This Republic of Suffering (42 page)

38. Chattanooga, Tenn., Disinterments from March to September 1864, Telegrams from January to July 1864, ms. vol. bd., Box 284.1, folder 3, p. 119, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL.

39. Mary C. Brayton, October 15, 1864, J. S. Moore, November 2, 1864, Chattanooga, Tenn., Orders for Disinterment and Removal of Bodies, September 1864–February 1865, Box 284.1, folder 5, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL.

40. “Soldiers' Cemetery at Belle Plain Va May 23 1864,” Box 192.3, folder 4; “Plot of Soldiers' Cemetery, Port Royal Va 28 May 1864,” Box 192.3, folder 5, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL.

41. Cornelius quoted in Christine Quigley,
The Corpse: A History
( Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1963), p. 55. See Cain and Cornelius Ledger, 1859, 1862, RBMSC.

42. “The Terrible Telegram,” March 18, 1863; Henry I. Bowditch to My Own Sweet Wife [Olivia Yardley Bowditch], March 19, 1863, both in Manuscripts Relating to Lieutenant Nathaniel Bowditch, vol. 2, pp. 98, 92, Nathaniel Bowditch Memorial Collection, MAHS.

43. Henry I. Bowditch,
A Brief Plea for an Ambulance System for the Army of the United States
(Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863), pp. 6, 15.

44. Coco,
Strange and Blighted Land,
pp. 114–15, 110; order in
Christian Recorder,
August 1, 1863, p. 1.

45. Alexander quoted in Kent Masterson Brown,
Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics and the Pennsylvania Campaign
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), p. 50; see also pp. 371–72, 381.

46. Receipt, August 15, 1862, Goodwin Family Papers, MAHS; Alvin F. Harlow,
Old Waybills: The Romance of the Express Companies
(New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1934), p. 299. See also Stillman King Wightman, “In Search of My Son,”
American Heritage
14 (February 1963), pp. 64–78.

47. Stotelmyer,
Bivouacs of the Dead,
p. 15.

48. Staunton Transportation Company, “Transportation of the Dead!” (Gettysburg, Pa.: H. J. Stahle, 1863), broadside, LCP.

49. Robert W. Habenstein and William M. Lamers,
The History of American Funeral Directing
(Milwaukee: Bulfin Printers, 1955), pp. 330–35.

50. On Ellsworth, see
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Magazine,
June 1, 1861, pp. 40–41. On embalming, see also Michael Sappol,
A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

51. Charlotte Elizabeth McKay,
Stories of Hospital and Camp
(Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1876), p. 47.

52.
Richmond Enquirer,
June 2, 1863, p. 2; December 4, 1863, p. 3; Charles R. Wilson, “The Southern Funeral Director: Managing Death in the New South,”
Georgia Historical Quarterly
67 (Spring 1983): 53.

53. Habenstein and Lamers,
History of American Funeral Directing,
pp. 330, 334. See also Gary Laderman,
The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Towards Death,
1799–1883 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), and Karen Pomeroy Flood, “Contemplating Corpses: The Dead Body in American Culture, 1870–1920,” Ph.D. diss. (Harvard University, 2001).

54. George A. Townsend,
Rustics in Rebellion: A Yankee Reporter on the Road to Richmond,
1861–1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950), pp. 121–22, 153–54.

55. Hardie to Provost Marshal General, City Point, November 23, 1864, M619, 2195, S1864 Roll 309, NARA; Turner and Baker Files, November 8, 1864, 363-B, M797, Roll 130, NARA; R. Burr to Brig. Gen. M. R. Patrick, November 21, 1864, M619 2195 S1864 Roll 309, NARA.

56. War Department, Quartermaster General's Office,
Compilation of Laws, Orders, Opinions, Instructions, Etc. in Regard to National Military Cemeteries
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1878), p. 5. See also Monro MacCloskey,
Hallowed Ground: Our National Cemeteries
(New York: Richard Rosens Press, 1968), p. 24.

57. Garry Wills,
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).

58. Trumbull,
War Memories of a Chaplain,
p. 209.59. Bowditch,
Brief Plea,
p. 15.

CHAPTER 4. NAMING

1. Walt Whitman,
Specimen Days
(1882; rpt. Boston: David Godine, 1971), p. 60.

2. Caroline Alexander, “Letter from Vietnam: Across the River Styx,”
New Yorker,
October 25, 2004, p. 44. See also Michael Sledge,
Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, and Honor Our Military Fallen
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

3. Mark Crawford,
Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War
(Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1999), p. 68, cites 13,768 U.S. deaths out of 104,556 who served. Only one in eight of these deaths was battle-related; the others were from disease.

4. U.S. War Department,
General Orders of the War Department
(New York: Derby & Miller, 1864), vol. 1, pp. 158, 248; “Return of Deceased Soldiers” and “Field Returns,” paras. 451, 452, 453, in
Regulations for the Army of the Confederate States,
1862 (Atlanta: James McPherson & Co., 1862); Samuel P. Moore, August 14, 1862, in Wayside Hospital, Charleston, Order and Letter Book, SCL;
Charleston Mercury,
January 27, 1864; Edward Steere,
The Graves Registration Service in World War II,
Quartermaster Historical Studies no. 21, Historical Section, Office of the Quartermaster General (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951), pp. 4–5. On inadequacies of Confederate casualty reporting in the Peninsula Campaign, see
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901) ser. 1, vol. 11, pt. 2, pp. 559, 760, 775, 501–2.

5. Sarah J. Palmer to Harriet R. Palmer, September 5, 1862, Palmer Family Papers, SCL; F. S. Gillespie to Mrs. Carson, July 5, 1864, Carson Family Papers, SCL.

6. Elvira J. Powers,
Hospital Pencillings: Being a Diary While in Jefferson General Hospital
(Boston: Edward L. Mitchel, 1866), p. 19. On chaplains, see Warren B. Armstrong,
For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), p. 134n98, quoting an 1864 order from the assistant medical director of the Department of the Cumberland. Chaplain figures in Steven E. Woodworth,
While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), p. 148.

7.
Daily South Carolinian,
June 16, 1864.

8.
Daily South Carolinian,
July 22, 1863; F. S. Gillespie to Mrs. Carson; Mathew Jack Davis Narrative, “War Sketches,” CAH; Joseph Willett to Dear Sister, June 6, 1864, Misc. Mss. Cummings, NYHS; Henry W. Raymond, ed., “Extracts from the Journal of Henry J. Raymond II,”
Scribner's Monthly
19 ( January 1880): 419–20; Steven R. Stotelmyer,
The Bivouacs of the Dead
(Baltimore: Toomey Press, 1992), p. 17.

9. On mail see W. D. Rutherford to Sallie Fair Rutherford, June 5, 1864, William Drayton Rutherford Papers, SCL.

10. J. W. Hoover to Mr. Kuhlman, September 8, 1864, J. W. Hoover Papers, WHS; Reverend Lemuel Moss,
Annals of the United States Christian Commission
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1868), pp. 411, 506. On letters after Gettysburg, see Andrew Boyd Cross, “The Battle of Gettysburg and the Christian Commission,” in Daniel J. Hoisington, ed.,
Gettysburg and the Christian Commission
([Roseville, Minn.]: Edinborough Press, 2002), p. 59. A quire is a set of twenty-four or twenty-five sheets of paper of the same size and stock.

11. Moss,
Annals,
pp. 512, 487–88, 563, 475. See U.S. Christian Commission, Record of Letters Written for Soldiers, Army of the Potomac, 1865, RG 94 E 746, and U.S. Christian Commission, Abstracts of Letters Written for Sick and Wounded Soldiers, Army of the Potomac, 1864–65, RG 94 E745, NARA.

12. Moss,
Annals,
pp. 409, 439–40. See U.S. Christian Commission, Letters Received, Individual Relief Department, 1864–65 RG 94 E748, NARA; U.S. Christian Commission, Record of Inquiries, Central Office, 1864–65 RG 94 E743, NARA.

13. U.S. Christian Commission, Death Register, 1864–65, October 6, 1864; October 9, 1864; October 8, 1864; September 19, 1864; October 3, 1864; November 3, 1864; October 18, 1864, RG 94 E797, NARA.

14. Moss,
Annals,
pp. 508, 439. U.S. Christian Commission,
Record of the Federal Dead Buried from Libby, Belle Isle, Danville and Camp Lawton Prisons and at City Point and in the Field Before Petersburg and Richmond
(Philadelphia: J. B. Rodgers, 1866). See U.S. Christian Commission, Correspondence Concerning “Record of the Federal Dead,” RG 94 E795, NARA.

15. Charles J. Stillé,
History of the United States Sanitary Commission
(New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1868), p. 451; George M. Fredrickson,
The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union
(New York: Harper & Row, 1965), chap. 7; Judith Ann Giesberg,
Civil War Sisterhood: The U.S. Sanitary Commission and Women's Politics in Transition
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000); Jeanie Attie,
Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); William Quentin Maxwell,
Lincoln's Fifth Wheel: The Political History of the United States Sanitary Commission
(New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956).

16. Stillé,
History of Sanitary Commission,
pp. 287, 308.

17. Ibid., p. 309; John Herrick to Frederick Law Olmsted, December 14, 1862, Washington Hospital Directory Archives, Letters of Inquiry, Box 192.2, folder 3, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL.

18.
Sanitary Reporter,
January 15, 1864, p. 135.

19. Stillé,
History of Sanitary Commission,
p. 309; Howard A. Martin to H. A. de France, July 4, 1863, John Bowne to H. A. de France, July 9, 1863, July 16, 1863, and July 21, 1863, Philadelphia Agency, Hospital Directory Correspondence, vol. 1, Box 596, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL; H. A. de France to Jos. P. Holbrook, July 27, 1863 and July 18, 1863, Washington Hospital Directory Archives, Box 195.1, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL.

20. Richard Deering, June 13, 1864, Louisville Hospital Directory Archives, Chattanooga, Special Inquiries, April 8, 1864, to August 25, 1864, Box 284.2, folder 1, p. 58; Report of Hospital Directory, July 9, 1864, Washington Hospital Directory Archives, Box 192.3, folder 12, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL; “The Hospital Directory,”
Sanitary Commission Bulletin
1 (December 15, 1863): 109.

21. Report of Hospital Directory, July 9, 1864, Washington Hospital Directory Archives, Box 192.3, folder 12, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL. For casualty numbers, see James McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 742.

22. Peter Williams to Dear Sir, March 28, 1863, Philadelphia Agency, Hospital Directory Correspondence, vol. 1, Box 596, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL. Susannah Hampton to Dear Sir, September 14, 1863, Philadelphia Agency, Hospital Directory Correspondence, vol. 2, Box 597, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL.

23. Mrs. Biddy Higgins to Sir, December 16, 1863, Philadelphia Agency, Hospital Directory Correspondence, vol. 2, Box 597, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL.

24. John Bowne to John W. Wilson, December 17, 1863, Philadelphia Agency, Hospital Directory Correspondence, vol. 2, Box 597, U.S. Sanitary Commission Records, NYPL.

25. Stillé,
History of Sanitary Commission,
pp. 310, 309.

26.
Louisiana Soldiers' Relief Association and Hospital in the City of Richmond, Virginia
(Richmond, Va.: Enquirer Book and Job Press, 1862), p. 30; Kurt O. Berends, “‘Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man': The Religious Military Press in the Confederacy,” 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. 147.

27. P. Hunter to Oliver H. Middleton, July 27, 1864; Henry W. Richards to Oliver H. Middleton, December 19, 1864; E. W. Mikell to Colonel B. H. Rutledge, June 21, 1864, all in Middleton-Blake Papers, SCHS.

28.
Harper's Weekly,
September 3, 1864, p. 576.

29. W. H. Fowler,
Guide for Claimants of Deceased Soldiers
(Richmond, Va.: Geo. P. Evans & Co., 1864), pp. 66, 17; 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), pp. 106–7.

30.
Daily South Carolinian,
May 17, 1864; W. D. Rutherford, telegram to Sallie F. Rutherford, July 6, 1862, William Drayton Rutherford Papers, SCL.

31. Gregory Coco,
Killed in Action: Eyewitness Accounts of the Last Moments of
100
Union Soldiers Who Died at Gettysburg
(Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1992), p. 76;
Harper's Weekly,
August 1, 1863, p. 495, and September 3, 1864, p. 576. Murphey quoted in Richard F. Miller, and Robert F. Moore,
The Civil War: The Nantucket Experience, Including the Memoirs of Josiah Fitch Murphey
(Nantucket, Mass.: Wesco Publishing, 1994), p. 80.

32. Louis Menand,
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001), p. 41.

33. 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. 145; Clara Barton, Journal, 1863, Clara Barton Papers, LC; T. J. Weatherly Diary, 1864–65, SCL.