Americans in the Civil War period were very interested in Heaven and what it might be like, because they were having to face the fact that many of... →
Drew Gilpin Faust
As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small... →
Before the Civil War, there were no national cemeteries, no processes for identifying the dead in the battle. There weren't any dog tags, and... →
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death, entering into a civil war that proved bloodier... →
The seductiveness of war derives in part from its location on this boundary of the human, the inhuman, and the superhuman. It requires us to confront... →
As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I... →
Death created the modern American union, not just by ensuring national survival, but by shaping enduring national structures and commitments. The... →
For all its ubiquity and its universality, war offers the attraction of the extraordinary - the escape from the gray everyday, from the humdrum into... →
I think that the firepower of the Civil War, the numbers of bodies that were left to rot, the numbers of amputations in the Civil War, all of this... →
Probably half the cases of Civil War dead were not identified. And so there was no way to let loved ones know, and there were no regularized... →