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This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War | 
 enlarge | Author: Drew Gilpin Faust
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 4914
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 037540404X
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.71
EAN: 9780375404047
ASIN: 037540404X
Publication Date: January 8, 2008
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Product Description
An illuminating study of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and practicalities of death in the face of the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War.
During the war, approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives. An equivalent proportion of today’s population would be six million. This Republic of Suffering explores the impact of this enormous death toll from every angle: material, political, intellectual, and spiritual. The eminent historian Drew Gilpin Faust delineates the ways death changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation and its understanding of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. She describes how survivors mourned and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the slaughter with its belief in a benevolent God, pondered who should die and under what circumstances, and reconceived its understanding of life after death.
Faust details the logistical challenges involved when thousands were left dead, many with their identities unknown, on the fields of places like Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg. She chronicles the efforts to identify, reclaim, preserve, and bury battlefield dead, the resulting rise of undertaking as a profession, the first widespread use of embalming, the gradual emergence of military graves registration procedures, the development of a federal system of national cemeteries for Union dead, and the creation of private cemeteries in the South that contributed to the cult of the Lost Cause. She shows, too, how the war victimized civilians through violence that extended beyond battlefields—from disease, displacement, hardships, shortages, emotional wounds, and conflicts connected to the disintegration of slavery.
Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, and nurses, of northerners and southerners, slaveholders and freedpeople, of the most exalted and the most humble are brought together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War’s most fundamental and widely shared reality.
Were he alive today, This Republic of Suffering would compel Walt Whitman to abandon his certainty that the “real war will never get in the books.”
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| Customer Reviews: Read 51 more reviews...
 Like mackeral in the moonlight, it both shines and stinks November 18, 2008
The nifty phrase of John Randolph of Roanoke seems appropriate.
Why, in a book that spends so much time on national cemeteries and mentions Montgomery Meigs several times, is there a complete omission of the sad and regretful story of how Arlington National Cemetery was created by Meigs as a deliberate affront to prevent the Lee family from ever again living in their home? Was it to avoid the story of the federal government refusing the payment of taxes by third parties and insisting on in-person appearance by Lee? Or the theft of the family furnishings, down to the slaughtering of Lee's daughter's pet pony? Or the visit many years later by Mrs. Lee at her childrens' urging, with her first view so sickening her that, bursting into tears, she would not alight from the carriage and left, never to return?
I was interested in the premise of this work, and pieces of it are fascinating, though I am unconvinced of the central premise wrapped up in "the art of dying." These soldiers tell the story in their own words with a clarity only partially obscured by this work.
I would have been satisfied with an even-handed approach. The footnotes on Nathan Bedford Forrest and Fort Pillow quickly answered that question - the findings of the Congressional Committee are ignored and the conclusions more readily acceptable to current political orthodoxy are warmly and blindly embraced.
It seems we may cross over the river, but are only permitted to rest in the shade on the northern side of the tree.
 The Good Death in the Civil War November 8, 2008
This book tells the story of the men who died in the Civil War, their final moments and the results on their families. What I found interesting with this book was at that time, there was no record on the soldier to confirm who he was. So, many, many soldiers died as unknowns. It wasn't until after this war, that our government came up with the idea of "dog tags" to identify the wounded and dead. The book has many stories of the families of the dead looking for their loved ones and not finding them. This was so heart rending to read. And, the stories of the men (one example was the Battle of Cold Harbor in 1864) putting notes on their bodies so that they would be identified. The level that the US Government after the war went to identify the Union dead and bury them properly was interesting also. Many were buried in common graves in the hundreds. Further, this was only accomplished for the Union dead the Confederate dead had to be re-buried through the local and state governments which they were. This caused a lot of anger and conflict between the two sides. This book does a good job of covering this. In conclusion, this is an excellent book for any Civil War reader but even for the reader interested in understanding the impact of this war on our history and conscious.
Outstanding October 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was a fascinating, yet painful book to read. Faust does a masterful job of personalizing the conflict through stories, quotations and pictures and capturing the anguish of the country during the war years. There is much to learn in this book for those of us that are not Civil War buffs and the discussion of a "good death" and how this conflict shook the nation's religious beliefs is fascinating. After I finished I re-read "All Quiet on the Western Front" and it made for an interesting juxtatposition of stories and conflicts. Anytime I am stimulated to learn more and read more I know the author has done an excellent job and any effort I put into the book was worth my time.
 Chapter 2, Killing "The Harder Courage" October 8, 2008
2 out of 9 found this review helpful
Biased history is a pet peeve of mine. This chapter illustrates whats wrong with most history found today.
A large part of this chapter was dedicated to the killing of black prisoners of war by Confederates, in fact several historical accounts of these events were covered in detail, but only the hint or suggestion that black Union soldiers may have been capable of the same acts. That "if" they did kill Confederate prisoners they were certainly justified to do under the circumstance was the main idea here. Not one account of known events, like Fort Gregg or Fort Blakeley was covered or suggested in relation to the killing of Confederate prisoners, only the Union prisoners and particulary the black Union prisoners were focused on.
Look how she treats the story of Captain Cailloux of the 1st Louisana Native Guards....
"Killed as he led his men in a charge at Port Hudson on May 27, 1863, Cailloux was the first of only a few black officers to die in the war. For all his courage and respectability, Andre Cailloux was in the eyes of the Confederates simply a man who deserved not just death but dishonor for his presumption in taking up arms against a superior race. Despite a truce called to permit the removal of te dead and wounded, rebel sharpshooters prevented Union troops from retrieving the bodies of black soldiers. Cailloux lay on the field until July 8, when Port Hudson surrendered. After forty-one days exposed to the elements, his body could be identified only because of a ring he still wore."
She goes on about Cailloux's funeral and then writes,.."Certainly, his death became a symbol for the northern antislavery cause and particulary for black abolitionist."
Certainly Cailloux's death had an effect on free blacks and their cause for full citizenship but the anti-slavery cause? she is leaving out some big facts. Captian Cailloux had been a 1st Lieutenant in the state militia of Confederate Louisiana prior to the fall of New Orleans. She mentioned he had been a free man but left out that he was part of a large community of free blacks in New Orleans that owned property, property that included slaves. How does she know why the Confederates kept the dead blacks soldiers from being removed from the battlefield, were they not most certainly looked upon as traitors to the South? She does not mention that Cailloux's men were sent out as cannon fodder by their white Union commanders to be hopelessly slaughtered. And the survivor's refused to take anymore commands from Union officers in the field during that fight.
For the novice reader Ms. Faust gives an idea of impartiallity with her writing skills but for the educated it is very obvious how much she left out.
Excellent historical reference book on the Civil War September 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very serious, thorough, well researched book, centered mainly on the aftermath of the Civil War in the United States. It is an enlightening book for the serious student of civil war history. It is not for the fainthearted, or those easily depressed by recounts of death and dying,and burial, which the book primarily focuses on. I found this to be a very compelling book to read, however, once I got through the first chapter. Thw wirter brought out a lot of things I had no prior knowledge of, particularly the views of the importance in our society of a "good death" and transmitting this to the survivors of a fallen soldier.
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