This Republic of Suffering (45 page)

9. Thomas B. Hampton to Jestin Hampton, October 15, 1863; Jestin Hampton to Thomas B. Hampton, April 24, 1864; both in Thomas B. Hampton Papers, CAH.

10. A. S. Collins and H. Collins to Jestin Hampton, March 21, 1865; Thomas B. Hampton Obituary [March 1865]: both in Thomas B. Hampton Papers, CAH.

11. Philippe Ariès,
The Hour of Our Death,
trans. Helen Weaver (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), pp. 557–601; Philippe Ariès,
Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present,
trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).

12. “My God! What Is All This For?,” Wolf C116, American Song Sheets Collection, LCP.

13. Captain Edson Gerry, “Battle of Winchester,” Wolf 108, online at musicanet.org/robokopp/usa/harkthem.htm; “Tell Mother, I Die Happy,” words by C. A. Vosburgh, music by Jabez Burns (New York: Charles Magnus, n.d.), Wolf 2290. See also “Shall We Know Each Other There?,” Wolf 2081, “Our Southern Dead,” Wolf C130, E. Walter Lowe, “The Dying Soldier” (New York: Charles Magnus, n.d.), Wolf 5486; L. Katzenburger, “The Dying Confederate's Last Words,” Wolf C49, “Oh! Bless Me, Mother, Ere I Die,” Wolf 1653, all in American Song Sheet Collection, LCP.

14. J. L. M'Creery, “There Is No Death,”
Arthur's Home Magazine
22 ( July 1863): 41.

15. Swedenborg quoted in Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang,
Heaven: A History
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 186. See Erland J. Brock, ed.,
Swedenborg and His Influence
(Bryn Athyn, Pa.: Academy of the New Church, 1988). My thanks to James Kloppenberg and Trygve Throntveit for help on Swedenborg. On heaven see also Jeffrey Burton Russell,
Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven and How We Can Regain It
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

16. James H. Moorhead, “‘As Though Nothing At All Had Happened': Death and Afterlife in Protestant Thought, 1840–1955,”
Soundings
67, no. 4 (1984): 458–59. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Swedenborg; or, the Mystic,” in Robert E. Spiller, ed.,
Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1965), p. 155.

17. Emily Dickinson to Fanny Norcross and Loo Norcross, April 1861, in Mabel Todd Loomis, ed.,
Letters of Emily Dickinson
(Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894), vol. 2, p. 237. Dickinson quoted in Shira Wolosky,
Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 44; Emily Dickinson, “I never felt at Home—Below—,” #413, in Thomas H. Johnson,
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1960); McDannell and Lang,
Heaven,
p. 228;
Daily South Carolinian,
April 24, 1864; Phillip Shaw Paludan,
A People's Contest: The Union and Civil War,
1861–1865 (1988; rpt. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), p. 367;
Harper's Weekly,
December 5, 1863, p. 784; poems from
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
26 (February 1863): 384, and 29 (October 1864): 584.

18. Robert Patterson,
Visions of Heaven for the Life on Earth
(Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1877);
Harper's Weekly,
December 5, 1863, p. 784; William Branks,
Heaven Our Home: We Have No Saviour But Jesus and No Home But Heaven
(Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1864). The book has twenty-five total chapters and is divided into three parts; part 2 is “Recognition.” Rebecca Gratz to Ann Boswell Gratz, September 12, 1861, in David Philipson, ed.,
Letters of Rebecca Gratz
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1929), p.427. On heaven and Jews, see Henry Harbaugh, “Heavenly Recognition Among the Jews,”
The Heavenly Recognition; or, An Earnest and Scriptural Discussion of the Question, Will We Know Our Friends in Heaven
(Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blackiston, 1865), pp. 85–115.

19. Epes Sargent,
The Proof Palpable of Immortality: Being an Account of the Materialization Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism
(Boston: Colby and Rich, 1875).

20. Robert S. Cox,
Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), p. 169; James Henry Hammond Diary, December 13, 1853, James Henry Hammond Papers, SCL; see Drew Gilpin Faust,
A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South,
1840–1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 66–67. Ann Braude demonstrates the especially close link between spiritualism and feminism in
Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1989). On numbers of spiritualists, the
North American Review
estimated at least 2 million in 1855; Harriet Beecher Stowe thought 4 to 5 million in 1869; Emma Hardinge, spiritualist writer, estimated 11 million in 1870. Nina Baym, “Introduction,” in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
Three Spiritualist Novels
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. ix.

21. Jean H. Baker,
Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), pp. 218–20, 221; “Lincoln's Attendance at Spiritualist Seances,”
Lincoln Lore,
no. 1499 ( January 1963): 1–4; no. 1500 (February 1963): 1–2; John Pierpont, “My Child,” online at www.poetry-archive.com/p/pierpont_john.htm; Henry Ingersoll Bowditch,
Memorial
(Boston: John Wilson & Son, 1865), p. 49; Bret E. Carroll,
Spiritualism in Antebellum America
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 16–34.

22. Cox,
Body and Soul,
p. 176.

23. Epes Sargent,
Planchette: or, The Despair of Science
(Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1869). “Novel amusement” from broadside “The Boston Planchette,” American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass., reproduced in Braude,
Radical Spirits,
fig. 5, after p. 114.

24. R. Laurence Moore,
In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 38; Epes Sargent,
The Scientific Basis of Spiritualism
(Boston: Colby & Rich, 1881), p. 346; John W. Edmonds and George T. Dexter,
Spiritualism
(New York: Partridge & Brittan, 1853), p. 360; Sargent,
Planchette,
p. 279.

25. “The Second Death,”
Banner of Light,
October 19, 1861, p. 6; “Message Department,” April 26, 1862, p. 6; May 31, 1862, p. 6; July 2, 1864, p. 1.; December 13, 1862, p. 6.

26.
Banner of Light,
April 26, 1862, p. 6.

27.
Banner of Light,
September 19, 1863; July 16, 1864; May 10, 1862; all p. 6.

28.
Banner of Light,
August 29, 1863, p. 6.

29. Ibid. See S. Weir Mitchell's fictional rendering of a spiritualist reunion of an amputee and his limbs, “The Case of George Dedlow,”
Atlantic Monthly,
July 1866, online at www.painonline.org/pdf/dedlow.pdf.

30. National Park Service, Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, Names Index Project, online at www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/info.htm. The data are entered from the General Index Cards of the Compiled Military Service records at the National Archives.

31.
Banner of Light,
May 31, 1862, p. 5; Sweet,
Speaking Dead,
pp. 11, 12, 3.

32. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
Chapters from a Life
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1896) pp. 96, 97, 98, 127, 128; Helen Sootin Smith, “Introduction,” Phelps,
The Gates Ajar
(1868; rpt. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. xxxiv. See Barton Levi St. Armand, “Paradise Deferred: The Image of Heaven in the Work of Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,”
American Quarterly
29 (Spring 1977): 55–78; Ann Douglas, “Heaven Our Home: Consolation Literature in the Northern United States, 1830–1880,”
American Quarterly
26 (December 1974): 496–515; Lisa Long, “The Corporeity of Heaven: Rehabilitating the Civil War Body in
The Gates Ajar,
”
American Literature
69 (December 1997): 781–811; and Carol Farley Kessler,
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
(Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982).

33. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
The Gates Ajar,
in
Three Spiritualist Novels
pp. 5, 32. See Mark Twain's “burlesque” of
The Gates Ajar,
perhaps the ultimate testimony to its cultural impact,
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
(1909; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

34. Phelps,
Gates,
pp. 41, 110, 42.

35. Ibid., p. 50.

36. Ibid., pp. 65, 64.

37. Ibid., pp. 10–11.

38. Catherine Edmondston,
Journal of a Secesh Lady: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston,
1860–1866, ed. Beth G. Crabtree and James W. Patton (Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1979), p. 461;J. Michael Welton, ed.,
“My Heart Is So Rebellious”: The Caldwell Letters,
1861–1865 (Warrenton, Va.: Fauquier National Bank, 1991), pp. 240, 241; Clara Solomon Diary, entry for June 7, 1861, Louisiana State University; Anne Darden, Diary, entry for July 20, 1861, North Carolina Department of Archives and History. See Drew Gilpin Faust,
Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 190–95. On both Job and “Though thou slay us,” see Peyton Harrison Hoge,
Moses Drury Hoge: Life and Letters
(Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1899), pp. 235–37.

39. Abraham Lincoln, “Address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,” November 19, 1863, in
Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings,
1859–1865 (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 536.

40. Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” in
Speeches and Writings,
pp. 686–87.

41. Stephen Elliott,
Ezra's Dilemna [sic]: A Sermon
(Savannah, Ga.: Power Press of George N. Nichols, 1863), p. 17; Stephen Elliott,
Gideon's Water-Lappers: A Sermon
(Macon, Ga.: Burke, Boykin & Co., 1864), p. 20. On providentialism see Mark Noll,
The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 75–94. On religion and nationalism, see Drew Gilpin Faust,
The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), pp. 22–40. With thanks to Katy Park for Latin assistance.

42. Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” p. 687.

43. Horace Bushnell, “Our Obligations to the Dead,” in
Building Eras in Religion
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1881), pp. 322, 327.

44. Horace Bushnell,
Reverses Needed: A Discourse Delivered on the Sunday After the Disaster of Bull Run, in the North Church, Hartford
(Hartford, Conn.: L. E. Hunt, 1861); Bushnell, “Obligations,” pp. 331, 333, 332, 341, 353. See William A. Clebsch, “Christian Interpretations of the Civil War,”
Church History
30, no. 2 (1961): 212–22.

45. Bushnell, “Obligations,” p. 350; Elliott,
Gideon's Water-Lappers,
p. 20; Bushnell, “Obligations,” p. 355. See also Horace Bushnell,
The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles of Universal Obligation
(New York: Charles Scribner & Co., 1866).

46. Bushnell, “Obligations,” p. 353.

47. Mary Ann Harris Gay,
Life in Dixie During the War
(Atlanta: Constitution Job Office, 1892), p. 195; Henry Timrod, “Ethnogenesis,” online at www.poemhunter.com/quotations/famous.asp?people=Henry%20Timrod; also quoted in Malvina Waring, “A Confederate Girl's Diary, March 9, 1865,” in Mrs. Thomas Taylor et al., eds.,
South Carolina Women in the Confederacy
(Columbia, S.C.: State Co., 1903), vol. 1, p. 280.

48. Presbytery and Ford quoted in Daniel W. Stowell,
Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South,
1863–1877 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 26–27; Mary Greenhow Lee Diary, April 15, 1865, WFCHS.

49. John Adger, “Northern and Southern Views of the Province of the Church,”
Southern Presbyterian Review
16 (March 1866): 410, quoted in Noll,
Civil War as a Theological Crisis,
p. 78; Hoge,
Moses Drury Hoge,
pp. 235–37, quoted in Stowell,
Rebuilding Zion,
p. 40.

50. Grace Brown Elmore,
A Heritage of Woe: The Civil War Diary of Grace Brown Elmore,
1861–1868, ed. Marli F. Weiner (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), pp. 119, 99; Cornelia Peake McDonald,
A Woman's Civil War: A Diary, with Reminiscences of the War, from March
1862, ed. Minrose C. Gwin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), p. 241.

51. Louis Menand,
The Metaphysical Club
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001), pp. x, 4. See Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Touched with Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
1861–1864, ed. Mark DeWolfe Howe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946). The pathbreaking study of these issues was George M. Fredrickson,
The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union
(New York: Harper & Row, 1965).

52. Paul Fussell,
The Great War and Modern Memory
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 7; “Mother, Come Your Boy Is Dying” [sheet music] (New York: H. DeMarsan, n.d.); “Bless Me, Mother, Ere I Die” (New York: H. DeMarsan, n.d.); “Who Will Care for Mother Now?” (New York: Charles Magnus, n.d.); “Rock Me to Sleep, Mother,” in
A Storm in the Land: Music of the
26
th North Carolina Regimental Band, C.S.A.
(New York: New World Records, 2002).

53. “Mother Would Comfort Me” (New York: H. DeMarsan, n.d.), Wolf 1472, words and music online at freepages.music.rootsweb.com/~edgmon/cwcomfort.htm; “Mother Would Wallop Me” (New York: H. DeMarsan, n.d.), Wolf 1470; John C. Cross, “Mother on the Brain” (New York: H. DeMarsan, n.d.), Wolf 1473, all from the American Song Sheet Collection, LCP. See southern editions: “Who Will Care for Mother Now?” (Macon and Savannah, Ga.: J. C. Schreiner & Son, 186–); “Rock Me to Sleep, Mother” (Richmond, Va.: C. Nordendorf, 1863); “Mother, Is the Battle Over?” (Columbia, S.C.: B. Duncan, 1863).