This Republic of Suffering (48 page)

6. On Lee see William F. Fox,
Regimental Losses in the American Civil War,
1861–1865 (Albany, N.Y.: Albany Publishing Company, 1889; rpt. 2002), p. 559. On Lee's manipulation of casualty statistics after Gettysburg, see Shelby Foote,
The Civil War: A Narrative,
Vol. 2:
From Fredericksburg to Meridian
(New York: Random House, 1963), p. 578.

7. William F. Fox, “The Chances of Being Hit in Battle,”
Century Illustrated Magazine
36 (May 1888): 94; Fox,
Regimental Losses,
p. 7.

8. Fox,
Regimental Losses,
p. 57.

9. John William De Forest,
Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
(New York: Harper, 1867), pp. 482–83. See also John W. De Forest,
A Volunteer's Adventures: A Union Captain's Record of the Civil War,
ed. James H. Croushore (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), p. 151. On the unreliability of Confederate rolls, see W. H. Taylor to J. E. Hagood, January 13, 1863, Hagood Papers, SCL. On inaccuracies of casualty statistics, see George C. Rable,
Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), pp. 288–89.

10. J. J. Woodward,
The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion,
Part I, Vol. I:
Medical History
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1870), pp. xxx, xxxi; Thomas L. Livermore,
Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America,
1861–65, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901), p. 6; “Notes on the Union and Confederate Armies,” in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds.,
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War
(New York: Century, 1889), pp. 767–68. On pensions see Megan McClintock, “Civil War Pensions and the Reconstruction of Union Families,”
Journal of American History
83 (September 1996): 456–80; Theda Skocpol,
Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); William H. Glasson,
Federal Military Pensions in the United States
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1918).

11. Mabel E. Deutrich,
Struggle for Supremacy: The Career of General Fred C. Ainsworth
(Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1962), pp. 46, 91. The Compiled Military Service Records (CMSR) has become an indispensable tool for Civil War researchers and genealogists. A printed index is now available with a useful introduction by Silas Felton that explains the origins of the CMSR and includes a bibliography of all state rosters. See Janet B. Hewett, ed.,
The Roster of Union Soldiers,
1861–1865 (Wilmington, N.C.: Broadfoot, 1997). Robert Krick introduces Janet B. Hewett, ed.,
The Roster of Confederate Soldiers,
1861–1865 (Wilmington, N.C.: Broadfoot, 1995), and similarly includes a survey and bibliography of state efforts.

12. Samuel P. Bates,
History of Pennsylvania Volunteers,
1861–1865, (Harrisburg, Pa.: B. Singerly, 1869–71), vol. 1, pp. iv–v.

13. Higginson,
Massachusetts in the Army and Navy,
vol. 1, p. 568; Silas Felton, “Introduction,” in Hewett, ed.,
Roster of Union Soldiers,
vol. 1, p. 29.

14. A recent study by James David Hacker identifies other problems in Confederate records, arguing that southern deaths from diarrhea and dysentery have been seriously undercounted and that total numbers of war deaths should be increased from 258,000 to 282,600. Hacker, “The Human Cost of War: White Population in the United States, 1850–1880,” Ph.D. diss. (University of Minnesota, 1999), pp. 41–43. Hacker seems to me far too sanguine in his acceptance of figures for both Union and Confederate battle deaths as “reasonably accurate”(p. 15).
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War
concluded in 1889 that “no data exist for a reasonably accurate estimate” of Confederate losses. See “Notes on the Union and Confederate Armies,” in Johnson and Buel, eds.,
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,
vol. 4, p. 768). Note too Robert Krick's comment on the “nonchalant Confederate approach to military record keeping,” in his introduction to
Roster of Confederate Soldiers,
p. 4.

15. A. S. Salley Jr., comp.,
South Carolina Troops in Confederate Service
(Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan Co., 1913), pp. v, vi, vii, viii. The Roll of the Dead prepared by a Confederate widow from Rives's notebooks remained unidentified in the National Archives until 1993. It has now been published as
Roll of the Dead: South Carolina Troops in Confederate State Service
(Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1994).

16. John W. Moore,
Roster of North Carolina Troops in the War Between the States,
Prepared by Order of the Legislature of 1881, 4 vols. (Raleigh, N.C.: Ash & Gatling, 1882), vol. 1, p. v. See, for Tennessee, John Berrien Lindsley,
The Military Annals of Tennessee
(Nashville, Tenn.: J. M. Lindsley & Co., 1886).

17. “Editorial Department,”
Southern Historical Society Papers
1 ( January–June 1876): 39; “Confederate Losses During the War—Correspondence Between Dr. Joseph Jones and General Samuel Cooper,”
Southern Historical Society Papers
7 ( June 1879): 289.

18. Frederick Phisterer,
Statistical Record of the Armies of the United States
(1883; rpt. New York: Castle, 2002); Fox,
Regimental Losses;
Thomas Livermore,
Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901); Frederick Dyer,
A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion
(1908; rpt. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959). The 1959 reprint has an excellent introduction by Bell Irvin Wiley. See also the review of Dyer in
American Historical Review
15 ( July 1910): 889–91.

19. Fox,
Regimental Losses,
p. 58.

20. Ibid., p. 1; William F. Fox, “The Chances of Being Hit in Battle,”
Century Illustrated Magazine
36 (May 1888): 99.

21. Fox,
Regimental Losses,
pp. 58–59.

22. Ibid., pp. 58, 59, 61.

23. See www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/josephstall1137476.htm; Fox,
Regimental Losses,
p. 46.

24. Walt Whitman,
Memoranda During the War
(1875; rpt. Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, 1993), pp. 74, 73, 74, 75; Walt Whitman, “Reconciliation,” in Whitman,
Civil War Poetry and Prose
(New York: Dover, 1995) p. 25; Whitman, “As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods,” in Whitman,
Civil War Poetry and Prose,
p. 25; Whitman,
Memoranda,
p. 46. It seems possible that Whitman derived his numbers from a letter from Charles W. Folsom, brevet colonel and assistant quartermaster to Brevet Brigadier General A. J. Perry, U.S. Quartermaster, May 27, 1868, that introduced volume 16 of
Roll of Honor: Names of Soldiers Who Died in Defence of the American Union, Interred in the National Cemeteries and Other Burial Places
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868), p. viii. Folsom's categories and numbers are very similar to Whitman's.

25. For contemporary versions of “All Quiet,” see, for example “Editor's Table,”
Southern Literary Messenger
34 (September–October 1862): 589, and “Journal of the War,”
DeBow's Review
2 ( July 1866): 68–69.

26. “Only One Killed,”
Harper's Weekly,
May 24, 1862, pp. 330–31; Lewis quoted in Robert V. Wells,
Facing the “King of Terrors”: Death and Society in an American Community,
1750–1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 127.

27. See H. M. Wharton,
War Songs and Poems of the Southern Confederacy
(Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1904), pp. 153–54, 131–32; “Only,”
Harper's Weekly,
January 3, 1863; “One of Many,”
Harper's Weekly,
April 16, 1864. “Only a Private Killed” is a refrain from a poem composed by H. L. Gordon and sent to Mrs. E. H. Ogden, November 12, 1861, GLC6559.01.038, Gilder Lehrman Collection, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, NYHS.

28. On Civil War sentimentality, see Alice Fahs, “The Sentimental Soldier,” in Fahs,
The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South,
1861–1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 93–119, and Frances M. Clarke, “Sentimental Bonds: Suffering, Sacrifice and Benevolence in the Civil War North,” Ph.D. diss. ( Johns Hopkins University, 2001). On irony, see Claire Colebrook,
Irony
(New York: Routledge, 2004).

29. Fox,
Regimental Losses,
p. 574.

EPILOGUE

1. Walter Lowenfels, ed. and comp.,
Walt Whitman's Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), p. 15; Bierce quoted in Daniel Aaron,
The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), p. 183.

2. Bierce quoted in Roy Morris Jr.,
Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company
(New York: Crown, 1996), p. 205; Sidney Lanier to Bayard Taylor, August 7, 1875, in Charles R. Anderson and Aubrey H. Starke, eds.,
Letters,
1874–1877,
The Centennial Edition of the Works of Sidney Lanier
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945), vol. 9, p. 230.

3. Susannah Hampton to Dear Sir, September 14, 1863, Philadelphia Agency, Hospital Directory Correspondence, vol. 2, box 597, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL.

4. Melville quoted in Lee Rust Brown, “Introduction,” in Herman Melville,
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems
(1866; rpt. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), p. viii.

5. Lucy Rebecca Buck,
Sad Earth, Sweet Heaven: The Diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck During the War Between the States
(Birmingham, Ala.: Cornerstone, 1973), p. 50.

6. Frederick Douglass, “The Mission of the War,” in
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass
(New York: International Publishers, 1950), vol. 3, p. 397.

7. E. B. Whitman, “Remarks on National Cemeteries,” in W. T. Sherman et al.,
The Army Reunion
(Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co., 1869), p. 225; Herman Melville, “A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight,” in
Battle-Pieces,
p. 62.

8. Walt Whitman, “The Million Dead, Too, Summed Up,”
Specimen Days
(1882; rpt. Boston: David Godine, 1971), p. 59.

9. William McKinley, “Speech Before the Legislature in Joint Assembly at the State Capitol, Atlanta, Georgia, December 14, 1898,”
Speeches and Addresses of William McKinley from March
1, 1897
to May
30, 1900 (New York: Doubleday & McClure, 1900), p. 159.

10. Douglass quoted in David W. Blight,
Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 238; Ambrose Bierce, “To E. S. Salomon” [1903], in Bierce,
Phantoms of a Blood-Stained Period: The Complete Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce,
ed. Russell Duncan and David J. Klooster (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), p. 334.

11. Oliver Wendell Holmes,
The Soldier's Faith: An Address Delivered on Memorial Day, May
30, 1895,
at a Meeting Called by the Graduating Class of Harvard University
(Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1895). Holmes had given an earlier version of this speech in Keene, New Hampshire, on Memorial Day 1884. See harvard regiment.org/memorial.htm.

Acknowledgments

The idea for this book grew out of my earlier work on women of the slaveholding South and crystallized as I recognized that their perceptions of the war were rooted in its terrible harvest of death. I have been engaged in this project for well over a decade, partly because I have undertaken other responsibilities alongside it, but partly because I found the subject so compelling and wanted to do it full justice. If I have in any way succeeded in this purpose, it is because of the many friends, colleagues, and even strangers who have helped. I want first to thank those who read and commented on the whole manuscript, saving me from errors and offering me invaluable perspective on larger conceptual questions: David Blight, Ann Braude, Gary Gallagher, Tony Horwitz, Jennifer Leaning, Stephanie McCurry, James McPherson, Luke Menand, Charles Rosenberg, and Jessica Rosenberg. Others read particular chapters in their areas of expertise, found library materials, guided me to and through manuscript collections, shared treasures encountered in their own research, worked as research assistants, aided in preparation of the manuscript, or contributed in countless other ways. I am deeply indebted to Michael Bernath, Homi Bhabha, Tracy Blanchard, Beth Brady, Gabor Boritt, Tom Coens, Lara Cohen, Gretchen Condran, John Coski, Yonatan Eyal, Henry Fulmer, Jesse Goldstine, James Green, Jenessa Hoffman, Kathryn Johnson, Andrew Kinney, James Kloppenberg, Jeremy Knowles, Lisa Laskin, Paul LeClerc, Millington Lockwood, Chandra Manning, Sandra Markham, Stewart Meyer, Reid Mitchell, Margot Minardi, Lien-Hang Nguyen, Charlie Ornstein, Amy Paradis, Katy Park, Michael Parrish, Charlene Peacock, Trevor Plante, Frances Pollard, George Rable, James Robertson Jr., Neil Rudenstine, Barbara Savage, Elana Harris Schanzer, Kay Shelemay, Theda Skocpol, Susan Stewart, Allen Stokes, Steven Stowe, Julie Tomback, Helen Vendler, and Ann Wilson. My gratitude to Jane Garrett for patience and faith.

My thanks to Louise Richardson for holding the fort at Radcliffe while I took a sabbatical to write; to Susan Johnson and Anne Brown for running my life; to Janine Bestine and Peggy Chan for running my computers; and to Lars Madsen for taking on so much so well at the last minute. Kennie Lyman did the near impossible in making sure the manuscript was ready to go to press on time. I have been privileged to enjoy the generosity first of the University of Pennsylvania and then of Harvard University in support of my work as a historian, and I have been inspired for the past six years by the intellectual riches of the Radcliffe Institute. I am the grateful beneficiary of the treasures of the many manuscript repositories cited in the notes, and I thank the libraries and museums that have permitted me to use quotations and illustrations. Parts of this book appeared in slightly different form in the
Journal of Southern History,
the
Journal of Military History,
and
Southern Cultures.
In quoting primary materials, I have retained original, often rather creative, spellings without inserting the intrusive
sic.

Charles Rosenberg and Jessica Rosenberg are great editors and critics. But they know that is the least of it. Thanks to them for believing in this project for so long and for living with my fascination with death.

         

Cambridge, January 2007