This Republic of Suffering (38 page)

10. William Corby,
Memoirs of Chaplain Life
(Notre Dame, Ind.: Scholastic Press, 1894), p. 184. Memorials to this moment are located at Notre Dame and on the field at Gettysburg. It has been estimated that Catholics constituted about 7 percent of Union armies. They would have been a far smaller percentage of Confederate soldiers. See Randall M. Miller, “Catholic Religion, Irish Ethnicity, and the Civil War,” in Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds.,
Religion and the American Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 261.

11. Bertram Korn,
American Jewry and the Civil War
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1951), p. 59; D. DeSola Pool, “The Diary of Chaplain Michael M. Allen, September 1861,”
Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society
39 (September 1949): 177–82; L. J. Lederman, letter to parents of David Zehden upon his death, quoted in Mel Young,
Where They Lie: The Story of the Jewish Soldiers…
(Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991), p. 149; Rebecca Gratz,
Letters of Rebecca Gratz,
ed. Rabbi David Philipson (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1929), pp. 426–27. See
From This World to the Next: Jewish Approaches to Illness, Death and the Afterlife
(New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1999), and Jack Riemer, ed.,
Jewish Insights on Death and Mourning
(New York: Schocken Books, 1995), pp. 309–53. On ecumenism see Korn,
American Jewry and the Civil War,
p. 59; Warren B. Armstrong,
For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), pp. 53–54; Kurt O. Berends, “‘Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man': The Religious Military Press in the Confederacy,” in Miller, Stout, and Wilson, eds.,
Religion and the American Civil War,
pp. 134, 157; Peter Paul Cooney, “The War Letters of Father Peter Paul Cooney of the Congregation of the Holy Cross,” ed. Thomas McAvoy,
Records of the American Catholic Historical Society
44 (1933): 223, 164; Louis-Hippolyte Gache,
A Frenchman, a Chaplain, a Rebel: The War Letters of Louis-Hippolyte Gache
(Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1991), pp. 176–77, 118–19; Sara Trainer Smith, ed., “Notes on Satterlee Hospital, West Philadelphia,”
Records of the American Catholic Historical Society
8 (1897): 404. On limitations to that ecumenism, see Gache,
Frenchman,
pp. 190–91.

12.
Once to Die
(Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 186–), p. 3; see also Karl S. Guthke,
Last Words: Variations on a Theme in Cultural History
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 36.

13. Confederate States Christian Association for the Relief of Prisoners (Fort Delaware), Minutes, March 31, 1865, Francis Atherton Boyle Books, 1555 Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (hereafter SHC); James Gray to Sister, June 12, 1864, in Mills Lane, ed.,
Dear Mother: Don't Grieve About Me. If I Get Killed, I'll Only Be Dead: Letters from Georgia Soldiers in the Civil War
(Savannah, Ga.: Beehive Press, 1990), p. 300. See also William Stilwell to Molly, September 18, 1862, in Lane,
Dear Mother,
p. 185; letter to Mollie J. McGaw, May 5, 1863, McGaw Family Papers, SCL; Desmond Pulaski Hopkins Papers, July 17, 1862, CAH. Statistics on locations of deaths from Robert V. Wells,
Facing the “King of Terrors”: Death and Society in an American Community
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 195.

14. [Frederick Law Olmsted],
Hospital Transports
(Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863), p. 80. Disruptions of African American family ties through the slave trade to the southwestern states was, of course, another matter—in its coerciveness, in its permanence. See Michael Tadman,
Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders and Slaves in the Old South
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).

15. Patricia Jalland,
Death in the Victorian Family
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 2. The English queen's own lengthy bereavement after Albert's death in 1861 focused additional attention on death as a defining element in Anglo-American family and cultural life.

16.
The Dying Officer
(Richmond, VA.: Soldiers' Tract Society, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 186–), p. 6; Hiram Mattison quoted in Michael Sappol,
“A Traffic in Dead Bodies”: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 31. See statement on meaning of last words in Susie C. Appell to Mrs. E. H. Ogden, October 20, 1862, Sarah Perot Ogden Collection, GLC 6556.01.106, Gilder Lehrman Collection, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, NYHS. Materials quoted courtesy of the Gilder Lehrman Institute may not be reproduced without written permission. See discussion of significance of last words in
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly,
December 7, 1861, p. 44.

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.