Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America's Culture of Death

Acknowledgments

X I I I Acknowledgments Many people have made this book a pleasure to write. At the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, I thank especially John Hench, Nancy Burkett, and the extraordinary services rendered by Joanne D. Chaison and her staff. In particular I express my gratitude to Laura E. Wasowicz, Curator of Children’s Literature, and to Georgia (Gigi) Brady Barnhill, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts. Gigi went the extra mile, offering me her unparalleled knowledge of the nineteenth-century memorial lithography and sharing with me many slides of the work that she has collected over the years. That the visual arts play such an important role in this project is due in large part to her unfailing helpfulness and energy. At the Library Company of Philadelphia, too, I found ready and enthusiastic assistance. Special plaudits go to Jennifer Ambrose, James Green, Cornelia S. King, Phillip S. Lapsansky, and Erika Piola for enriching my work in numerous ways. Jim Green did a great service in introducing me to Dr. Carol Soltis, whose work on Rembrandt Peale and his painting The Court of Death has deeply informed my thinking. Along the way I also received expert help from reference librarians at the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the New York Historical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library of Congress, the University of Mississippi, and the Arkansas History Commission. Closer to home, I acknowledge the exceptional reference staff at the Bailey Library of Hendrix College. Peggy Morrison worked wonders with her interlibrary loan skills, collecting pamphlets and photocopies that I would not have dreamed were accessible. Outside of my research nexus, I received encouragement, support, and wise counsel from numerous quarters. I benefited greatly from attending a 1998 Summer Institute on the history of death in America sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Held at Columbia University under the enthusiastic and able leadership of David and Sheila Rothman, this institute laid the groundwork for many of the ideas and issues explored in this book. I thank all of my fellow participants for stimulating my thought, for suggesting possible source materials, and for being great scholarly pals. Presenting an early formulation of the outline for this book at the Southern Historical Association’s annual meeting also galvanized my efforts. Drew Gilpin Faust, Charles Reagan Wilson, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown all offered supportive words as well as cogent critiques. A sabbatical leave and faculty project grant offered to me by Hendrix College allowed me the blessing of time and space in which I could finish my research and complete a draft of my manuscript. I must also point to my students at Hendrix College, who over the past years have taken my courses on the American Civil War and Reconstruction and on the history of death in America. I have learned more than I can say from them. And while I cannot identify each individual student who has contributed an insight that shifted my thinking on a particular topic, I can acknowledge them collectively for their dedication, intelligence, and good cheer. Dear friends and colleagues have also sustained this project by listening to me spin out ideas, by reading snippets of prose, by suggesting sources, and by reminding me that this was a book worthy of writing. Jay Barth, Lloyd Benson, Steve and Martha Goodson, Steven Hornsby, Ian King, Rebecca Resinski, John Rodrigue, Sylvia Frank Rodrigue, Allison Shutt, Martha Sledge, and Mart Stewart have all, in different ways, made this a better book. X I V A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S I could not have asked for more from my colleagues at Cornell University Press. This book project has lived through three excellent editors, Peter Agree, Sheri Englund, and now Alison A. Kalett. Alison has been a steadfast supporter of this project, offering me thoughtful readings of chapters and helping me to stay focused on its broad interpretive signi ficance. Special credit also goes to those outside readers who read my manuscript for Cornell, Susan Juster and David Waldstreicher. Both of them lavished me with amazingly detailed reports that have made this a much stronger book. I also want to acknowledge Cameron Cooper, Susan Specter, Karen Hwa, my copyeditor, Cathi Reinfelder, and others at the Press for their work on the book. My wife, Nancy, and...