Discussion Post 7: Marshall

The Great Exaggeration: Death and the Civil War

Nicholas Marshall

The Journal of the Civil War Era, Volume 4, Number 1, March 2014, pp. 3-27 (Article)

Published by The University of North Carolina Press DOI: 10.1353/cwe.2014.0010

For additional information about this article

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cwe/summary/v004/4.1.marshall.html

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n ic holas marshall

The Great Exaggeration Death and the Civil War

What did the Civil War death tolls mean to those who lived through the war? We are now told that wartime deaths were unprecedented, over- whelming, and constituted one of the fundamental experiences for the wartime generation. But is this really true? In recent years, statistical descriptions have been used by historians—including such renowned scholars as James McPherson, Eric Foner, and Drew Gilpin Faust but also celebrated fi lmmakers Ken and Rik Burns, among many—to drive home a characterization of the war based on the scale of death. They may be found across the range of media regarding the war, in fi lms, museums, popu- lar histories, scholarly treatises, and lectures. One such statistic is that the number of soldiers’ deaths in the Civil War was greater than the total num- ber suff ered in all other American wars combined. A second point makes use of the fi rst fi gure: if one calculates the proportion of the total popu- lation that died while in military service during the war and applies this percentage to present-day population fi gures, the equivalent number of deaths for Americans in the twenty-fi rst century would reach above 7 mil- lion. This is a staggering fi gure that suggests that the Civil War generation made almost inconceivable sacrifi ces.1

We are shocked at these numbers, however, because we interpret them from a modern point of view. The present essay argues that while factually correct, the statistics work to exaggerate the war’s impact. At its essence, the use of these statistics is designed to provide perspective, a laudatory goal. It is supposed to allow those of us looking back on the war to get a clear sense of the emotional texture of the time. The great problem in this instance, however, is that it violates one of the central codes of historical analysis—that of avoiding presentism. Instead of putting us in the minds of those who experienced the Civil War, it conjures up signifi cance by facilely equating wildly disparate eras. In addition, implicit in the use of the overall casualty fi gure is the notion that size matters—that is, that in certain cir- cumstances, the volume of death itself is enough to make an argument for

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the signifi cance of an event, or to make a case that a social equilibrium has been disturbed. However, to be convincing, this mode of argument has to establish that the scale has indeed changed dramatically for those experi- encing it; historians should not simply extrapolate meaning from the pres- ent back into the past. To question the “size matters” argument, one must at least temporarily accept the notion that comparative statistics of death are meaningful, but only in the context of appropriate comparisons. In the bigger picture, however, it is not enough simply to speak about numbers. To understand how deaths aff ect a culture, it is essential to examine the meaning ascribed to them beyond the statistics. In one way, this is obvi- ous: compared with the tens of thousands of traffi c deaths per year in the United States, for example, the relatively small number of people killed on September 11, 2001, had an enormous impact, infl uencing the nation’s psyche, and, ultimately, domestic and international politics and culture. To be convincing when making a point about death, therefore, we must fi nd evidence for the transformative power of the meaning of military mortal- ity, and place any statistics in their contemporary context, before making claims about signifi cance.2

In the case of the Civil War, historians have not adequately taken into account the context of death and dying. Solid scholarly work exists on the central importance of death in antebellum America and the ordinary expe- rience of death during the war, but Civil War historians have tended to sidestep this in order to claim the war years as exceptional. They have also underplayed the signifi cance of the demographic realities Americans faced before, during, and after the war. These reveal a society constantly coping with large-scale mortality.

If we start to take more seriously the antebellum circumstances, we can reexamine the statistical realities of Civil War deaths and put them into a more reasonable perspective. First, what was the demographic reality before the war for those Americans who would later experience the carnage associated with shells and bullets? In other words, how would they have viewed the statistics of death that we fi nd so monumental? A much higher percentage of the population died each year than does today, though the numbers varied dramatically by region and period. Figures available from Massachusetts, which began collecting statistics in the 1840s, point to a nineteenth-century death rate that hovered between 1.7 and 2.3 percent. In New York City, however, estimates are higher, mostly between 2 and 3 percent but with spikes close to 5 percent. In Chicago, from 1847 to 1864, the rate radically changed from year to year, with lows around 2 percent and highs above 6 percent. The modern rate is a relatively constant num- ber, now below 0.8 percent. Thus, in the nineteenth century the average

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person regularly saw two to three times (and sometimes upwards of six to seven times) as many people die per year than we do today. The drop in mortality in the last 130 years or so can be attributed to, fi rst, public health measures such as clean water delivery systems and more eff ective sewage removal, and second, twentieth-century advances in medicine based on understandings of germ theory and the development of treatments such as antibiotics. For Civil War–era Americans, however, there was a constant presence of infectious and endemic diseases that no longer trouble us sig- nifi cantly in the United States: tuberculosis, typhoid, typhus, dysentery, malaria, even cholera. Thus, we must recognize that people of the period in question were much more familiar with death and dying, and that they recognized that life was fragile.3

The second important demographic point about the antebellum expe- rience with death is that the high numbers were distributed much more evenly among the population. That is, the chances of dying young were much greater then than today. The simplest statistical measure of this phenomenon is life expectancy (measured in years), which was only in the upper thirties or lower forties in the antebellum years. Today the fi gure is up to the high seventies. While this tells us that, on average, people died much younger, it also includes high infant mortality rates that might be interpreted to skew the numbers, and the grossness of the number perhaps serves to minimize some important elements of the demographic picture. One way to see more clearly the eff ects across a lifetime is to use life tables, which state the probability of reaching certain ages for the cohort born in a specifi c year. For twenty-fi rst-century Americans, these fi gures show that close to 99 percent of those born today will live to age twenty, 95 percent to age forty-fi ve, and 83 percent to age sixty-fi ve. We can see this phenom- enon another way when we examine the actual age at death. In the United States in 2001, for example, 85 percent of the dead were at least fi fty-fi ve years old, and 75 percent were sixty-fi ve and over. In terms of daily experi- ence, this means that we understand death to happen when people are old, when we often can say, “they lived a full life.” It has also led to the cultural phenomenon of great tragedy associated with early death, articulated most often by statements such as “one should never have to witness the death of one’s own child.”4

For antebellum Americans, however, the life tables reveal an entirely diff erent picture. In 1850 Americans had only a 77 percent chance of mak- ing it to age one, 69 percent chance to age nine, 62 percent chance to age twenty-four, and only 47 percent chance to age forty-nine. This meant that a person would likely be cut down before reaching even the most conserva- tive defi nition of “aged.” Almost a third would die as preadolescent children,

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and another one-fi fth would die in the prime of life. David Hacker’s recent careful statistical accounting of the Civil War–era dead confi rms this point. He shows that for those living in the decade spanning 1850–60, the chance of survival was extremely variable and often low. For example, males between twenty and twenty-four could expect to lose 18 percent of their cohort during the decade, while for females it was even worse (about 21 percent). Overall, these fi gures demonstrate that Civil War–era Americans regularly lost family members at all ages and that they understood that the hand of death could reach out for them at any moment.5

Evidence for the extraordinary importance of affl iction in the lives of antebellum Americans may be found in nearly any historical source from the period. Newspapers almost always included both poems about the death of loved ones and advertisements for nostrums claiming to cure a variety of ailments. Health became an important focus of advice manuals, and fi ction frequently used death and sickness as plot devices. In many cases, private correspondence concerned matters of health to the exclu- sion of most other topics. It is in diaries that regularly recorded signifi cant events, however, that the full import of suff ering best reveals itself.

An examination of these personal writings of ordinary Americans in the North highlights the affl ictions faced in the years leading up to the Civil War. It demonstrates just how pervasive and powerful the problem was for the great majority of the population. The diseases and accidents of the period killed so frequently that families, neighbors, and friends lived in constant fear that those close to them could be taken away at any moment.6

The diaries also suggest that the sentimentality of the period had a com- plex relationship with the harsh reality of separation from loved ones. The style of emotional response that became a standard mode within the liter- ary culture of the mid-nineteenth century, and that has been mocked as mawkish, in fact was often apparent in diaries not meant to be read by any- one other than the diarist. This suggests that while reactions to separation from loved ones could be expressed in ways determined by the dominant culture, it does not necessarily mean that the emotions somehow lacked authenticity. In other words, the frequent separations of the period before the war caused heartfelt suff ering. Furthermore, it makes it clear that high death rates do not necessarily result in desensitization to loss.7

The persistent presence of affl iction, even for those in the prime of life, may be seen in the diary of a young woman named Cornelia Smith, writ- ten from 1835 to 1843. The diary was unusual in its length and commit- ment to full entries. Most diaries covered shorter periods, included large gaps, or used briefer descriptive passages yet nearly all of them discussed experiences with affl iction. This diary thus may be viewed as a fuller

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representation of common life paths. Cornelia lived in Trumansburg, a town on the western side of Cayuga Lake, about fi fteen miles from Ithaca, New York, and spent most of her days helping in her parents’ household. She also earned money as a schoolteacher in nearby district schools and thus boarded with the parents of her students for many school terms.

In the fall of 1835, Cornelia witnessed a friend die of scarlet fever, saw her mother severely injured in a wagon accident, discovered that her sister- in-law was very sick with consumption, and endured days of extreme pain from a toothache. Early in 1836, she went to live with her brother John and helped tend to Anna, his dying wife. At one point, Cornelia encouraged herself to let the “sickness” of her “sister” “be a warning to . . . prepare for Death.” Another brother brought his family to visit, and all the children had contracted whooping cough. As Anna continued to fade, Cornelia also suff ered through some illness. On February 12 she was unable to sit up all day, due to a pain in her side. Five days later, Anna seemed to be on the verge of death. Cornelia commented that it was “hard to see own friends sick and dying and know that one must soon bid them a fi nal adieu but why wish them to stay in this world of trouble, and trials.” Furthermore, she wrote, if her own grace was true, then she would “soon meet them in a better world where there will be no partings.”8

The late winter and spring included more trials. Anna managed to hold on to life into late February. Cornelia kept watch over her throughout the fi nal weeks of sickness, often commenting in her diary on Anna’s condi- tion. One evening she noted that Anna looked “frightful,” “restless and uneasy.” The ordeal meant very little sleep for Cornelia, and she began to feel “worn out.” On February 20, Anna fi nally died “in great distress,” and Cornelia struggled to accept that all the suff ering and pain of separation were part of God’s plan. “Blessed be the name of the Lord—O that this may be the language of my heart,” she wrote after Anna’s funeral. Several months later, Cornelia went off to teach school, just after two neighbors, Charlotte Dunham and Henry Lewis, died. “Death is every day calling some one and why am I spared?” she wrote. On the Fourth of July, she remembered that one year before she had been in the company of one who was now dead, and wondered if by the same time next year she would be numbered among the dead as well.9

August brought Cornelia more bad news. Her brother Henry wrote a letter informing the family that his wife had died. He was sending his two small children to live at the old homestead. For her part, Cornelia hoped the death would lead Henry to a closer relationship with God. One of Henry’s children died on the trip to the grandparents’ home, and, after dropping the other off , Henry left for Michigan. That fall and winter,

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Cornelia continued to note the deaths of acquaintances and nearly always remarked on the need for preparation and the fact that she had again been spared.10

The next two years brought little relief. Cornelia’s brother John remar- ried early in 1837, but his new wife, Delia, soon fell sick. After visiting the house, Cornelia wrote, “it makes me feel very solemn to go there so soon and see another sister sick and languishing.” During the summer, she recorded another series of deaths, including a nearby boating accident that took several lives. In November, on a Saturday, Cornelia wrote, “another week has winged its rapid fl ight away and I am still numbered with the living.” In February, a close friend died, and Cornelia helped prepare the corpse. “Time after time I am admonished by death be ye also ready,” she wrote that evening. Just two months later, brother John’s wife Delia died suddenly after giving birth. The day of the funeral, Cornelia received “unexpected and solemn news” in a letter that informed the family of the death of “Caroline H.” “We see the old, the middle age, and the young called away by death,” Cornelia wrote.11

Cornelia contracted scarlet fever early in 1841 but made a recovery. In late January, disease struck again John’s house. John and six of his chil- dren became ill, and two children soon died. Cornelia described the scene in her diary, “While some were in one room taking care of the sick others were in another paying their last respects to the dead. Oh such scenes, it seemed that I could not endure them, the Lord only can support.” At the funeral for young Phebe, Cornelia was overwhelmed: it was “too much for me to bear up under,” she wrote, “and I had to be carried and laid on the bed. I was completely overcome.” She then began to suff er from illness and returned to her parents’ home. John and his children, wanting to distance themselves from the home in which so many had already died, moved into the old family home as well. A few weeks later, however, another of John’s children, Charles, died in much agony. “The Lord has taken him to himself where pain and sickness will trouble him no more,” said Cornelia, “and I would be reconciled and say the will of God be done.”12

During the rest of this year, Cornelia made several entries in her diary that linked her experience with affl iction to her understanding of religion. In April, after reading her deceased niece’s journal, Cornelia found it hard to believe that she would never enjoy the young girl’s company again on earth. She took comfort though in the knowledge that, in her words, “if I am ever so happy as to join the redeemed in heaven there I hope to meet her and all my christian friends never more to be separated. O blessed thought.” A few months later, when she herself was “affl icted with sickness and pain,” Cornelia tried to put it in perspective. She asked, “from whence

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cometh affl iction?”—and answered, “Are they not sent by a kind parent who does it for our good?” She concluded, “then let me profi t by them, may they serve to make me more humble, more prayerful, more watchful and to live more prepared for death.”13

Here, Cornelia has clearly stated the religious reasoning that informed the lives of many as they carried on through days burdened by affl iction. The suff ering had a divine purpose; it was instruction in how to live, com- mitted to God and prepared to die. The vision of heaven served to amelio- rate the suff ering, showing that pain was only temporary and that God had provided an eternal rest for those who paid attention to instructions. Thus, if one could be assured of saving grace, a bright future lay ahead, despite the present burdens of worldly existence. Furthermore, almost invariably, heaven was described as a place “where parting is no more”: the end of physical pain would be accompanied by a greater benefi t, the end of physi- cal separation from loved ones.

Diaries like Cornelia Smith’s thus help us to understand both how per- vasive affl iction was and its importance in shaping the way antebellum Americans viewed their position in the religious world. Still, the intense frequency of death and separation in Cornelia’s diary becomes monoto- nous and thus seems like an unusual example. Could one argue that her case was not representative? Looking at the broad spectrum of diaries in the period demonstrates why we should think otherwise. In many in- stances, the frequency of sickness and death was so great that diarists resorted to close record-keeping of the events, thus providing a quantita- tive demonstration of demographic conditions in the countryside. Some diarists kept lists of the deaths in their neighborhood or simply noted the names of the dead in their journals on the day they heard the news or attended the funeral. That many people recorded this information off ers a clue to its signifi cance, and some elementary tallies make plain that a health crisis had indeed hit the countryside. In addition, these relatively impassive measures of affl iction were not mediated through the language of sentimentality that was increasingly part of the culture. In other words, the problem of separation was a pressing corporeal issue for nearly all Americans, and they understood it partially through a depressing set of statistics of their own making.

As with Cornelia Smith’s, the deaths reported in diaries covered a great span of ages. In New York’s Steuben County, the Rice family kept an account book to track their expenditures, debts, and credits. At the back of the book, someone added another list, “Deaths in the Neighborhood.” According to the list, eighteen neighbors died in 1845. The 1853 account- ing also included the ages of the nineteen deceased, ranging from one to

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ninety-two, with the average age at death being just over thirty-fi ve. Ten of the nineteen died between the ages of sixteen and twenty-seven. To the east of Steuben, in Madison County, David Darrow noted the deaths of twenty-six acquaintances in the sixteen months between October 1851 and March 1853.14

Thayer Gauss’s brief diary reinforces the impression that death came often and early. In the six weeks following January 12, 1847, Gauss recorded six deaths in the neighborhood, including Dr. Hall, a well-respected phy- sician cut down in the “prime of life” before age forty. At least three of the fi ve other dead listed here, like Hall, had not yet reached forty years of age. In the next few days, Gauss reported on the sicknesses within his own family, his own severe headache, and the illness that laid up his wife and daughter for two weeks. “But when so many are dangerously ill and death is in our midst,” he wrote, “and so many are falling on my right hand and on my left I have great reason to be thankful that my health and the health of my family is as good as it is.” Gauss seemed to be taking pleasure in small victories.15

When considering the eff ects of the Civil War, it is vitally important to recognize the vast volume of death faced by antebellum Americans, but one must also understand the cultural web of death that enveloped Americans by the mid-nineteenth century. Here, a look at Mark Schantz’s book, Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America’s Culture of Death, is extremely illuminating. Here is the fi rst line: “Living under the shadow of postmodernity, where all historical ‘facts’ are dimly perceived, at least one reality appears horribly luminous: that 620,000 men lost their lives in the American Civil War.” Like many historians, Schantz accepts that the war produced what he calls a “stunning level of carnage,” yet his goal is to show how circumstances before the war, in some sense, trained Americans to understand and cope with the exceptional level of loss they were to experience in the 1860s.16

In the main, Schantz does this through a comprehensive analysis of antebellum culture. He fi nds that death was at the center of antebellum life. Whether examining art, fi ction, poetry, sermons, personal writings, or any other cultural form, Schantz argues that the “fundamental confronta- tion with death” was “one of the most pervasive concerns of the antebellum era”; that “nineteenth-century America was a death-embracing culture”; that death was “the major story” for nineteenth-century Americans; and that “the very pervasiveness of death in antebellum America trained up an entire generation to see it not as something to be avoided, but as the inevitable destiny of humanity.” Schantz notes that everyone in the period recognized how frequently death visited American homes, though he does

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so using mainly qualitative rather than quantitative evidence. In the end, however, his purpose is to show that, whatever the specifi c demographic circumstances, by 1860 Americans had a clear cultural matrix that allowed them to process the violence of the Civil War, that it “made it easier to kill and to be killed”:

They understood that death awaited all who were born and prized the ability to face death with a spirit of calm resignation. They believed that a heavenly eternity of transcendent beauty awaited them beyond the grave. They knew that their heroic achievements would be cherished forever by posterity. They grasped that death itself might be seen as artistically fascinating and even beautiful. They saw how notions of full citizenship were predicated on the willingness of men to lay down their lives. And they produced works of art that captured the moment of death in highly idealistic ways. Americans thus approached the Civil War carrying a cluster of assumptions about death that, I will suggest, facilitated its unprecedented destructiveness.

Previous work by other historians support Schantz’s fi ndings about the pervasiveness of death in the antebellum culture, but his application of them in this form to the problem of Civil War deaths is new, exciting, and represents a direct challenge to the standard thesis that the dying in the Civil War was understood as a wholly new phenomenon. Americans were not facing appalling new levels of loss without a cultural leg to stand on. Instead, they folded the experience into a well-developed, shared perspec- tive. This would suggest that if historians fi nd a culture intimately linked to death during the Civil War, then they should consider viewing it as a con- tinuation of older forms rather than something entirely novel. In addition, of signifi cant importance here is that heroic deaths for a great cause could be recognized as more purposeful than, say, dying at home from typhoid.17

Given the grim reality for antebellum Americans and the continu- ation of such circumstances into the war, let us now examine the com- monly cited fi gures that purport to show the bloodiness of the Civil War. At the top of the list is the seemingly huge total representing casualties of war. David Hacker has recently reexamined the question of how many actually perished in the war, and he estimates that the overall numbers are even greater than previously believed. For the purposes of the pres- ent comparison, I will use both the old fi gure, 620,000, and Hacker’s new estimate, 750,000. Whichever is used, the number dwarfs the losses in all other American confl icts, yet we must view this from the nineteenth- century perspective to understand its importance in its own time. If one divides the number by four to get a crude average of the number of deaths

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in the military during each year of the confl ict, we fi nd that from 155,000 to187,500 deaths accrued per annum. This fi gure, however, has little mean- ing unless we know how many people regularly died in this era. Working from the available statistics on death rates, we may estimate the total num- ber of deaths in 1860. A 2 percent death rate would have meant about 629,000 deaths, while a 3 percent rate would have resulted in 943,000 deaths. If we take the higher estimated death total for the war and use the lowest prewar estimated death rate, the additional deaths would rep- resent a 29.8 percent increase in total deaths, a substantial amount, no doubt, but not overwhelming (and if using the 3 percent death rate for 1860 and the lower fi gure of 155,000 additional deaths, the percentage increase would be just sixteen). If we look at estimated death rates for the period that include antebellum, bellum, and postbellum periods, we notice that these Civil War variations had contemporary parallels. In Historical Statistics of the United States, estimated death rates for Massachusetts are supplied for every year after 1855. In this broader context, death in the Civil War is more a variation on a theme than a fundamental change in key or tenor. The fi gures show that the death rate varied dramatically year to year. The largest single change in the nineteenth century (including the Civil War years) occurred between 1871 and 1872, a 22 percent increase. If one uses the fi gures for Chicago between 1847 and 1864, however, the great- est change in the death rate between single years was an astounding 296 percent. Nothing close to this level of variation occurs today, and the Civil War additions (the yearly increase of between sixteen and thirty) would not appear obviously anomalous to those living through the period.18

David Hacker’s work confi rms this point. For some of the cohorts that he estimated, the survival rates before the war, from 1850 to 1860, were either eerily similar to or, amazingly, even worse than those during the Civil War. For example, Hacker’s tables identify male survival rates for the age cohort twenty to twenty-four as 82 percent for the decade 1850–60, 72 percent for the war decade, and 89 percent for 1870–80. For females in these same three decades at the same ages, the survival rates are 79, 76, and 82 percent. What does this tell us about the chances of dying? For both men and women, whether in the war or not, the probability of dying ranged from approximately 1 in 5 to 1 in 4. Furthermore, the fi gures for other cohorts show that women in the twenty to twenty-four age range during the war years had a lower survival rate than all other male cohorts who fought in the war!

Thus, the demographic picture of life in the mid-nineteenth century based on quantitative sources confi rms the experiences revealed in diary sources. Together, these show that Civil War–era Americans, such as

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Cornelia Smith, would not have seen the scope of the dying associated with the war as a new, nearly unthinkable slaughter. Before, during, and after the war, the world as they knew it included suff ering and death in similar large measures. The losses in the war were not large enough to be viewed as unprecedented because they fi t within the broader nineteenth-century pattern of mortality. This is not to say that deaths in the war were not emo- tionally wrenching or that they did not raise any number of new issues for Americans. The antebellum evidence shows that within a sentimentalized culture death was indeed an important and profoundly disturbing event. Deaths in the war were also viewed in this way, and the trauma associated with them was real, heartfelt, and an added burden. The demographic pic- ture that spans the war years, however, makes clear that it is unconvincing to claim signifi cance or meaning based on the perception that the magni- tude of war deaths necessarily forced Americans to reassess the implica- tions of the carnage.

If the overall death rates did not represent a wholly new experience for Americans of the time, can something similar be said about the analogies historians make to twenty-fi rst-century society? Specifi cally, we should be careful when noting that if we calculate the percentage of Americans that died in the Civil War (above 2 percent), and apply it to our current popu- lation, our equivalent experience today would be the loss of from 6 to 7.2 million. While factually correct, this is misleading, because it ignores con- text. Death rates today are about eight-tenths of a percent (that is, approxi- mately eight of every thousand Americans die each year). For a population of 300 million, this means that about 2.4 million die every twelve months. The 6 to 7.2 million fi gure, therefore, shocks us in part because of our own very diff erent experience with death. If we divide it into four years as in the Civil War, it becomes 1.5 to 1.8 million per annum. This would represent an increase in the death rate experienced today of about 75 percent, a level far beyond that of the Civil War era and demonstrating clearly that the comparison is fl awed. Furthermore, as we know, nearly all who die today are relatively old. These 1.5 to 1.8 million extra deaths, as we envision them when this analogy is used, would occur in fi ghting-age men and women. Again, the tragic element feels enormous. In a nation that usually sees only about 36,000 deaths in this age group every year, the scope of loss would indeed be monumental: forty-one to fi fty times as many young men and women would die in each of four years, a rate several orders of magnitude above what Civil War–era Americans experienced. Thus, the simple statis- tic, while informative on one level, serves to obfuscate the historical experi- ence. Put another way, the modern analogy does not help situate us in the minds of those who lived through the Civil War.19

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At this point, it is vitally important to add to discussion of the casualty fi gures that approximately two-thirds of the deaths of soldiers in the war came from disease rather than the battlefi eld. Looking back from today, these numbers are diffi cult to fathom, and the image they conjure is of horrendously unsanitary conditions in military camps. These deaths seem as much a product of war as those that resulted from wounds: soldiers in camp were there to fi ght the war, and they died because the conditions were necessary to conduct fi eld operations with a massive army. But this is also a present-minded understanding of the circumstances; it ignores the epic antebellum confrontation with disease.

The records and experience of the U.S. Sanitary Commission shed light on the way Americans understood the circumstances facing soldiers in the camps. Leaders of the commission recognized the problems and possibili- ties of forging a healthy army. The key moment in enlightened understand- ing of these issues came with the British involvement in the Crimean War, and Florence Nightingale’s eff ective work in reducing the incidence of dis- ease. High levels of mortality, sometimes reaching 60 percent, convinced the British to engage in ameliorative actions, including “fresh air, suitable food and clothing, cleanliness of person and quarters, and well-regulated habits.” By these means, death rates were reduced, it was claimed, to close to 1 percent. For the Americans, the army’s experience in the Mexican War off ered a similarly debilitating picture. The commission claimed that 15 percent of volunteers and 8 percent of regular troops died from disease alone in that confl ict. In peacetime, at home, the rate was just under 3 per- cent (not out of line with estimates for the general population).20

The commission’s stated goal was to both prevent disease and provide relief and aid for those sick and wounded. It sought to advise the army on how to create the most sanitary of camps and also to make available to surgeons the most up-to-date information on treatments. In addition, it created hospitals and delivered necessary supplies, such as fresh veg- etables, clothes, and bandages, to the troops. The army, however, includ- ing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, frequently resented and resisted the commission’s eff orts, indicating on some level that disease was considered part of the process of prosecuting a war. The resistance, however, was not a universal phenomenon, according to the commission, as they reprinted glowing testimonials from offi cers in the fi eld. While it is diffi cult to estab- lish the eff ectiveness of the commission’s work (and of the thousands of vol- unteers who gave money, supplies, and service), there is no doubt that lives were saved and recoveries aided by their eff orts. In published materials, the commission claimed to have helped to reduce the death rate by disease to less than one-third that experienced in the Mexican War. It recognized the

t h e g r e at e x a g g e r at i o n 1 5

scope of the losses involved in the Civil War while emphasizing the com- mitment to continue the fi ght, noting that “every town and neighborhood in the land has borne a share in this sacrifi ce, and the voice of mourning for the fallen brave and loved ones has mingled with new vows of devotion to the national cause in every community of the North.” Perspective, however, was maintained by stating that “this has occurred in an army whose death- rate from disease has been less than was ever before known in the annals of great campaigns.” Thus, those who were best-informed on the issue, due to their understanding of the contemporary circumstances, considered the volume of death by disease in the Civil War to be a great victory rather than a shocking level of loss.21

The Sanitary Commission was aware of some of the hazards posed by unsanitary conditions in the camps, but many soldiers and civilians did not view the camps as disease entities of an entirely diff erent stripe from their own communities. They had very little knowledge of what caused sickness; in fact, given the high death rates at home for people of all ages (including those of military age)—and the role of contagious and endemic diseases in these deaths—dying of disease in a camp must have seemed distressingly normal. Instead of attributing these losses to the war, as we now do, Americans of the nineteenth century in the midst of war would most likely have counted them as the cost of living.

Let us now work from an assumption that deaths from disease were not viewed as war casualties. Instead of 620,000 to 750,000 casualties, we are left with 207,000 to 250,000. If we divide this estimate by the four years of war, we have 51,750 to 62,500 battlefi eld deaths per year. Is this a “harvest of death,” as Drew Gilpin Faust has emphasized? In one sense, of course, it is (and no one should minimize the sacrifi ce and suff ering in each case), but as an indicator of how enormous the losses of the Civil War were, it falls short. Recall that in 1860, using the most conservative estimate, approximately 629,000 Americans died, out of a population of about 31 million. The additional battlefi eld deaths due to the war would represent an increase of 8 to 10 percent, a fi gure that would not be out of line with normal variations before and after the war. Furthermore, because so many people died young in this era, the casualties would be interpreted very diff erently than today. The same sense of loss twenty-fi rst-century Americans associate with the relatively rare death of a young person was not felt regarding Civil War–related deaths. Given this situation, let us also reexamine the standard statistical analogy to the present regarding 6 to 7.2 million deaths, removing from consideration those who died from dis- ease (after all, when we imagine soldiers dying today—which this analogy purposely encourages—we do not envision a twenty-year-old perishing on

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the ground, under a dirty blanket, from dysentery). In addition, instead of using raw percentages that do not account for contemporary death rates, let us employ as our measure of comparison variation from the norm of the time. Should a new Civil War break out, in this case, instead of contemplat- ing 6 to 7.2 million deaths today, we would notice an uptick to approxi- mately 2.6 million deaths per year, from the normal 2.4 million (the 8 to 10 percent increase). While this calculation understates the scope of loss in some way, it more clearly represents how Americans today would feel the eff ects of increased dying that Civil War–era Americans encountered.22

State-level examples may help drive home this point. Ohio’s popula- tion was over 2 million in 1860; that year, about 43,749 deaths occurred in the state. Over the course of the war, approximately 11,588 men from Ohio were killed in battle. In percentage terms per year, this would mean an additional rise in the death rate of less than 7 percent. In 1860, Massachusetts had a population of 1,231,057. That same year, approxi- mately 23,021 people died in the state. The year before, when the death rate was a bit lower, about 20,888 deaths occurred. The change in one year represents a growth of about 10 percent (the death rate rose by 0.14 per- cent). Changes of this magnitude were frequent, most likely due to varying rates of contracting infectious diseases. Over the course of the war, a grand total of 6115 residents of the state perished from battle wounds, represent- ing approximately 1,529 deaths per year. Like Ohio, in percentage terms, this would mean an increase of less than 7 percent per year over the prewar standard in Massachusetts.23

The experience with epidemic sickness and death in other historical moments should also remind us that Americans have been much more blasé about death from sickness than they are today. Two examples should suffi ce: smallpox during the American Revolution and infl uenza in 1918– 19. As Elizabeth Fenn has shown, between 1775 and 1782 the colonies and new nation suff ered through a wide-ranging smallpox epidemic. While the numbers are sketchy at best, many more Americans died from small- pox than from wounds on the battlefi eld. Yet very few contemporaries, or historians, saw fi t to anoint the killing disease as especially signifi cant or worthy of analysis. The same is true of the global fl u epidemic at the end of the World War I. As many as 100 million worldwide, and 600,000 in the United States (roughly fi ve times the number of American casualties in World War I and approximately equal to the total number of deaths in the Civil War), perished over the course of just a few months in this remarkably deadly episode. In addition, this was an unusual strain of infl uenza that killed mainly the healthiest cohort of the population (those in their twenties and thirties) through a violent immune response. If any

t h e g r e at e x a g g e r at i o n 1 7

event should have triggered reevaluation of the nation’s approach to death (based solely on changes in incidence and scale, as Civil War historians often do), this would be it. Yet, one historian’s book on the subject is titled America’s Forgotten Pandemic, and he spends a signifi cant portion of the book trying to explain why the epidemic seemed to disappear from public consciousness so soon after it waned. The answer, in part, must be that Americans into the twentieth century viewed disease—and the death that came with it—as a constant, as something that had to be dealt with as part of everyday existence.24

Beyond a reevaluation of the statistics, diary evidence during the war suggests that the antebellum circumstances regarding death continued in similar patterns. Americans recognized that war-related deaths touched many households, but, as in years past, they also noted the frequent deaths due to sickness and accident that occurred. Nancy Emerson of Virginia, like a great many nineteenth-century diarists, tried to sum up the year’s events in late December. For 1862, she spoke of the deaths of three locals in the war, Col. William Baylor and brothers James and John Gabert, all killed at “the second battle of Manassas.” She then lists other deaths in the neighborhood: L. Kerr of typhoid fever, and “little” Emily Baylor and David B. (age twelve) of diphtheria. In the end, the three soldiers were among the “fi fteen new graves” added to the community’s “graveyard this year.” Celestia Lee was seventeen in 1863 and living on a farm in Iowa when she started her account of important events. Her diary is noteworthy for depicting a home life and social world (fi lled with discussions of “beaus”) that was, to be sure, aff ected by the war, but not fundamentally changed. Her experience with war-related death is relatively slight. In the main, as those who recorded such things before the war, she notes the frequent deaths in the neighborhood from diseases such as scarlet fever, consump- tion, and “membrane croup.” These hit the young especially, including her seven-year-old niece, Mary. A passage from May 1865 indicates the com- mon mixing of considerations of death with more mundane aff airs: “Ma has gone to O. W. Barkers Columbus died this morning with scarlet fever his little sister was buried last week Monday & Mrs. Barker is real sick. O Savior we thank thee for the health thou hast blest us with & may suffi cient grace be given to those you have stricken. I got my hat it looks real nice.” A few months later she summed up the local experience with the war: “Most of the soldiers that went from around here are home now I think there were over 30 from the Tp [township] went & only one killed J. Pierce & two sickened & died & Colvill quite a number were wounded & some severely but all at home now it seems so odd & they act so independent too but guess we can match them.” Lee’s fi nal comment here refers to the

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behavior of the young men who were now back in the local community and the young women who mixed with them, demonstrating her continuing interest in evaluating social relationships. Note too that Lee separated the battlefi eld deaths from those soldiers who “sickened & died” in the war.25

In his study of diaries and letters in wartime Philadelphia, J. Matthew Gallman fi nds a similar pattern. He describes distinct continuity of expe- rience and cultural forms across the antebellum and Civil War periods, including coping mechanisms for the separation from loved ones fi ght- ing and dying in the war. While the loss was considerable for Americans, Gallman notes that “they did have traditions to cling to to help them cope. Departures at young adulthood were a familiar aspect of young men’s experiences. The westward migration of the previous several decades had accustomed many to long separations.” Death was also common in their households, Gallman observes, but it usually occurred close to home. He sees the effi cient mail system that linked Philadelphia to the troops as one way family members and friends managed the separation. He sums up: “The letters and diaries examined here suggest that Philadelphians adjusted to these separations without fully recasting antebellum rela- tionships.” Frances Clarke’s recent, penetrating book confi rms this per- spective. In War Stories: Suff ering and Sacrifi ce in the Civil War North, Clarke argues against the claims by historians—based mainly on the study of unrepresentative major authors such as Ambrose Bierce—that the war caused dramatic cultural change through the experience with death. “In contrast,” she states, “those who study mainstream thought—refl ected in the writings of common soldiers, lesser-known authors, and the mass of ordinary civilians—suggest that no such abrupt cultural shift was evident by war’s end.”26

Diaries and letters from the period, and Gallman’s book, also reveal the frequency of drownings and accidental deaths from industrial acci- dents and transportation mishaps. Horses bolted, axes missed their tar- gets, boats capsized, and engines exploded, creating mayhem on a scale unknown to modern-day Americans. In Philadelphia alone during the war years, 1,753 people died in violent accidents, about one-half of the number of Philadelphians who died on the battlefi eld during this time. Again, these fi gures show that the contemporary environment created a familiarity with early deaths both accidental and health-related.27

The Lincoln family experience confi rms this perspective. By the time Abraham was assassinated in 1865, the nuclear family had already suff ered two traumatic blows, the deaths of sons Willie and, much earlier, Eddie. In eff ect, the family’s story represents a microcosm of the ratio of casual- ties of war: two deaths at the hands of disease, and one from the barrel of

t h e g r e at e x a g g e r at i o n 1 9

a gun. Confederate general James Longstreet’s experience during the war reveals a similar sequence of events. He survived four long years of war, though wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864, but three of his children (ages one, four, and six) were carried off together in an 1862 scar- let fever epidemic, almost simultaneous with the death of Willie Lincoln. These family stories can be used to remind us that the vast majority of military deaths in the Civil War, those caused by disease, would not have been interpreted as unusual or even, perhaps, as a casualty of war. The chances of dying this way were very high before the war, and they remained so during the war for all Americans. This is not to say that Americans were so inured to death that they did not suff er when it occurred, as is obvious from Cornelia Smith’s diary and the Lincolns’ responses to their children’s deaths. Civil War–era Americans had developed close, emotional connec- tions to loved ones, and the frequency of death did not serve to make peo- ple callous. Instead, it intensifi ed the experience and produced a culture that sought to fi nd understanding and solace.

We may thus recognize the ordinary, if still emotionally charged, expe- rience of Abraham Lincoln as he faced losses in his family, but what of his concerns regarding the steadily mounting losses in the army? His public and private statements reveal that he could be very sympathetic, even sentimental, when it came to individual circumstances, but he also recognized the need to fi ght the war and that losses would necessarily come with the battle. In a letter to the parents of Col. Elmer Ellsworth, he assured them that “in the untimely loss of your noble son, our affl ic- tion here, is scarcely less than your own. So much of promised usefulness to one’s country, and of bright hopes for one’s self and friends, have rarely been so suddenly dashed, as in his fall.” He then briefl y pointed out the fi ne elements of Ellsworth’s character before closing with: “May God give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power. Sincerely your friend in a common affl iction.” However, when addressing the larger issues of death and sacrifi ce, Lincoln could be sympathetic yet not overly concerned by the situation. In his Annual Message to Congress in 1864, for example, he noted “that we do not approach exhaustion in the most important branch of national resources—that of living men. While it is melancholy to refl ect that the war has fi lled so many graves, and carried mourning to so many hearts, it is some relief to know that, compared with the surviving, the fallen have been so few.” He then pointed out how the increasing number of voters (all men, of course) in the last election meant that the population continued to grow in the face of the death toll of the war. “It is not material to inquire how the increase has been produced, or to show that it would have been greater but for the war, which is probably true,” he said. In this

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clear-eyed (some might say cold-hearted) tone, he emphasized that “the important fact remains demonstrated, that we have more men now than we had when the war began; that we are not exhausted, nor in process of exhaustion; that we are gaining strength, and may, if need be, maintain the contest indefi nitely.”28

Lincoln’s attitude toward death and his family’s private experience with it align closely with the larger society’s. Personal writings from both before and during the war demonstrate the signifi cance of death and separation from loved ones. Americans recognized the fragility of life and struggled to cope with the accompanying sorrow. The war added to the problem and created new concerns specifi c to the dying in the war, but the great mass of Americans, Lincoln among them, never discussed the volume of casualties as somehow intrinsically signifi cant.

And, in fact, there is very little evidence in the public record to show that death during the war was considered occurring on a monumental or desta- bilizing scale, beyond that of the antebellum period. A search through the pages of periodicals generally supportive of the Republican Party during the war—Harper’s Weekly, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune— for example, turns up sentimental pieces about loss and recognition of the carnage involved in particular circumstances, but it also reveals matter- of-fact accounts of the number of dead in specifi c battles and a fi rm com- mitment to the importance of the cause. The overall levels of death do not receive attention as an identifi able problem per se, suggesting that this was indeed not the central experience of the war. Reporting on a funeral, for example, the Times mixed sorrow with patriotism, noting, “Two more of our best and bravest have fallen—two more heads lie low in the dust—two more names have been added to the long list of those ‘noble ones’ who have given their life, their all, for country.” At Christmas in 1864, Harper’s Weekly tried to identify the thoughts of the nation at the end of a bloody, yet encouraging year: “War is sorrowful, but there is one thing infi nitely more horrible than the worst horrors of war, and that is the feeling that nothing is worth fi ghting for, and the blindness which can not see that war is often the safest, surest, shortest, and least bloody way of peace.” Comments like these demonstrate an interpretation of death that was fi rmly grounded in its historical moment, and that linked each death to a larger eff ort.29

If the volume of deaths indeed held such signifi cance on its own for those living through the war, then it seems surprising that those opposing the war did not fi nd much traction and did not make consistent use of the scale of death as an issue. In the North, the Copperhead movement never put forward the desire to end the dying as its reason for existence. Instead, northern opposition to the war repeatedly spoke to concerns about civil

t h e g r e at e x a g g e r at i o n 2 1

liberties and an overreaching government. It is true that the high point for the movement occurred in the summer of 1864 when the war eff ort stalled and casualties mounted, but as soon as Sherman’s army turned the tide, the antiwar crusade crumbled. What this says is that huge losses by them- selves did not cause a reaction. Rather, the army’s inability to justify the losses through military advances allowed feelings of resistance to build. Another way to see this is to note that the Battle of Gettysburg produced a horrifi c number of casualties but because it was a victory for the North very little opposition was generated.30

Recognizing that soldiers and noncombatants viewed the dying in context, however, does not preclude new experiences of death during the war for those that lived through it. In other words, while the volume of death was not unprecedented, the circumstances of the Civil War were. The meaning, texture, and signifi cance of battlefi eld deaths were indeed processed in the moment. For example, how did family members of dead soldiers cope with the virtual annihilation of many bodies, the lack of corporeal presences to mourn, and the fear that corpses could be abused or neglected? Drew Gilpin Faust has examined these topics with great insight, and very little about the antebellum demographic or cultural envi- ronment could have prepared Americans for some of these problems (note, however, that diaries show that when family members moved west, those remaining behind often worried about the possibility of never seeing loved ones again and, should they die in far off regions, not having access to the corpse or burial site for mourning). The care for wounded soldiers and the experience of hospitals would also have presented novel situations. While all this must be acknowledged, the connection of the war deaths to a greater cause imbued them with a meaning that should not be overlooked and that may be seen as an improvement over the struggle to make sense of the vast numbers of dead during the antebellum period. In some way, the signifi cance ascribed to deaths while in the service of protecting the Union or Confederacy obviated the antebellum need for struggling to under- stand God’s will when those in the prime of life were cut down. Recall, for example, Cornelia Smith’s attempt to understand why her young nephew died in great agony from a common disease. For family members of sol- diers, however, the interpretation was easily found. As Minnesotan Patrick Taylor noted in a letter to his parents upon the death of his brother (the two fought side by side at Gettysburg), “Isaac has not fallen in vain. What though one of your six soldiers has fallen on the altar of our country. ‘Tis a glorious death; better die free than live slaves.’” Edward Everett, in his speech at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg in 1863 (in a cultural context very diff erent from the alienation associated

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with later wars), reinforced this point by claiming it was “sweet and becom- ing to die for one’s country” and that if ever gratitude was owed to any it was “to those whose last resting place we this day commend to the bless- ing of Heaven and of men.” Hence, dying for the cause was seen as both patriotic and a guarantee of a passage to heaven. Death in the war could be viewed as a better death than the model “good death” before the war. It satisfi ed the cultural demands of the period in ways antebellum deaths might not have.31

Furthermore, Frances Clarke has shown through a survey of ordi- nary Americans’ private papers that for the common person the suff er- ing experienced in the war fi t well into idealized, pre–Civil War modes of understanding. Reactions by those who were wounded in the war were “profoundly conservative,” providing “solace, identity, and inspiration”:

the diaries and letters of sick and wounded soldiers make clear that large numbers expressed their suff ering in terms popularized by domi- nant stories, representing themselves as undaunted patriots and trying to remain genial or uncomplaining no matter their misfortune. Unlike their counterparts in later wars, Union soldiers experienced their affl ic- tions in a culture that valued ideal suff ering as edifying, uplifting, and benefi cial to both oneself and society. . . . By imagining well-borne suf- fering as evidence of the justice of their cause, patriotic writers limited the disillusionment that might have resulted from rising death tolls, allowing ordinary white soldiers to embrace heroic status both as war- riors and as worthy suff erers.

In addition, Clarke demonstrates that for those who lost a loved one in the war, comfort was not diffi cult to summon: “They could take solace in an extensive literature written by female nurses and civilian volunteers which was fi lled with examples of Union soldiers dying good deaths—a litera- ture suggesting that all who died or suff ered for the Union had necessarily been saved.”32

The evidence from the period thus makes clear that historians need to reevaluate the way we have come to understand the carnage of the Civil War. Before the war began, the constant presence of lethal diseases and accidents meant Americans were used to physical suff ering and frequent separation from loved ones on a massive scale, at least relative to today. Furthermore, in an increasingly sentimental culture, these Americans had developed social and psychological means of coping with these losses, though they still felt them with tremendous emotional force. In the main, then, the war added to an existing demographic problem rather than cre- ating an entirely new one, and the culture was at least partially successful

t h e g r e at e x a g g e r at i o n 2 3

in folding the experience of war into an eff ective process of coping with suff ering and dying.

In sum, the arguments for the signifi cance of death that are in current ascendance are not fully convincing. If, on the one hand, the case for the importance of death in the Civil War is based simply on the volume of death, then it loses its cogency when put into the demographic context of the antebellum period and the relatively moderate reaction to the dying on the part of those who lived through the war. If, on the other hand, the case is made using the seemingly omnipresent discussion of death during the war, then the evidence breaks down when it is shown that antebellum Americans had many of the same concerns. In addition, regarding anxiety about the meaning ascribed to Civil War deaths, it must be kept in mind that the commitment to the idea of death in the war as ennobling and spir- itually sanctifying served to soften feelings of loss. Finally, it should be rec- ognized that discussions of the problem of death in the postwar period do not reveal much about how people faced the issue during the war. Instead, they speak more to concerns of the contemporary society. In the end, we must keep in mind that combat deaths were experienced within the context of the droning, unvarying dying that washed over Americans throughout this period. Given this milieu, the nearly ubiquitous use by historians of a set of factually correct, yet misleading, statistics needs rethinking. To make a case for the bloodiness of the war in this manner says more about how we interpret these fi gures today—and the uses we make of them—than about the way Americans actually experienced the wrenching confl ict.

notes

1. The importance given to the volume of death may be seen in popular forums such as the introduction to Ken Burns’s documentary The Civil War, introductory pan- els at the new museum at the Gettysburg National Military Park, and the recent PBS documentary Death and the Civil War. Within a wide-ranging analysis of death, Drew Gilpin Faust’s prizewinning This Republic of Suff ering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2008) makes similar claims. J. David Hacker’s “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57 (December 2011): 307–48, while itself a careful quantitative analysis, precipitated new levels of signifi cance attributed to the total fi gures for Civil War dead. The editors of Civil War History claimed that Hacker’s article “stands among the most consequential pieces ever to appear in this journal’s pages,” (307) and Eric Foner said the essay “further elevates the signifi cance of the Civil War and makes a dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history” (quoted in Guy Gugliotta, “New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll,” New York Times, April 2, 2012). An alternative perspective may be found in Mark E. Neely Jr., The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007). In an introduction to Hacker’s article, James McPherson uses

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the larger overall casualty fi gure, by itself, to challenge Neely: “Such a fi gure calls into question Mark Neely’s assertion that the Civil War was ‘remarkable for its traditional restraint.’ The Civil War did indeed result in more American soldier deaths than all the other wars this country has fought combined” (310).

2. We could make any number of similar comparisons and extrapolations: between 1860 and 1870 approximately 1 million women in the prime of life (between the ages of fi fteen and forty) died. This is, of course, many more than all the soldiers lost in all wars combined, and equates to more than 10 million deaths today.

3. Death Rates for Massachusetts may be found in Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition On Line, ed. Susan B. Carter et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Table Ab1048–58, “Death Rate for Massachusetts, by Sex and Selected Causes, 1855–1970.” For the New York City fi gures, see fi gure 1 in Michael R. Haines, “Estimated Life Table for the United States, 1850–1910,” Historical Methods 31 (Fall 1998): 149–70. The Chicago fi gures are found in “ANNO DOMINI 1864: THE CITY OF CHICAGO,” Chicago Tribune, January 2, 1865. See Michael R. Haines and Richard Hall Steckel, A Population History of North America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 328–38, for an excellent overview of the mortality studies. They point out that work on the stature of Americans and some incisive mortality stud- ies suggest there was an increase in mortality between 1830 and 1860. On medical practice, see Richard Harrison Shryock, Medicine and Society in America: 1660-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960); Martin S. Pernik, A Calculus of Suff er- ing: Pain, Professionalism, and Anesthesia in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).

4. Center for Disease Control, “United States Life Tables, 2001,” National Vital Statistics Reports 52, no. 14 (February 18, 2004): 3; Center for Disease Control, “Leading Causes of Death,” National Vital Statistics Report 50, no. 15 (September 16, 2002): 20.

5. Haines, “Estimated Life Table for the United States,” appendix A; Hacker, “Count- ing the Civil War Dead,” 313.

6. This section of the article is based on a wide-ranging survey of personal writings from across New York State. Historical work from other areas supports the claims made here. Lewis Saum’s excellent and comprehensive study, Popular Mood of Pre-Civil War America, based on several thousand sets of diaries and letters, confi rms the posited concern with sickness, death, and separation. For most Americans, according to Saum, “a sense of tentativeness colored all,” and expressions of the inscrutableness of God’s intentions appeared over and over again in these materials. “Such sentiments were not limited to emotional occasions; they were nearly omnipresent.” Most important was the need to be ready for death. “That theme was so fundamental and prevalent among the common men that had they stumbled upon the isolated expression ‘manifest destiny,’ they might well have pictured death and the grave.” Thomas Dublin came to similar conclusions after reading a mass of letters written by women who worked in factories in New England between 1830 and 1860. He found three main themes that “suggest

t h e g r e at e x a g g e r at i o n 2 5

aspects of nineteenth-century life that working women shared with all women, and that permeated the lives of men as well.” First, the women expressed “repeated concerns regarding sickness and death, reminding readers today how immediate and pressing these problems were in their daily lives.” Second, the writers exhibited signifi cant reli- giosity, which provided important solace, “particularly in times of sickness.” The third theme was the “importance of family and kinship bonds for women, even in the face of repeated migrations that often caused family separation.” Conevery Valencius made a similar point upon reading a trove of letters from Arkansas and Missouri: “Worry about sickness, disease, and accident was part of the fabric of life for all manner of correspondents.” Valencius’s, Dublin’s, and Saum’s studies show that the themes found in New Yorkers’ writings were not specifi c to their home region. Lewis O. Saum, The Popular Mood of Pre-Civil War America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1980), 12, 13, 18; Thomas Dublin, ed., Farm to Factory: Women’s Letters, 1830–1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 3–5; Conevery Barton Valencius, The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 5. See also Mark S. Schantz, Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America’s Culture of Death (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008) for a comprehensive description of the importance of death in the larger culture in the antebellum years.

7. Herbert Ross Brown, The Sentimental Novel in America, 1789–1860 (New York: Pageant, 1959), off ers a traditional critique of the genre. Reinterpretations of these texts may be found in Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977); Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Nina Baym, Wom- an’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Richard H. Brodhead, Cultures of Let- ters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1993); Joyce W. Warren, ed., The (Other) American Traditions: Nineteenth-Century Women Writers (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993); Nancy Schnog, “Inside the Sentimental: The Psychological Work of The Wide, Wide World,” Genders 4 (Spring 1989): 11–25; Shirley Samuels, ed., The Culture of Sen- timent: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Alice Fahs, “The Sentimental Soldier in Popular Civil War Literature,” Civil War History 46 (June 2000): 107–31; Lori Merish, Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth-Century American Litera- ture (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000); Mary Louise Kete, Sentimental Collaborations: Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000); Lyde Cullen Sizer, The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850–1872 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Joseph Fichtelberg, Critical Fictions: Sentiment and the American Market, 1780–1870 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003).

8. Diary of Cornelia H. Smith, February 17, 1836, Rare Book and Manuscript Department, Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (KLCU).

9. Diary of Cornelia H. Smith, February 19, 21, May 18, 27, 1836.

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10. Diary of Cornelia H. Smith, August 1, 1836. 11. Diary of Cornelia H. Smith, June 8, November 17, 1837, February 18, April 17,

1838. 12. Diary of Cornelia H. Smith, January 24, February 18, 1841. 13. Diary of Cornelia H. Smith, April 25, July 29, 1841. 14. Rice Family Account Book, Pratt Family Papers, KLCU; Diary of David M.

Darrow, 1851–53, Madison County Historical Society, Oneida, N.Y. 15. Diary of Thayer Gauss, January 12, February 24, 1847, KLCU. 16. Schantz, Awaiting the Heavenly Country, 1. 17. Ibid., 2–3, 4, 8. Schantz’s book in many ways summarizes a vast volume of work

on death in the period: David E. Stannard, The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Charles O. Jackson, ed., Passing: The Vision of Death in America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1977); Martha V. Pike and Janice Gray Armstrong, A Time to Mourn: Expressions of Grief in Nineteenth Century America (Stony Brook, N.Y.: Museums at Stony Brook, 1980); Philippe Aries, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York: Knopf, 1981); Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes toward Death, 1799–1883 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Robert V. Wells, “Taming the ‘King of Terrors’: Ritual and Death in Schenectady, New York, 1844–1860,” Journal of Social History 27 (Summer 1994): 717–35; Robert V. Wells, Facing the “King of Terrors”: Death and Society in an American Community, 1750–1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). A similar pattern emerged in middle-class England, as shown in James Stevens Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death (Detroit: Partridge, 1972); Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). For an excellent survey of the historiography, see Frances M. Clarke, War Stories: Suff ering and Sacrifi ce in the Civil War North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

18. Historical Statistics of the United States, table Ab1048–58. 19. Modern death rates may be found in “Deaths: Final Data for 2006,” Center for

Disease Control, National Vital Statistics Report, 57, no. 14 (April 2009): 1–136. 20. “The Sanitary Commission,” North American Review 98, no. 203 (April 1864):

373. 21. U.S. Sanitary Commission, The Sanitary Commission of the United States Army:

A Succinct Narrative of Its Works and Purposes (New York: Published for the Benefi t of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, 1864), 256. See also Maxwell W. Quentin, Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel: The Political History of the United States Sanitary Commission (New York: Longmans, Green, 1956). Figures taken from Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 1908, Civil War Home Page, http://www.civil-war.net/ searchstates.asp?searchstates=Total, indicate a death rate from disease among Union troops of 7.2 percent.

22. Faust, Republic of Suff ering, xiii. 23. U.S. Census, 1850, 1860; Historical Statistics of the United States, Table

Ab1048–58; State-level casualties taken from Dyer, A Compendium, http://www.civil

t h e g r e at e x a g g e r at i o n 2 7

-war.net/searchstates.asp?searchstates=Ohio, http://www.civil-war.net/searchstates. asp?searchstates=Massachusetts.

24. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–1782 (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002); John M. Barry, The Great Infl uenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (New York: Penguin, 2005); Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Infl uenza of 1918 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

25. Diary of Nancy Emerson, December 29, 1862, available online at University of Virginia Library, Valley of the Shadow: Valley Personal Papers, http://valley.lib.virginia. edu/papers/EmeDiar; Civil War Diary of Celestia Lee Barker, 1863–1904, Iowa State University Library, Digital Collections, Civil War Diaries, http://cdm16001.contentdm. oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15031coll14/id/1320/rec/1.

26. J. Matthew Gallman, Mastering Wartime: A Social History of Philadelphia dur- ing the Civil War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 83; Clarke, War Stories, 4.

27. Gallman, Mastering Wartime, 55. 28. Abraham Lincoln to Ephraim D. and Phoebe Ellsworth, May 25, 1861, in The

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 4, New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1953, 386–87; “Annual Message to Congress,” December 6, 1864, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 152.

29. “Death of Two Soldiers,” New York Times, November 23, 1864; “Saturday, December 31, 1864. Christmas,” Harper’s Weekly, December 31, 1864.

30. Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

31. Patrick Taylor quoted in Richard Moe, The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), 277; Edward Everett, “Gettysburg Address,” Nov. 19, 1863, Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project, http://www.voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/warpeace/ee1863txt. xml. On this point, see also Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

32. Clarke, War Stories, 27, 53–54, 62.