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

Civil War soldiers went into battle with specific views about heaven and life after death. They laid down their lives knowing that their sacrifice would be honored and remembered and that they would enter a heavenly landscape freed of physical affliction. "Americans in vast numbers," writes Mark S. Schantz, "were willing to risk being torn to bits at precisely the moment that their culture told them that heaven would make their bodies whole." (61)

Schantz's study is at once concise and wide-ranging. In what the author describes as soundings into the vast antebellum literature and imagery of death, he examines theological constructions of heaven, the rural cemetery movement, death poems, lithography and photography. The American culture of death that he evokes may not have been as pervasive and uniform as Schantz suggests: his materials are drawn largely from the Protestant Northeast and, perhaps, obscure regional, ethnic and denominational variations. But, the larger point—the existence of a distinctive culture of death—is convincingly and instructively made. Consider Abraham Lincoln's famous "melancholy." When melancholy is located in the culture of death, it becomes clear that it ought not be conflated with the post-Freudian concept of psychological depression. As Schantz observes, Lincoln "cultivated a disposition of melancholy" that contemporaries "viewed as one of his most endearing and laudable features." (93)

Some of the clearest evidence of a distinctive culture of death emerges as Schantz examines antebellum memorial lithographs and the manner in which they were adapted for fallen Civil War soldiers. The images depicted memorial stones framed by weeping willows and mourners. On the face of the stone, the lithographer inscribed the words "In Memory of" but left the image largely blank for the consumer to complete. A similar Civil War lithograph, "The Soldier's Grave," retained the image of the memorial stone with the words "In Memory of" inscribed across the top. But, the image guided the consumer on what to write below the space provided for the name of the dead soldier. The words "of the" directed the consumer to enter the soldier's regiment. The words "who died at" directed the consumer to record the name of a battle. Finally, above a death poem, the lithographer wrote for all consumers this judgment: "A Brave And Gallant Soldier And A True Patriot." Introduced by Currier and Ives in 1862, "The Soldier's Grave," revealed a culture of death that drew a curtain over dysentery, mutilation and mass graves and structured a common memory for all dead soldier as purposeful warriors fallen in battle.

Something of the American culture of death accompanied soldiers into battle. But it is not at all clear that it contributed to an individual's behavior under fire. Stories of bravery abound, but so, too, do stories of panic and desertion. When considering what prompted individuals to fight it is prudent not to minimize the thrill of battle. It was not the promise of an afterlife that commanders presented to their troops as they led them into battle—it was the excitement of the fight.