All these song sheets are in the American Song Sheet Collection, LCP.

  21. William J. Bacon, Memorial of William Kirkland Bacon: Late Adjutant of the Twenty-sixth Regiment of New York State Volunteers (Utica, N.Y.: Roberts Printer, 1863), p. 50.

  22. On condolence letters, see Michael Barton, “Painful Duties: Art, Character, and Culture in Confederate Letters of Condolence,” Southern Quarterly 17 (1979): 123–34; and Barton, Goodmen: The Character of Civil War Soldiers (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981), pp. 57–62. See also William Merrill Decker, Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America Before Telecommunications (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Janet Gurlin Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982). For contemporary guidebooks for letter writers, see The American Letter-Writer and Mirror of Polite Behavior (Philadelphia: Fisher & Brother, 1851), and A New Letter-Writer, for the Use of Gentlemen (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1860). For an acknowledgment of the ritual of the condolence letter in Civil War popular culture, see the Daily South Carolinian, February 26, 1864; see also June 22, 1864, and the song by E. Bowers, “Write a Letter to My Mother!” (Philadelphia: n.p., [1860s]), Wolf 2677, LCP.

  23. Williamson D. Ward diary quoted in Joseph Allan Frank and George A. Reaves, “Seeing the Elephant”: Raw Recruits at Shiloh (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989), p. 98; Minutes, July 1864–June 1865, Confederate States Christian Association for the Relief of Prisoners (Fort Delaware), Francis Atherton Boyle Books, 1555 SHC.

  24. W. J. O’Daniel to Mrs. [Sarah A.] Torrence, quoted in Haskell Monroe, ed., “The Road to Gettysburg: The Diary and Letters of Leonidas Torrence of the Gaston Guards,” North Carolina Historical Review 36 (October 1959): 515; William Fields to Mrs. Fitzpatrick, June 8, 1865, Maria Clopton Papers, Medical and Hospital Collection, ESBL; I. G. Patten to Mrs. Cadenhead, August 5, 1864, in I. B. Cadenhead, “Some Letters of I. B. Cadenhead,” Alabama Historical Quarterly 18 (1956): 569; Henry E. Handerson, Yankee in Gray: The Civil War Memoirs of Henry E. Handerson with a Selection of His Wartime Letters (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1962), p. 62.

  25. William Fields to Mrs. Fitzpatrick, June 8, 1865, Maria Clopton Papers, Medical and Hospital Collection, ESBL; Clara Barton, Manuscript Journal, 1863, Clara Barton Papers, LC. See also Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Clara Barton: Professional Angel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 94, 148; “Our Army Hospitals,” unidentified and undated newspaper clippings, Louis C. Madeira Civil War Scrapbooks, vol. A, pp. 111–26, LCP. For an example of a nurse cueing a soldier to leave a message for his wife, see William H. Davidson, ed., War Was the Place: A Centennial Collection of Confederate Soldier Letters (Chattahoochie Valley Historical Society, Bulletin no. 5 [November 1961]): 115. On the important role of hospital personnel in a Good Death, see Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799–1883 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 131; Gerald Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1987), p. 29; Corby, Memoirs of Chaplain Life, p. 93. See also Jestin Hampton to Thomas B. Hampton, January 25, 1863, Thomas B. Hampton Papers, CAH; S. G. Sneed to Susan Piper, September 17, 1864, Benjamin Piper Papers, CAH.

  26. Christian Recorder, November 12, 1864.

  27. Richard Rollins, ed., Pickett’s Charge!: Eyewitness Accounts, (Redondo Beach, Calif.: Rank & File Publications, 1994), p. 96.

  28. James R. Montgomery to A. R. Montgomery, May 10, 1864, CSA Collection, ESBL; John M. Coski, “Montgomery’s Blood-Stained Letter Defines ‘The Art of Dying’—and Living,” Museum of the Confederacy Magazine (Summer 2006): 14.

  29. Coski, “Montgomery’s Blood-Stained Letter.”

  30. Contrast this “checklist” with the “stock messages” that Jay Winter describes from British officers in World War I informing relatives of a soldier’s death: he was loved by his comrades, was a good soldier, and died painlessly. This is a remarkably secular formula in comparison to the Civil War’s embrace of the ars moriendi tradition. See J. M. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 35. For a Civil War condolence letter written almost in the form of a checklist—indentations and all—see John G. Barrett and Robert K. Turner Jr., Letters of a New Market Cadet: Beverly Stannard (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), pp. 67–68. For a Catholic example, see Cooney, “War Letters of Father Peter Paul Cooney,” pp. 153–54. Much of the “checklist” had its origins in the deathbed observers’ search for reassurance that the dying person was successfully resisting the devil’s characteristic temptations: to abandon his faith, to submit to desperation or impatience, to demonstrate spiritual pride or complacence, to show too much preoccupation with temporal matters. See Comper, Book of the Craft of Dying, pp. 9–21. For a brief discussion of consolation letters, see Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 84–86.

  31. Edwin S. Redkey, ed., Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African American Soldiers in the Union Army (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 67. Preparation constituted a significant dimension of the Good Death for Jewish soldiers as well. Note the emphasis of Albert Moses Luria’s family on his preparedness and note his epitaph: “He went into the field prepared to meet his God.” See Mel Young, ed., Last Order of the Lost Cause: The True Story of a Jewish Family in the Old South (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1995), p. 147. See also, on sudden death, W. D. Rutherford to Sallie F. Rutherford, June 23, 1864, W. D. Rutherford Papers, SCL; Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family, p. 208.

  32. Letter to Mrs. Mason, October 3, 1864, 24th Reg. Virginia Infantry, CSA Collection, ESBL.

  33. Alexander Twombly, The Completed Christian Life: A Sermon Commemorative of Adjt. Richard Strong (Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell, 1863), p. 10; David Mack Cooper, Obituary Discourse on Occasion of the Death of Noah Henry Ferry, Major of the Fifth Michigan Cavalry (New York: J. F. Trow, 1863), p. 30.

  34. Bacon, Memorial of William Kirkland Bacon, p. 57. On presentiment see also Alonzo Abernethy, “Incidents of an Iowa Soldier’s Life, or Four Years in Dixie,” Annals of Iowa, 3d ser. 12 (1920): 408. For a Jewish example, see the report of the death of Gustave Poznanski in Charleston Daily Courier, June 18, 1862. On presentiment and on soldiers’ deaths more generally, see James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 63–70. See also Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers (New
York: Viking, 1988), pp. 63–64; L. L. Jones to Harriet Beach Jones, Herbert S. Hadley Papers, MOHS; W. D. Rutherford to Sallie Fair, July 26, 1861, W. D. Rutherford Papers, SCL. See also E. S. Nash to Hattie Jones, August 19, 1861, Herbert S. Hadley Papers, MOHS; Wells, Facing the “King of Terrors,” pp. 162–63.

  35. J. C. Curtwright to Mr. and Mrs. Lovelace, April 24, 1862, in Lane, ed., Dear Mother, p. 116. T. Fitzhugh to Mrs. Diggs, June 23, 1863, Captain William W. Goss File, 19th Virginia Infantry, CSA Collection, ESBL; Sallie Winfree to Mrs. Bobo, October 9, 1862, Henry Bobo Papers, CSA Collection, ESBL.

  36. T. J. Hodnett quoted in Davidson, ed., War Was the Place, pp. 80, 76–77; Walter Pharr, Funeral Sermon on the Death of Capt. A. K. Simonton (Salisbury, N.C.: J. J. Bruner, 1862), p. 11; Elijah Richardson Craven, In Memoriam, Sermon and Oration…on the Occasion of the Death of Col. I. M. Tucker (Newark, N.J.: Protection Lodge, 1862), pp. 5–6.

  37. James B. Rogers, War Pictures: Experiences and Observations of a Chaplain in the U.S. Army, in the War of the Southern Rebellion (Chicago: Church & Goodman, 1863), p. 182; Guy R. Everson and Edward W. Simpson Jr., Far, Far from Home: The Wartime Letters of Dick and Talley Simpson, 3rd South Carolina Volunteers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 287; J. Monroe Anderson to the Sisters of Gen. Gregg, January 9, 1863, Maxcy Gregg Papers, SCL; John Weissert to Dearest Wife and Children, October 17, 1862, John Weissert Papers, Box 1, Correspondence Sept.–Oct. 1862, BHL. For a Catholic example of reading the body for signs of the state of the soul, see Sister Catherine to Father Patrick Reilly, December 5, 1862, Patrick Reilly Papers, PAHRC, which describes the death of Sister Bonaventure “with sweet peace and joy” and reports “the peace and calm of her soul was evident on her countenance.”

  38. L. S. Bobo to Dear Uncle, July 7, 1862, August 14, 1862, Bobo Papers, CSA Collection, ESBL; Cadenhead, “Some Confederate Letters of I. B. Cadenhead,” p. 568; E. and E. Nash to Respected Nephews in Camp, November 11, 1862, Alpheus S. Bloomfield Papers, LC.

  39. Frank Perry to J. Buchannon, September 21, 1862, in Lane, ed., Dear Mother, p. 189.

  40. Frank Batchelor to Dear Wife, in Batchelor-Turner Letters: 1861–1864: Written by Two of Terry’s Texas Rangers, annotated by H. J. H. Rugeley (Austin, Tex.: Steck Co., 1961), p. 80.

  41. Sanford Branch to his mother, July 26, 1861, in Lane, Dear Mother, p. 36; Coco, Killed in Action, p. 91; Alonzo Hill, In Memoriam. A Discourse…on Lieut. Thomas Jefferson Spurr (Boston: J. Wilson, 1862); Davidson, ed., War Was the Place. Chaplain Corby observed that nearly all men called to their mothers as they lay dying. This was enshrined in Civil War popular song: see, for example, Thomas MacKellar, “The Dying Soldier to His Mother” (New York: Charles Magnus, n.d.) Wolf 551, and C. A. Vosburgh, “Tell Mother, I Die Happy” (New York: Charles Magnus, n.d.), Wolf 2290. For a southern example, see Charles C. Sawyer, “Mother Would Comfort Me!” (Augusta, Ga.: Blackmar & Bro., 186–). There were so many songs written as messages to Mother from the battlefield that they began to generate parodies and satirical responses. See John C. Cross, “Mother on the Brain” (New York: H. De Marsan, n.d.), Wolf 1470, and Cross, “Mother Would Wallop Me” (New York: H. De Marsan, n.d.), Wolf 1437. All of these songs, except the southern example, are in the American Song Sheet Collection, LCP. See Chapter 6.

  42. William W. Bennett, A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1877), pp. 243–44. T. Fitzhugh to Mrs. Diggs, June 23, 1863, Captain William W. Goss File, 19th Virginia Infantry, CSA Collection, ESBL. For a letter in almost identical language, see E. W. Rowe to J. W. Goss, December 16, 1863, CSA Collection, ESBL.

  43. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Touched with Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1861–1864, ed. Mark DeWolfe Howe (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), p. 27; Holmes, Civil War Diary, Harvard Law School Library, Harvard University.

  44. A. D. Kirwan, ed., Johnny Green of the Orphan Brigade: The Journal of a Confederate Soldier (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956), p. 37; David Cornwell, quoted in Earl J. Hess, The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), p. 143.

  45. Army and Navy Messenger, April 1, 1864, quoted in Berends, “Wholesome Reading,” p. 154. See also Fales Henry Newhall, National Exaltation: The Duties of Christian Patriotism (Boston: John M. Hewes, 1861); William Adams, Christian Patriotism (New York: A. D. F. Randolph, 1863); Joseph Fransioli, Patriotism: A Christian Virtue (New York: Loyal Publication Society, 1863). The last of these works is Catholic. Note the disapproval of Sister Matilda Coskey of the father who refuses to permit his wounded son to be baptized, arguing “he has served his country, fought her battles & that is enough—he has nothing to fear for his soul.” Sister Matilda Coskey to Father Patrick Reilly, October 18, 1864, Patrick Reilly Papers, PAHRC.

  46. William Preston Johnston to Wade Hampton, November 3, 1864; James Connor to Wade Hampton, November 6, 1864, Wade Hampton Papers, ESBL; N. A. Foster to William K. Rash, 52nd North Carolina, CSA Collection, ESBL. For another discussion of gallantry, see Eleanor Damon Pace, ed., “The Diary and Letters of William P. Rogers, 1846–1862,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 32 (April 1929): 299.

  47. George Barton, Angels of the Battlefield (Philadelphia: Catholic Art Publishing Co., 1897), p. 181.

  48. Linderman makes this point about compulsion in Embattled Courage, p. 30; Smith, ed., “Notes on Satterlee,” pp. 433–34; Berends, “Wholesome Reading,” p. 137.

  49. Hugh McLees to John, December 20, 1863, John McLees Papers, SCL; Berends, “Wholesome Reading,” p. 139, n21; Gache, Frenchman, 164. On bad deaths, see also Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family, p. 207.

  50. Laderman, Sacred Remains, p. 99; Robert I. Alotta, Civil War Justice: Union Army Executions Under Lincoln (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Press, 1989); Charleston Mercury, September 18, 1863; John Ripley Adams, Memorial and Letters of John R. Adams, D.D. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1890), p. 123; letters from Guilburton, September 4, 1863, and from Henry Robinson to his wife, both in Lane, ed., Dear Mother, pp. 263–64, 107.

  51. Corby, Memoirs, p. 248; Frances Milton Kennedy Diary, M-3008, entry for September 26, 1863, SHC. For examples of descriptions of executions, see Cooney, “War Letters of Father Peter Paul Cooney,” p. 57. On dying badly, see Edward Acton, “‘Dear Mollie’: Letters of Captain Edward Acton to His Wife, 1862,” ed. Mary Acton Hammond, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 89 ( January 1965): 28.

  52. Robert Kenzer, “The Uncertainty of Life: A Profile of Virginia’s Civil War Widows,” in Joan E. Cashin, The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 120; Clarke County Will Book E, 1860–67, pp. 129–30, Clarke County Courthouse, Berryville, Va.; Lane, ed., Dear Mother, 108. See N. Crosby, Financial Plans in Case of Death, GLC03046. N. Crosby to son, April 23, 1862, Gilder Lehrman Collection, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, NYHS.

  53. John Edwards, Noncuptative Will, April 3, 1862, dictated to Hill at the hospital of the 53rd Virginia Infantry regiment at Suffolk, VHS. Thanks to Frances Pollard for drawing my attention to this document.

  54. Burns Newman to Mr. Shortell, May 24, 1864, Michael Shortell Papers, WHS. See also Disposition of Personal Effects of Dead Wisconsin Soldiers, 1863, Wisconsin Governor’s Papers, WHS.

  55. Daily South Carolinian, May 29, 1864. For other examples, see obituaries of W. W. Watts, August 23, 1864; H. L. Garlington, August 13, 1864; Milton Cox, August 9, 1862; Joseph Friedenberg, September 15, 1862, all in Daily South Carolinian; George Nichols in Richmond Daily Whig, December 24, 1862; Walter Matthews in Richmond Daily Dispatch, December 25, 1862; Isaac Valentine in Charleston Daily Courier, June 18, 1862; Thomas B. Hampton [March 1865] in Thomas B. Hampton Papers, CAH.

  56. Roland C. Bowen to Friend Ainsworth, September 28, 1862, in Gregory A. Coco, ed., From Ball’s Bluff to Gettysburg…and Beyond:
The Civil War Letters of Private Roland E. Bowen, 15th Massachusetts Infantry, 1861–1864 (Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1994), p. 124.

  57. Washington Davis, cited in Linderman, Embattled Courage, p. 241. On numbness see Drew Gilpin Faust, “A Riddle of Death”: Mortality and Meaning in the American Civil War, 34th Annual Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture (Gettysburg, Pa.: Gettysburg College, 1995), p. 21.

  58. Herman Melville, “The Armies of the Wilderness,” in Melville, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1866), p. 103.

  CHAPTER 2. KILLING

  1. Tolstoy quoted in Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), p. ix; Orestes Brownson, The Works of Orestes Brownson, ed. Henry F. Brownson (Detroit: T. Nourse, 1882–87), vol. 17, p. 214.

  2. Grossman, On Killing, p. xiv. See also Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

  3. Theophilus Perry, quoted in Randolph B. Campbell, A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas, 1850–1880 (Austin: Texas State Historical Press, 1983), p. 239; [Mrs. Frances Blake Brockenbrough,] A Mother’s Parting Words to Her Soldier Boy (Petersburg, Va.: Evangelical Tract Society, 186–), p. 3; Confederate Baptist, December 3, 1862; Knox Mellon Jr., ed., “Letters of James Greenalch,” Michigan History 44 ( June 1960): 198–99; Christian Recorder, October 18, 1864.

  4. Scott quoted in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, August 3, 1861, p. 178;T. Harry Williams, “The Military Leadership of the North and the South,” U.S. Air Force Academy, Harmon Memorial Lecture no. 2, 1960, p. 6, online at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usafa/harmon02.pdf.