This Republic of Suffering (41 page)

44.
Southern Churchman,
June 26, 1862; John Weissert to Dearest Mother and Children, December 14, 1862, John Weissert Papers, Box 1, Correspondence Nov.–Dec. 1862, BHL; Henry L. Abbott to J. G. Abbott, October 17, 1863, in Scott, ed.,
Fallen Leaves,
pp. 223–24; “Indifference of Soldiers to Death,”
Christian Recorder,
November 14, 1863, p. 184; Surgeon [name illegible] to Reverend Patrick Reilly, June 25, 1862, Patrick Reilly Papers, PAHRC; Henry Clay Trumble,
War Memories of an Army Chaplain
(New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1898), pp. 158, 39; Isaac Hadden to his Kate, May 24, 1864, Misc. Mss. Hadden, Isaac, NYHS; Charles Wainwright in Allan Nevins, ed.,
A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright,
1861–1865 (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1962), p. 56; Wilbur Fisk quote in Reid Mitchell,
The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 157.

45. Weymouth Jordan, ed., “Hugh Harris Robison Letters,”
Journal of Mississippi History
1 ( January 1939), p. 54; Elijah P. Petty,
Journey to Pleasant Hill: The Civil War Letters of Captain Elijah P. Petty, Walker's Texas Division, CSA,
ed. Norman D. Brown (San Antonio: University of Texas, Institute of Texan Cultures, 1982), p. 304; Angus Waddle to My dear Sister, March 6, 1862, Ellen Waddle McCoy Papers, MOHS; Katharine Prescott Wormeley,
The Other Side of War: With the Army of the Potomac: Letters from the Headquarters of the United States Sanitary Commission During the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia in
1862 (Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1889), p. 114.

46. Daniel E. Sutherland,
Seasons of War: The Ordeal of a Confederate Community,
1861–1865 (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 163; Casler,
Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade,
p. 89;
Soldiers' Almanac
(Richmond, Va.: MacFarlane & Fergusson, 1863).

CHAPTER 3. BURYING

1. Board of Trustees of the Antietam National Cemetery,
History of Antietam National Cemetery
(Baltimore: J. W. Woods, 1869), p. 5.

2. [Henry Raymond], “Editor's Table,”
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
8 (April 1854): 690, 691.

3. Ibid., pp. 691, 693. On body and death, see Caroline Bynum,
The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), and Bynum,
Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion
(New York: Zone Books, 1991).

4. Daniel E. Sutherland,
Seasons of War: The Ordeal of a Confederate Community,
1861–1865 (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 274; Gage in Gregory A. Coco,
Wasted Valor: The Confederate Dead at Gettysburg
(Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1990), p. 137; Wirt Armistead Cate, ed.,
Two Soldiers: The Campaign Diaries of Thomas J. Key, C.S.A., December
7, 1863–
May
17, 1865
and Robert J. Campbell, U.S.A., January
1, 1864–
July
21, 1864 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938), p. 182;
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper,
August 16, 1862, p. 334.

5. Sutherland,
Seasons of War,
p. 76.

6. A. P. Meylist to Edmund B. Whitman, June 10, 1868, Edmund B. Whitman, Letters and Reports Received, Record Group 92 E A1–397A, NARA; H. Clay Trumbull,
War Memories of a Chaplain
(New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1898), p.209. See especially “Soldiers Graves and Soldier Burials,” pp. 203–32.

7.
General Orders of the War Department, Embracing the Years
1861, 1862
&
1863 (New York: Derby & Miller, 1864), vol. 1, pp. 158, 248. See also James E. Yeatman, [Sanitary Commission,] “Burial of the Dead,” printed circular, September 20, 1861, William Greenleaf Eliot Collection, MOHS; Erna Risch,
Quartermaster Support of the Army: A History of the Corps,
1775–1939 (Washington, D.C.: United States Army, 1989), p. 464.

8. Horace H. Cunningham,
Field Medical Services at the Battles of Manassas
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1968), p. 48;
Regulations for the Army of the Confederate States,
1862 (Atlanta: James McPherson & Co., 1862).

9. Report of Colonel Henry A. Weeks, 12th New York Infantry, May 28, 1862,
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1884), ser. 1, vol. 11/1, p. 725;
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper,
February 28, 1863, p. 366;
Christian Recorder,
May 21, 1864, p. 83; Richard F. Miller and Robert F. Mooney,
The Civil War: The Nantucket Experience: Including the Memoirs of Josiah Fitch Murphey
(Nantucket: Wesco Publishing Co., 1994), p. 107.

10. Many descriptions of Antietam assert that the dead were buried by the 21st, but Holt's observations contradict this. Daniel M. Holt,
A Surgeon's Civil War: The Letters and Diary of Daniel M. Holt, M.D.,
ed. James M. Greiner, Janet L. Coryell, and James R. Smither (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1994), p. 28; Mrs. H. [Anna M. E. Holstein],
Three Years in Field Hospitals in the Army of the Potomac
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1867), p. 11.

11. James M. McPherson,
Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 4; W. D. Rutherford to Sallie Rutherford, May 21, 1864, William Drayton Rutherford Papers, SCL. (This example is not from Antietam, as are all others in this section, but from Spotsylvania in 1864.) See also Steven R. Stotelmyer,
The Bivouacs of the Dead: The Story of Those Who Died at Antietam and South Mountain
(Baltimore: Toomey Press, 1992), p. 10.

12. Stotelmyer,
Bivouacs of the Dead,
pp. 9, 5.

13. Gregory A. Coco,
A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg, the Aftermath of a Battle
(Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1995), p. 313; Gerard A. Patterson,
Debris of Battle: The Wounded of Gettysburg
(Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1997), p. 28; Coco,
Strange and Blighted Land.,
pp. 60, 64. On lack of tools, see also Richard Coolidge to Major General W. A. Hammond, September 4, 1862, Papers of George A. Otis, RG 94 629A, NARA.

14. W. B. Coker to his Brother, July 28, 1861, 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. 40;
Official Records,
ser. 1, vol. 27, p. 79, cited in Gerard A. Patterson,
Debris of Battle: The Wounded of Gettysburg
(Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1997), p. xi; Theodore Fogel to his parents, September 28, 1862, in Lane, ed.,
Dear Mother,
p. 190.

15. John A. Wyeth,
With Sabre and Scalpel: The Autobiography of a Soldier and Surgeon
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1914), p. 254;
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper,
November 14, 1863, p. 124; Frank Oakley's reactions described in Cynthia to My Dear Father, August 22, 1862, Frank Oakley Papers, WHS.

16. Quotes from Joseph Allan Frank and George A. Reaves,
“Seeing the Elephant”: Raw Recruits at the Battle of Shiloh
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), p. 122.

17. Coco,
Strange and Blighted Land,
p. 89; Stotelmyer,
Bivouacs of the Dead,
p. 4; Frank and Reaves,
“Seeing the Elephant,”
123; Coco,
Strange and Blighted Land,
p. 127; Earl J. Hess,
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), p. 41; Cyrus F. Boyd,
The Civil War Diary of Cyrus F. Boyd, Fifteenth Iowa Infantry
1861–1863, ed. Mildred Throne (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Reprint Co., 1953), pp. 41–42; H. Clay Trumbull,
War Memories of an Army Chaplain
(New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1898), p. 209; Robert Zaworski,
Headstones of Heroes: The Restoration and History of Confederate Graves in Atlanta's Oakland Cemetery
(Paducah, Ky.: Turner Publishing Co. 1997), p. 7.

18.
New York Herald,
September 7, 1862; James Eldred Phillips Diary, entry for May 1863, p. 16, VHS. On hogs see for example Sutherland,
Seasons of War,
pp. 193, 228; William D. Rutherford to Sallie Fair, August 26, 1861, Rutherford Papers, SCL.

19. “Burials,”
Sanitary Commission Bulletin
1, no. 20 (August 15, 1864): 623; R. A. Wilkinson to M. F. Wilkinson, July 8, 1862, Wilkinson-Stark Family Papers (mss. 255), The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans; Hardin quoted in Frank and Reaves,
“Seeing the Elephant,”
p. 122.

20. William Corby,
Memoirs of Chaplain Life: Three Years Chaplain in the Famous Irish Brigade, “Army of the Potomac”
(Notre Dame, Ind.: Scholastic Press, 1894), p. 91; Coco,
Strange and Blighted Land,
p. 119; Wyeth,
With Sabre and Scalpel,
p. 248; Holt,
Surgeon's Civil War,
pp. 190, 103.

21. William Gore, February 25, 1865, BV Gore, William B., NYHS. Edgar Allan Poe wrote frequently about the fear of being buried alive in his widely popular short stories. See, for example, “The Premature Burial” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in Stephen Peithman, ed.,
The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981). See also Timothy Trend Blade, “Buried Alive!”
American Cemetery,
September 1991, pp. 34–54.

22. Gregory A. Coco,
Killed in Action: Eyewitness Accounts of the Last Moments of
100
Union Soldiers Who Died at Gettysburg
(Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1992), p. 34.

23. Cate, ed.,
Two Soldiers,
p. 93; Houghton quoted in Coco,
Killed in Action,
pp. 44–45; Fannie A. Beers,
Memories: A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1888), p. 83.

24. Trumbull,
War Memories of a Chaplain,
p. 219.

25. J. W. McClure to My Dearest Kate, August 17, 1864, McClure Family Papers, SCL.

26. Sutherland,
Seasons of War,
pp. 160–61; Charles Kerrison to My Dear Sister, May 19, 1864, Kerrison Family Papers, SCL; George R. Gauthier,
Harder Than Death: The Life of George R. Gauthier, an Old Texan
(Austin, Tex.: n.p., 1902), p. 15; Oliver Wendell Holmes, “My Hunt After ‘The Captain,'”
Atlantic
10 (December 1862), p. 743.

27.
Narrative of Privations and Sufferings of United States Officers and Soldiers While Prisoners of War in the Hands of Rebel Authorities, Being the Report of a Commission of Inquiry, Appointed by the United States Sanitary Commission
(Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1864), p. 159; Holt,
Surgeon's Civil War,
p. 63.

28. Coco,
Strange and Blighted Land,
p. 49. On death and Civil War horses, see Drew Gilpin Faust, “Equine Relics of the Civil War,”
Southern Cultures
6 (Spring 2000): 23–49.

29. Hollywood Cemetery, Records, 1847–1955, VHS; Mary H. Mitchell,
Hollywood Cemetery: The History of a Southern Shrine
(Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1985), p. 48.

30. Benedict Anderson,
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
(New York: Verso, 1991).

31. John Thompson, “The Burial of Latané,” online at www.civilwarpoetry.org/confederate/officers/latane.htm. See Drew Gilpin Faust, “Race, Gender and Confederate Nationalism: William D. Washington's
Burial of Latané,
” in Faust,
Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), pp. 148–59.

32. Faust, “Race, Gender and Confederate Nationalism,” pp. 149–51.

33.
Harper's Weekly,
October 11, 1862, p. 655; Coco,
Strange and Blighted Land,
p. 11; John W. Schildt,
Antietam Hospitals
(Chewsville, Md.: Antietam Publications, 1987), p. 14.

34. Flora McCabe to Dearest Maggie, January 26, 1862, Flora Morgan McCabe Collection, LC. On fear of getting the wrong body, see also Friedrich Hartmann to Sarah Ogden, September 10, 1863, Sarah Ogden Correspondence and Ephemera, GLC6559.01.114, Gilder Lehrman Collection, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, NYHS.

35. Patterson,
Debris,
p. 173; see also, “Yorktown,”
New York Herald,
April 30, 1862; Robert E. Denney,
Civil War Medicine: Care and Comfort of the Wounded
(New York: Sterling Publishers, 1994), p. 58; W. White to Dear Parents, June 21, 1862, William White Papers, PAHRC.

36. See Pennsylvania State Agency, December 10, 1863, Record Book, November 1863–December 1864, NYHS; New England Soldiers Relief Association Papers, RG 94, p. 800, NARA. On Central Association, see T. N. Dawkins to J. W. McClure, December 4, 1864, McClure Papers, SCL;
Louisiana Soldiers Relief Association and Hospital
(Richmond, Va.: Enquirer Book and Job Office, 1862), p.30. On support from a single community, see Robert V. Wells,
Facing the “King of Terrors”: Death and Society in an American Community,
1750–1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 129.

37. On the U.S. Sanitary Commission, see “Burials,”
Sanitary Commission Bulletin
1, no. 20 (August 15, 1864): 623; “Rev. Mr. Hoblitt on Nashville Hospitals,”
Sanitary Reporter,
1, no. 5 ( July 15, 1863): 34; “The Commission on the James River and the Appomattox,”
Sanitary Commission Bulletin
1, no. 18 ( July 15, 1864): 567. On Sanitary Commission and burials, see [Holstein],
Three Years in Field Hospitals,
p. 71; J. S. Newberry, “Report of the Hospital Directory,”
Sanitary Reporter
1, no. 11 (October 15, 1863): 81.