The Civil War changed virtually every aspect of American society, from religion to gender roles. Drew Gilpin Faust, president of and Lincoln Professor of History at Harvard University, has devoted her new book to exploring how the war changed American death. In the Civil War, over 2 percent of the nation’s population died””which, as Faust points out, was roughly equivalent to the entire state of Maine being killed, or twice the population of Vermont. The Victorian choreography of “the good death” was inadequate for dealing with the mind-boggling numbers, the stench, the mangled corpses of men too young to die. Americans had to overhaul their notions of what death could and should look like, and even what kind of God could be said to be present””or absent””during such death.
Many of the concrete changes in American dying that Faust documents involve the government’s role in military death; indeed, it was the Civil War that created governmental responsibilities that we now take for granted, such as next-of-kin notification, which neither the Union nor the Confederacy viewed as their job in 1861. At the outset of the war, the Union had no organized method for burying, or even identifying, dead soldiers. That began to change with the 1862 passage of a law giving the president power to purchase land for a national cemetery for soldiers; cemeteries were established at Chattanooga, Stones River, Knoxville, Antietam, and, of course, Gettysburg.
In the years during and after the war, the government developed a more aggressive system for counting the war dead (the figures of Union soldiers killed were constantly revised until the 1880s, when the War Department settled on 360,222) and paying pensions and survivor’s benefits. The erstwhile Confederacy didn’t have a government anymore, and certainly didn’t expect the Union to give money to Confederate war widows, so states stepped in.
I glad to read this book review by Lauren F. Winner about the Civil War, she writes very thoughtful reviews. I don’t want to get off topic but I would like to point out that Lauren Winner is an author in her own right. Her book “Girl meets God”, it is one of my favorites because it illustrates some very important things about the Anglican/Episcopal “Book of Common Prayer” and our Christian faith. I hope other Episcopalians, especially young people, will take notice of her book which is written from both the Jewish and Christian perspective. It certainly helped me understand and appreciate our historic Christian faith the importance of the valuable beliefs we should be preserving at this time.
It is good to see a public review, as well as freshly published books, repudiating the Lost Cause mentality that says the Confederacy was fighting only to uphold States’ rights to non-interference from the Federal government. If one watches the popular Civil War epics [i]Gettysburg[/i] or its sister flick, [i]Gods and Generals,[/i] one comes away thinking the issue was to unify the Union at whatever cost or to let the Southerners live and let live. The issue of slavery merely makes cameo appearances for context.
Clearly the Civil War also changed our thinking about government and the Union, but to deny it was not first about the issue of slavery and how that problem would be worked out in our society is disingenous at best. Slavery was the not so invisible elephant in every argument in the 1860 election as well as the secession debates in every parlor, town meeting, legislative hall, or pulpit.
However, the comment here–
[blockquote]She reminds us that many southern unionists opposed secession not because they were any less invested in slavery, but because they believed that their leaving the Union would more seriously imperil slavery than their staying.[/blockquote]
–makes a great viewpoint on the value some place on staying engaged in a protracted conflict if only to maintain a position to influence the debate/conflict. This could apply everywhere from Iraq to the pews and councils of the Anglican Communion.
It applies no matter what value judgment one makes on slavery, Iraq, the Anglican Communion or any other protracted conflict. Once one separates from the opposition the ability to influence the outcome in your favor is radically diminished no matter how good it feels to achieve that separation. To return to the Civil War for a moment, I think this was the genius of General Grant in forcing engagements at every opportunity.
I would argue that slavery was the “presenting issue” and that fact in no way lessens, for me, the validity of the “Lost Cause.” In the same way, the blessing of the homosexual lifestyle is the “presenting issue” of the current upheaval in the Anglican Communion. It is not, however, the cause. The cause is differing understandings of authority of Scripture and the person and nature of Jesus Christ.
Enough of the revisionists, whether historians or churchmen.
Although the slavery issue may have been the “presenting issue” and a major impetus for secession, the right of secession; that the Union was, in law, a voluntary association among sovereign states, was settled law prior to 1860 and taught in every Constitutional Law book. Actually, several states’ acts of ratification of the Constitution contained explicit clauses declaring their right to secede from the Union if they saw fit. Both NY and MA threatened to do so in the first half of the 19th century. More recently, we have the spectacle of many in New Hampshire declaring their desire to secede from “George Bush’s United States” for one reason or another. (As a military officer sworn to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..” I yearn for command of the forces we send to that errant state to put down that rebellion. “Marching to the sea, leaving the place a howling wilderness” works as well there as it once did in South Carolina.)