Death In The Civil War Essay

The Work of Death seemed inevitable to soldiers who embarked on the journey known as the Civil War. Throughout the Civil War, human beings learned how to prepare for death, imagine it, risk it, endure it, and seek to understand it. All the soldiers needed to be willing to die and needed to turn to the resources of their culture, codes of masculinity, patriotism, and religion to prepare themselves for the war ahead of them. Death individually touched soldiers with it’s presence and the fear of it, as death touched the soldiers it gave them a sense of who they really are and how they could change on their death bed.

Although there was quite a bit of death, the whole motive of the book was to inform people how the soldiers coped with death,

killing, burying friends and family, and realizing their understanding of it. Faust included the steps of the techniques of dealing with death; he made them the chapter titles, sort of ironic if you think about it. He also included the blacks reason for fighting in the Civil War. Faust described the horrible events that happened to the blacks to a point that one could imagine standing there enduring it along side them. He includes the reason for vengeance against the South; the way death is bringing different religions together for soldiers to have a “good death,” and most importantly the fundamental purpose of the War.
In the textbook America, the South argued that the fundamental purpose of the War was not about slavery but about the South’s effort to defend the state’s rights.

But in reality that was just an excuse to real cause, the abolishment of slavery. The southern states didn’t want to have their slaves taken away and Lincoln told them that they could retain their slaves, if they were to join back into the Union. Slavery was the fundamental for the Civil War, it made soldiers become “hard,” numb, and “calloused” or indifferent to others deaths in prospect of their own death. Slavery was mostly killing, which was the essence of the

War.
From reading This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War and the textbook America, I gathered that This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War go more into the blacks reasons for fighting in the War. In America, it only tells one that they passed the Militia Act to allow freed slaves as soldiers or laborers, the textbook doesn’t actually go into depth about the freed blacks and the war. Not only were the slaves fighting for their freedom but they were fighting for a claim to their humanity, which to many seemed that it was inseparable from avenging the slave system for the wrongs it did, that rendered the slaves as property rather than men. It also states that the deaths of the blacks promised political as well as spiritual redemption; black soldiers sought out to win a place in politics, as citizens and as men, through the willingness to give up their lives. This Republic of Suffering also tells one deeply about the way bodies were handled after death. Many of the soldiers were in unnamed graves because the hospitals failed to keep a careful record of the dead. The only way they knew where soldiers were buried was because of makeshift grave markers made of hardtack, pieces of board from ammunition boxes, and crossed fence rails. Whereas the textbook had no knowledge of that at all. It is said that the burying the dead during the Civil War seemed as an act of improvisation, and many were left laying in the field dead or dying for hours or even days. Because of dead being left in the fields death left a stench so morbid that people had to carry a bottle of pennyroyal or peppermint oil to counteract the smell.
As the argument of This Republic of Suffering, continued the soldiers, as most believed that they were destined to die on the battlefield came to terms with it. Everyone in the Civil War was willing to die for his country. The soldiers heavily relied on their religious backgrounds to make sure that they died a “good death.” All of the religions shared beliefs about life’s meaning and life’s appropriate ending. The soldiers often gathered together for a sermon no matter their religion because they shared the same belief when dying. While many of the soldiers were on their death bed, they wrote letters to their loved ones back home describing the war and telling them that they were dying and would be dead soon. So, Faust argued that death would be unavoidable and he was correct and soldiers took that into consideration and still fought for the thing that they thought was right. Faust said that the distinction between men and animals threatened to disappear. Yes, the Civil War was a major confrontation in America but it was basically inevitable in the universe. In the Civil War there is bound to be death and This Republic of Suffering perfectly described it in full detail with experiences from actual soldiers incorporated in the story.
This Republic of Suffering, it had the strength of pathos following it. Faust used examples from actual soldiers, nurses, and civilians during the war to make the reader almost cry while reading. With the strength of pathos, it is possible that Faust had used too much of it. He tended to get off topic when trying to describe an event or he would use too many quoting from sources. He would drift into what someone thought, such as G. R. Lee describing the procedure in his unit for burying the fallen soldiers but after that the author didn’t make much commentary, so it was hard to go on the topic, instead he went into another example and didn’t further explain that.
People who would like this selection of reading would probably have to be Civil War enthusiasts or people crazy about death. Some one would really have to be interested in death or the Civil War to be able to read it unless its for a grade and enthusiasts are people who like anything Civil War almost like they are obsessed with it. Civil War enthusiasts and Death enthusiasts would most likely read This Republic of Suffering because Faust went into excellent detail with everything that happened and his examples.
In conclusion, the book This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War shared the gruesome details of death, where soldiers had to embrace death, risk their life for it, and rely on their religion to help them through the hard time known as the Civil War.

Author Drew Faust hit key points on his argument about death all throughout the book and completed it outstandingly. He went into depth of how the dead were handled and how nurses wrote the families by using pieces from the letters. In any way a person can try to describe a war, no one can make it a good thing even though the union soldiers were fighting for a good thing because it is and will always be known as the most bloodiest war in American

History.