“Earth Has No Sorrow That Heaven Cannot Cure”: Northern Civilian Perspectives on Death and Eternity During the Civil War

This article examines how religious Northerners conceived of death and eternity during the Civil War. Letters and diaries reveal that religious civilians coped with their own mortality or the deaths of family members with a steadfast hope that they would be reunited with loved ones in heaven. Believing that God sovereignly determined the timing of a person’s passing, civilians encouraged soldiers to be prepared for death at any moment. Upon receiving the unwelcome news of a soldier’s passing, they sought evidence that he had left a testimony of dying in the faith. Comforted by a hope of attaining heaven, civilians described its blissful shores with some specificity, yet their conflicting depictions of heaven demonstrate a breadth of theological views. While some individuals imagined heaven as a place where the worship and praise of God predominated, others focused on reunion with families in a setting that resembled the Victorian home. Far from representing the beginning of a secular approach to death and dying, the Civil War marked the continuation of a religious understanding of death while exposing the theological fragmentation that characterized mid-nineteenth-century American religion.