Death of a Nation

Faust finds such despair seeping through countless letters and journals of soldiers and civilians alike. But the horror at the violence was not always paralytic. Well before the war ended, the North had embarked on a reburying program that by 1871 had resulted in the creation of 74 national cemeteries—the nation's first, beginning with Gettysburg—to hold the remains of 303,536 men. (Southerners, however, were not included in this program until the McKinley administration.) The necessity of medical hygiene and sanitation was recognized as never before. Women, particularly those Southern women who initiated the reburial efforts, discovered the benefits of social activism.

But the most profound change occurred in the public's impression of its government, which was thereafter expected to bear responsibility for burial, for the notification of survivors and for pensions for veterans. "In some ways I don't find this book a depressing book," Faust said in a recent telephone interview. "I find it an inspiring book, as I watch people struggle to deal with extraordinarily difficult circumstances and retain their humanity and affirm that humanity in the face of suffering and loss." At the same time, she is keenly aware of what her research uncovered: that more than half a century before World War I, which is usually cited as the war that taught the world about mass slaughter, Americans had been well schooled in these horrors. "The level of carnage that was experienced in Europe had been experienced through much of the South during the war. So I think you begin to see inklings of that modern perspective—the irony, the questioning, the doubt—coming out of the Civil War."

"This Republic of Suffering" is one of those groundbreaking histories in which a crucial piece of the past, previously overlooked or misunderstood, suddenly clicks into focus. The Civil War, we come to see, was not just the first modern war but also produced the first modern generation. As Faust writes, "The Civil War generation glimpsed the fear that still defines us—the sense that death is the only end. We still work with the riddle that they—the Civil War dead and their survivors alike—had to solve so long ago."

© 2008