|
|||||
|
Book offers a rare window into death as a social issue for battlefront and home front Book offers a rare window into death as a social issue for battlefront and home front"This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War" As I have reviewed a score of books this summer and fall concerning the Civil War, the images of suffering and death found within their pages have lingered in my mind as the fighting in the Civil War was the worst violence the nation had, up to that point, witnessed. New military technologies allowed for horrible wounds and rapid attacks while the cramped quarters of camps and rough conditions that troops lived through on a day-to-day basis encouraged epidemic outbreaks of pathogenic disease. Of course, the walking wounded were often victims of diseases germane to their wounds and medical corpsmen were not up to the huge task of caring for so many wounded. Death, then, was the logical outcome of many battles and even more so the plight of prisoners of war and even everyday infantrymen in a muddy, cold, camp far from home. While the expanse of death and illness are topics often touched upon in most books dealing with any aspect of the Civil War from specific battles to the leadership of either army, the experience of death as a concept and a social issue in the War has not been treated seriously by writers despite the looming spectre it casts over all other aspects of the Civil War. To change this situation, Drew Gilpin Faust, a highly-respected historian of the Civil War's sociocultural history and the current president of Harvard University, has written "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War", a book that seeks to address the massive questions revolving around death and the experience of the Civil War. A somber and difficult topic but one that opens up a wealth of insight into the contemporary social attitudes of the time period, death is treated by Drew Faust as a leitmotif that linked individual lives and the experiences of families on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line to a much larger experience of war and change. At a time when most of the nation had profound feelings of Christian faith, the War challenged those left behind after the death of a loved one (and, truly, in some cases of many loved ones) to still believe in their God and continue in their system of faith. Death, prior to the war, was typically the fate of the very old and the very young and while disease took a much worse toll (especially on the young) than today, the concept of violent death was rather remote for most Americans prior to the onset of the conflict. Drew Faust takes a typical sociohistorical approach to the concept of death in the realm of the Civil War, looking at how death happened, how the living (both in terms of comrades on the battlefield and kin back home) responded to the death of someone, how the pragmatic needs of coffins and burial were met during times of intense conflict and heavy losses, and how social attitudes were changed in broad ways due to the massive scale of death at the hands of armed conflict. While some of her conclusions are expected (i.e., that women especially in the South had to re-adjust their concepts of faith and life as they lost lovers, sons, and brothers to the War), Drew Faust nonetheless comes to these conclusion via a stunning and consummate exploration of primary sources, other documents, and her own skill as a historian very experienced within the territory of the Civil War's social effects. In the hands of a less-experienced and astute a writer, much of the material here would seem dull if not downright gory while Faust makes it both engrossing and a topic that carries its own meaning with great dignity. You come away from reading even a couple chapters of this book feeling very much humbled by the experience of those who fought in the Civil War and those who tended to the home front alike. "This Republic of Suffering" is not the first book I've read with the theme of death as a leitmotif concurrent with a period of war and pain affecting a broad population: "Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia" by Catherine Merridale, which I read a couple years ago, covers the experience of mass deaths under Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union along much the same lines. Of course, we are looking at two vastly different nations and time periods between these two books yet the overall impression is much the same: the power of death on an epic scale to suck the sense of life and morality out of an entire population, a whole generation, is staggering. Like Merridale, who is another talented writer and adroit historian, Faust is able to convey both the pithy, honest, emotion and the complex pragmatism that people during the Civil War faced death with and how they struggled to find courage and resolution in the wake of such vast tragedy. The core power of "This Republic of Suffering" is the ability of the book to bring us as readers to the table of the period's experience of so horrid and mighty an aspect of war instead of simply relating it to us on our own contemporary terms. While not always the most assuring of books or the most pleasant, either, this book is very important and offers a very rare window into the lives of Americans, Southerners and Yanks alike, during the nation's darkest hour.
MIKE WALKER is a writer based in Gainesville, Florida, who contributes to this newspaper on issues regarding history, natural history, ecology and contemporary events. He may be reached via email with comments at: cloudrace@prontomail.com |
      |
||||
